I’m a Scientist November 2013: Who’s taking part?

I’m a Scientist: Get me out of here! is back from 11th–22nd November with 4 new zones, 20 scientists, and 100 classes.

With nearly three applicants for every scientist’s place, there was fierce competition. After weeks of sifting applications and single sentence summaries, we’re ready to announce our scientists, and the schools who will be not so silently judging them.

We’d like to thank Science Foundation Ireland for providing funding for the event; as well as the Institute of Physics in Ireland for funding the Nanotechnology Zone, and ESERO Ireland for funding the Space Zone.

Nanotechnology Zone

The Scientists:

Sinead Cullen Trinity College Dublin	I work with really tiny devices to try and destroy one of the worlds largest killers; Heart Disease.
Jessamyn Fairfield Trinity College Dublin	I study how really small objects interact with light, electricity, and energy differently than large objects do, and try to use what I learn to design electronics that behave like the brain.
Eleanor Holmes Trinity College Dublin	I take the thinnest sheets of carbon possible (graphene); put dots of a magnetic metal on top; run electrical current through it; then put the whole thing in a strong magnetic field to see what it does!
Christian Wirtz Trinity College Dublin	I’m a nanoscientist – essentially I play with Lego on length scales smaller than a virus.
Adam Murphy Dublin City University	I use a massive UV Laser to make shapes that are millionths of a millimetre big out of silver, which have crazy effects on light, and can be used to detect cancer easier.

The Schools:

St Mary’s Grammar School, Belfast
Claregalway College, Galway
Eureka Secondary School, Meath
Santa Sabina, Dublin
Castlecomer Community School, Kilkenny
Loreto St Michaels, Meath
St Farnans Post Primary, Kildare
Mount Sackville Secondary School, Dublin
Pipers Hill College, Kildare
Presentation De La Salle, Carlow
Salerno Secondary School, Galway

Space Zone

The Scientists:

Stephen Scully NUI Maynooth	Design of Next Generation Cosmology Telescopes for the European Space Agency
Lauren McKeown University College Dublin	My phd involves modelling the surfaces of cool stars and later combining my predictions with data taken across sub – millimetre and millimetre wavelengths.
Joseph Roche Trinity College Dublin	Although I’m an expert in dying stars, I spend most of my time time researching ways to make learning science more fun by freezing, levitating or exploding things for anyone that is interested!
Eoin O’Colgain University of Oviedo, Asturias, Spain	I work on the mysterious 95% of our universe NOT described by the Standard Model of particle physics, so in short, everything else!
Colm Bracken N.U.I. Maynooth	Designing space telescope cameras to search for answers to how stars and galaxies form and change, and even to search for the evidence of alien life.

The Schools:

St Andrew’s College Junior School, Dublin
Presentation De La Salle, Carlow
St Farnans Post Primary School, Kildare
Kilrush Community School, Clare
Bothar Mobhi, Dublin
Abbey Community College, Roscommon
Shimna Integrated College, Down
Pipers Hill College, Kildare

Helium Zone

The Scientists:

Shane McGuinness Trinity College Dublin	I look at human-wildlife conflict in Rwanda where mountain gorillas, poor subsistence farmers, volcanic eruptions and land shortages, all in a politically unstable region, making biological conservation and development of poor communities a real challenge
Maria McNamara University of Bristol	I’m a palaeontologist and I do fossilisation experiments to work out what colours were fossil insects, birds and feathered dinosaurs millions of years ago and what they used colours for – camouflage, mating displays or warning signals
Karen McCarthy University College Cork	I’ve got big ideas for little things – my work on bacteria and secret compartments within them will potentially change how we use bacteria in our everyday lives!
Gabriele De Chiara Queen’s University Belfast	Schroedinger’s cat, quantum teleportation and other weird things of the quantum universe
Angela Stevenson Trinity College Dublin	I use robots to dive for sea urchins in cold water coral reefs that grow very deep (1500m!) in the ocean; I study these reefs so that we can better understand and conserve these vulnerable ecosystems.

The Schools:

Francis St CBS, Dublin
CBS Thurles, Tipperary
Malahide Community School, Dublin
Our Lady’s Grammar School, Down
Margaret Aylward Community College, Dublin
Colaiste Pobail Bheanntrai, Cork
Carlow Educate Together NS, Carlow
St Killian’s College, Antrim
Mildred Gill, Londonderry
Scoil Ailbhe, Tipperary
Claregalway College, Galway

Lithium Zone

The Scientists:

Sive Finlay Trinity College Dublin	I study the evolution of tenrecs; a weird family of mammals from Madgascar which includes an amazing mix of different species that look like moles, shrews, hedgehogs and otters even though they’re actually more closely related to elephants and aardvarks!
Michael Nolan University College Cork	We use computer simulations to develop new materials that use light energy from the sun to make fuel from water and carbon dioxide.
Emma Cahill University Pierre et Marie curie, Paris, France	I study how addictive drugs hijack the brain’s circuits to change short term and long term behaviour
Ciara Keane Trinity College Dublin	I investigate the role of people’s genes play in fighting HIV and Hepatitis C infections
Cathal Cummins University of Limerick	Bubbles are really light so they float but, for some reason, Guinness bubbles sink; we use maths and physics to solve this mystery!