First of all, thank you so much for voting me as your winner! I am absolutely chuffed, and have been smiling since I found out on Friday. I plan on setting up a marine biology website, so keep an eye out for it!

I had such a blast over the two weeks of I’m a scientist… get me out of here. The live chats were so exciting and fast paced. It was impossible to predict the questions, and some even left me thinking “Oh yes, how does that work?!”. I had to warm up my brain before each chat so I would be ready for the super speedy typing and brain power required to keep up with your interesting and often mind boggling questions! The questions ranged from “Do animals have their own language” to “How many shark species are there” to “Will we ever become immune to Ebola?”.

The best part of this whole experience was being able to talk, totally casually, about science. We have all heard scientific phrases like “genetically modified” and “climate change”, but they aren’t always explained in a clear way.  It was fun to have friendly conversations about what these things are and how they will affect us. Scientists have a reputation as geniuses in glasses and white coats mixing chemicals, but there’s so much more to us than that stereotype!  There are marine biologists (like me) studying sea life, computer scientists creating apps for your phone, pharmacologists creating new drugs to cure diseases, geologists finding new ways to predict earthquakes… and so on. Science is such a broad subject, there’s bound to be at least one part that interests you.

I would like to say a big thank you to the organisers, the moderators, my fellow scientists , the teachers and the students for making the last two weeks so enjoyable.  It was a great experience, and I will miss answering all of your questions. Hopefully you all learned something new.  I surely did! 🙂