Hi everyone!

First of all, I want to say a big big thank you to everyone who voted, I was not expecting to win, and any of us in the final three would have been worthy winners (so I am especially grateful to those who decided to use their vote for me)! Thank you to Walaa, Breandan, Adam, Gabriel and Sarah for being such fantastic competitors and I wish them all the best going forward in their science careers.

This was my first time doing I’m a Scientist so I didn’t know what to expect when I signed up or even if my application would get through! I am so glad I was put in the Americium zone and got the chance to talk to all of you. You asked some absolutely brilliant questions and some that were even beyond my own knowledge so I definitely see lots of budding scientists amongst you all. Hey, you never know, some of you may even want to get into climate science now and help me save the world?! I hope I inspired at least some of you to get into science, getting comments like “thanks to you I like science a little bit more” and that “you found the answers to your question really useful” made every minute I put into the competition worth it. 

Thank you to the teachers who gave up their class time and some home time to help the chats run and for giving me the chance to talk to your pupils, you are all excellent and are pioneers of the gap between science at different levels. I hope you found the talks interesting and fun!

Thanks also to the moderators who worked tirelessly over the last two weeks to keep everything running smoothly and answering all the questions I had when I was panicking on how to use the website!

So finally, I guess again I just want to say a big thanks to you guys, I hope I made you realise that not all scientists are scary men dressed in lab coats and just with a tiny bit of hard work and interest you can follow your dreams. Maybe one day I will meet Sir David Attenborough! The final goal!

Bye for now,

Sophie. 

Scientists! If you’d like the chance to win funding for your own public engagement work, apply for the next I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here: iasuk.ddev.site/scientist-apply