Meet A Winner!
By Dave Hall
Last year Dr Jonathan Wood beat off thousands of entrants to win FameLab 2006, a competition to find the next voice of science. The Null caught up with him as he prepares to go back to Cheltenham Science Festival, the home of FameLab, this June.| What are you going to be doing at the science festival this year? It should be great fun. Last year I was in the FameLab competition but managed to catch a few of the other acts. This year, I’m looking forward to seeing more events without having to worry about winning anything! I’m doing a couple of presentations, one by myself and one with some of last year’s FameLab entrants called “The Science of Super Heroes” – it should be very enjoyable! |
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When you won FameLab you talked about spiders’ webs. Can they really be that interesting?
A Canadian company, wanting to produce lots of silk, even succeeded in getting goats to produce milk that is high in spider silk proteins. Crazy! |
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| Have you been up to much since then? I have tried to do some science communication stuff, mostly off my own back. I think if you want to do any speaking, it’s up to you to organise it. I approached Science Oxford, a local centre that organises events for schools and general audiences. I have also recently started appearing on a radio show on BBC Radio Oxford, where the public call in or email questions about science and I am in the hot seat to answer them. Things like why is grass green? And are fish colour-blind? I’m still confused about that one. It is fun though; I enjoy it a lot. |
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| Are you a technophile or a technophobe? I’m a technophile – I’m a geek! I left my sandals at home though. |
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| What about Marmite, good or bad? BAD! You only have to smell it! |
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| If you had the opportunity to be a space tourist, would you go? No! I would be disappointed with myself for saying it, but I feel no real need to go up there. Oh, and I would be scared too! |
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| Aside from your other media duties you’re also editor of the journal Materials Today – any big breakthroughs we should know about? Firstly, Manchester researchers have been playing with something called ‘graphene’, which is a type of carbon like graphite, but arranged in a single layer that is only one atom thick. It’s incredible that a material can exist that you can handle in the lab, but is as thin as could possibly be – literally only one atom deep. It is very exciting physics. Secondly, there are some interesting new patents from Nokia and Motorola, where they have separately created displays that are both a visual display screen and a solar cell. Mobile phones are using more and more power, so anything that takes the pressure off the battery so that it doesn’t need to be recharged so often is good news. |
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| Do you think there is enough science on TV? No, there is not enough, but I think it’s hard to do science on TV. Radio and the newspapers are much easier media for sharing science and they are improving at it too. TV is powerful. It reaches a wide audience and can use both images and sounds, but it’s quite restrictive in that ideas need to be very simple to come across well. Science is not so good at that. Plus, any programmes have to compete with Friends and Scrubs. But then history programmes do quite well at the moment, and things like Time Team have been going for ages and seem to have a good following, so there is hope. |
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| If you could have a special power for a day, what would it be? Estimating room size! I am very bad at it and would like to improve! It’s a very selfish power though! It’s hard to see how you could really improve the world’s troubles. |
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| If we put you on a soapbox right now, what would you bend our ears about? I think I would go on about that Channel 4 documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle”. It was dangerously misleading. |
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| So the world in a hundred years time - will it be a good place to be? Well, it will be warmer! Yes, I think it will be good – health and education may cost more but there will be some amazing advances, as well as gadgets and games. Science will provide a lot when it comes to health in the future, especially in diagnosis of disease and personalised medicine. |
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| And finally, the Null confession box! Anything you should get off your chest? I remember at the end of the first year of my PhD, we had to sit a viva before we progressed into the second year. The tradition was that all students had to be given a bit of a grilling to make sure they knew just what was required. It showed them how to improve and deal with the proper viva at the end of the PhD itself. I was sat before the panel of interviewers: my supervisor, a Prof. and others. Under the severe questioning, I felt under pressure and my body language was pretty appalling. I was moving around in my chair, folding my arms and twiddling this pen around in my hand. The pen had a clasp with a ball on the end and in mid-twiddle the ball fired off at great velocity just missing the professor’s head. It brushed his hair parting as it sailed past but he didn’t bat an eyelid! I had almost assaulted him, but there was no reaction at all! I could concentrate on nothing else. I wish I had not taken that pen into the viva now. |
Jonathan will be appearing at the Cheltenham Science Festival, which is running from 7th-10th June. That's this week! The final of FameLab 2007 will be one of the many events. You can find out more about FameLab, including how to sign up for next year's competition at www.famelab.org.
Read what happened when the Null met:
Alice Roberts
Adam Hart Davies
Roger Highfield
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