A message from the 2014 I’m a Scientist Kenya winner, Priscilla…

It was wonderful to interact with young curious minds, and upcoming scientific innovators. The range of questions, from basic biology to engineering and astrophysics, to evolution and religion, always surprised me. I enjoyed tackling each question, but most of the time I had to do a lot of research to answer them. I have learnt a lot from the questions as well as the comments that followed our answers. I also got to learn (or be reminded) about the mind of the young Kenyan scholar. I could relate to the frustration of having all those questions and no answers, with no idea where to get the answers from, or who to ask. I hope I was able to answer some of those.

I would like to sincerely thank the students for voting for me. It was a great honour. I enjoyed interacting one on one during the chats and reading through the comments after. Thank you for inspiring me to be a good mentor. The event wouldn’t have been so successful of it wasn’t for the dedication and commitment from the teachers. I am grateful to the teachers for their help in coordinating the students, and for providing them with knowledge to communicate and express their thoughts clearly, and for helping us scientist in answering the questions. Keep up the good work.

A big thanks to my fellow scientists Mel, Jay, Chapa and Dorcas who took part in the event together with me. They put in a lot of time off their busy schedules and made the event the success it was. Apologies for the questions that went unanswered. There were very many questions, some out of our areas of work, and to be honest, questions we do not have answers to. Hopefully we will all keep looking for knowledge long after the event.

Finally I would like to thank I’m a scientist for organising a Kenyan version and for making it work as well as it did with limited resources. Thank you for educating and inspiring our students and getting the interested in science. We will keep the schools engagement going (using the prize money from IAS Kenya!).

Priscilla