• Question: If you do not win the money would you be willing to find the funds another way out of your own time and efforts?

    Asked by anon-282384 on 8 Mar 2021.
    • Photo: Alex Baxendale

      Alex Baxendale answered on 8 Mar 2021: last edited 8 Mar 2021 12:45 pm

      Money is definitely not the only thing keeping us going, but there are a few businesses and charities that give out chunks of money every now and then, so we are always looking for opportunities to get our work paid. But, not everything requires money! I’m a self-funded PhD student so I don’t get money from anyone, I just get a student loan from the government to pay for my bills. All of my experiments and work are done as cheap as possible, it takes more time to do it, but it means that it isn’t all reliant on winning money!

    • Photo: Dennis Relojo-Howell

      Dennis Relojo-Howell answered on 8 Mar 2021: last edited 10 Mar 2021 10:08 am

      Over the years, I’ve been suporting a school project for children in a slum in the Philippines (It’s the same slum where I grew up). My prize money will be donated to their school, because I fiercely believe that one of them could be a scientist! Winning would be terrific, but even if I don’t, these children will still be receiving funds from me.

      As a resilience researcher, I want to empower children and adolescents. A good start is for them to have resources – which can propel them to study science later in their lives. Who knows? One of them might be the next brain surgeon!

      Luck and circumstances salvaged me; I’m now paying it back. I’m supporting children in the slums in the Philippines who are treading the same paths that I once trod.
      It’s very unlikely that I will win – I’m a horrible scientist because I’m not as ‘sciency’ as others, but it’s fun chatting with you all.

    • Photo: Lisa Orchard

      Lisa Orchard answered on 8 Mar 2021:

      Hi Kayleigh! We have successfully been running a Girls in Science scheme for a number of years and I would hope this can continue. So far we have had some money from the university, and have topped up with supplies that we have purchased ourselves as a team. However, the money would allow us to build on this a lot more, and build further events for both girls and boys. I am hoping I can build this up, but it will need a lot more work and we will be more restricted in terms of resources. I have no expectation of winning the money – there are lots of brilliant psychologists in this group and I have learned so much from their fabulous responses! For me, I just love talking to people about psychology. 🙂

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 10 Mar 2021:

      Hi KayleighJ,

      I will try! I am hoping to set up a new card game to engage students with science for those who may not think that science is for them, as well as to promote engagement in learning instead of the mainstream way of being taught to, not with.

      I think that the input from ‘I’m a scientist’ if I do win the funds is as equally as important as the money itself. Being such a large and fantastic platform for engaging students with science will really rocket my plans for this project!

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 11 Mar 2021:

      Great question Kayleigh. Obviously, it would be lovely to win the money, especially as a result of just coming on here and having fun and interesting chats with people – it isn’t usually that fun! If I don’t win however, I will still try to pursue my idea however I can. I have a team of colleagues who are keen to work on this with me, and so we will most likely apply for funding from various other places too, for example, there are large scientific funding bodies where we can apply, or sometimes our university likes to fund public engagement and science communication activities so we can share our work with the public – but those applications are a lot less fun than this. If this was how I got money to fund my work all the time that would be great! We might also look at other ways to run the projects that don’t cost as much money, if this is possible.

    • Photo: Harry Piper

      Harry Piper answered on 25 Mar 2021:

      Money is really hard to come by but its really important to spread the impact! If I could find the funds I would definitely try to go ahead with my plans! I’m happy to put in the work, it might just get put on the backburner for a while though until I find the time to make applications for money!

Comments