News

We’ve decided on the 8 zones running in the March I’m a Scientist event. In mid November the Wellcome Trust agreed to fund 50% of the costs of I’m a Scientist for the next 3 years, and we’ve also got 4 sponsors supporting themed zones. The 3 General zones are named after elements and will have a mix of scientists from all disciplines. We’re through to Gallium, Germanium and Selenium in the periodic table for March. The chemists among you may notice that we’re sadly not running an Arsenic Zone, because of the problems it may cause with firewalls. The 5 themed zones are open for scientists who are members of, or funded by, the zone sponsors: Electromagnetic Zone: sponsored by the Science & Technology Facilities Council Energy Zone: sponsored by the RCUK Energy Programme Quantum Zone: sponsored by the Institute of Physics Space Zone: sponsored by the Institute of … Continue reading →

We would like to congratulate the following students who have been named as the student winners in their zones of the STFC sponsored November 2011 event. Subatomic Zone – Aaron Dinas, Littleover Community School Zinc Zone – Anu Elegbede, St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School Well done to Aaron and Anu! The moderators thought they both asked good questions and really engaged with the event. They will each receive a student winner certificate and WH Smith vouchers. We would also like to thank all the other students who participated. There were some brilliant live chats and thought provoking questions asked which challenged the scientists. As one scientist said “the questions are great – was just discussing some of them with my research group at lunch“.

For the next three weeks 14 researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute will be talking with school students from a local Cambridgeshire school in Genome Futures, an I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here! event. Genome Futures is part of the Wellcome Trust’s 75th anniversary celebrations, where Wellcome Trust-funded centres, such as the Sanger Institute, are running events to engage their local communities. The Sanger Institute is a research centre that specialises in studying diseases that have an impact on global health by investigating genomes. During the event students from Sawston Village College will ASK scientists questions, CHAT with them during a live chat, and VOTE for the scientist who has best talked about their work. But unlike previous I’m a Scientist events there are no evictions. All the scientists will keep answering questions from the students until the end of the event on Friday 16th December. The event … Continue reading →

After two weeks of intense debate, stimulating chats and thought-provoking questions, I’m a Scientist, Get me out of Here! draws to an end. The five STFC scientists in each of the Subatomic and Zinc Zones battled it out for student votes, chatting with students in 36 live chats and answering 684 questions along the way. The scientists were eliminated one by one, to reveal the winner in each zone. So, congratulations to the winners: Ben Still – Subatomic Zone – Queen Mary, University of London Peta Foster – Zinc Zone – STFC Central Laser Facility Ben and Peta both receive £500 to spend on a science communication project, and we can’t wait to see their wonderful ideas put into practice! Ben plans to “Put it towards producing some podcasts and a documentary for everyone to enjoy” and Peta wants to “Create a demonstration of the best question/s I receive here so that it … Continue reading →

Last week we (that’s Shane and Sophia) sat before a Wellcome Trust Grants Committee to ask them to fund the project for 3 more years. Prof Stephen Curry and Dan Hannard from Woodkirk Academy came along to give a first hand account of participating in the event as a scientist and teacher. Over 100 scientists and supporters joined in via twitter. You can read what they said here. Thank you to you all. You are the best advocates for event we have. The good news is that the committee said Yes. They have agreed a Society Award to fund 50% (as requested) of the costs of the event. The even better news is that this means we can expand the number of zones we run. In 2012 we’ll run 30 zones and this will rise to 50 in 2014. More students, more teachers, more schools and more scientists will now … Continue reading →

Tomorrow, Tuesday 8th November, at 16.20 is an important time. Sophia and I, aided by Dan Hannard and Prof. Stephen Curry, participating teacher and scientist, will be asking the Wellcome Trust to part-fund I’m a Scientist for another 3 years. We have a 10 minute presentation and then 25 minutes of Q&A. We need your help! During the Q&A we will have a slide that will display all the tweets with #IAS2011 – live. It would be very impressive to see loads of tweets supporting the event between 16:30 and 17:00. 140 characters (including #IAS2011) saying what you got out of it would be perfect. I’m sure the committee would want to hear directly from the participants so please don’t hold back. That’s between 4.30 and 5pm on Tuesday 8th November. Please put it in your diary and tweet for #IAS2011

It’s a good few months since the last I’m a Scientist in June earlier this year, and the time has come to run another event! From November 14th-25th we are running a smaller I’m a Scientist event with 2 zones. It’s sponsored by the Science & Technology Facilities Council, so the 10 scientists taking part all work with the STFC in different ways, such as using STFC facilities, working for the STFC or receiving STFC funding for their research. The STFC is one of the 7 Research Councils in the UK, and they address research topics from particle physics to global security. They’re looking at topics as fundamental as the birth of the universe to the solar system we live in, understanding how the heavy elements are formed in the violent explosions of stars, and if it’s possible to complete the ‘Standard Model’ (including the search for the elusive Higgs … Continue reading →