I’m a Scientist: Get me out of here! is off to a roaring start here in Ireland. All twenty scientists are confirmed and registered on the site, and the live chat bookings are flying in from schools across Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. With a growing waiting list for teachers wanting to take part with their students, we can’t wait to get started with the event.

We’re delighted to see such enthusiasm from both the teachers and scientists; this is only the second time we’ve run I’m a Scientist: Ireland and the response has been fantastic. It’s nice to see returning teachers, as well as in influx of new schools. With scientists too, we weren’t quite ready for the number of brilliant researchers we’ve had to turn down this year!

Talking of the scientists, they’ve been busy filling in their profiles, and helping to ramp up the excitement on Twitter.

Lithium Zone zoologist, Sive Finlay of the Trinity College Dublin, has already filled in her profile, including some fantastic fieldwork photographs. “I’ve always been fascinated by the incredible, beautiful diversity of the natural world. I love finding out new facts about how animals work and trying to figure out why they have evolved to be the way they are.”

Very excited/intimidated to be part if @imascientist this year! Profile is ready to go – bring on the questions 🙂
— SiveFinlay (@SiveFinlay) October 15, 2013

While Sive’s fellow Lithium Zone scientist, and therefore competitor, Cathal Cummins loves to “bring mathematics alive”, and plans to spend the prize money on new demonstrations for his physics busking.

In the ESERO Ireland funded Space Zone, Joseph Roche plans to spend his winnings to “improve the visual communication of astrophysicists.” Quite what that means, we’re not totally sure, but we’re interested to find out; that’s if he wins of course. He’s competing with Eoin O’Colgain, who wants to spend the money on a “whirlwind tour of Irish schools to promote fundamental research.”

@imascientist so exciting to be chosen to take part, thanks a million #IASIE
— Sinead Cullen (@SinCully) October 9, 2013

Over in the Helium Zone, Shane McGuinness has confessed that he never actually studied Biology in school, yet spends his days “[working] with some of the most endangered species on the planet.”

Eleanor Holmes of the Nanotechnology Zone, funded by the Institute of Physics in Ireland, describes herself as a “recovering Lego addict”, and has stemmed this addiction into her passion for building science experiments. Christian Wirtz describes his work as, “kind of like using Lego, but even the finished products are smaller than a virus.” We’re sensing a theme here; the best we ever managed to build with Lego was a submarine that sank when we put it in the bath…

There are of course many more scientists not featured in this post, scientists with fantastic aspirations for the €2,000 in prize money we’re giving out this year, go to the zones and check out their profiles.

We’ll see you all in November; for now, it’s back to booking live chats.