I’m absolutely thrilled that the students enjoyed talking to me enough that they chose me as the winner! I’m also really surprised because I thought the other scientists were absolutely brilliant! 

Being part of I’m A Scientist has been an amazing experience! Getting to talk to the students directly was fantastic! They had so many great questions for us, a lot of which really made me think about the work I do and why I enjoy it so much! Some of the questions were tough to answer which made me go and learn more about several topics related to my research, I’m sure that new knowledge is going to come in handy for my work and when I do more outreach in the future! 

I also learnt a lot from the other scientists in the Sustainability Zone, we might all be working towards making things more sustainable but we do that in such a huge range of ways! Hearing about their work was so interesting! It was also great getting to chat with them a few times and find out about how they got into science, not everyone follows the same path to becoming a scientist. 

Of course none of this would have been possible without the fantastic I’m a Scientist team. Everyone has been brilliant, keeping us up to date with emails, moderating the chats, giving advice on what to say in our profiles and generally being really great and helpful!

Overall this activity has been amazing and has solidified my desire to work in science outreach after my PhD. I would recommend it to any scientists, even if they don’t think they want to do outreach as a career, the questions you get will make you think differently about your research and about science as a whole.

I hope that the students I talked to continue to be interested in science whether they decide to pursue it as a career or not. And who knows maybe I’ll get to work with some of them in the future!