We are coming to the close of the first week of the 2011 ’I’m a Scientist: Get Me Out of Here!’ competition. For those of you who haven’t heard of this before, IAS is a science communication project in which scientists spend two weeks answering questions from school pupils about science, battling it out with each other to avoid being evicted, X Factor style, by the students.

The whole competition is run entirely online: scientists are split into groups of five known as Zones, roughly by research area. Students from participating schools all over the country are then allocated to a Zone. They then have two weeks to pose any and every question they can imagine to their scientists via a forum, and during a 30 minute live chat. Questions can be anything and recent questions posed include:

• do you include your opinions in your work and if so, why?
• if the hangover was real would they die from alcohol poisoning and drug abuse?
• What do you think the best experiment is to do with children in year 9??

During the second week, the students will be asked to vote on their favourite scientist and the candidates will be evicted one by one…

Competition is fierce, and the general feeling from past events is that the whole experience is exhilarating, with so much direct contact with students that it changes the whole way you look at communicating. In the first large event, Stephen Curry, then of Nature Network, now blogging at Occam’s Typewriter, wrote several fascinating posts about his experiences. I won’t spoil the surprise and tell you whether he won, but well worth a read. There are dozens of other excellent posts out there: attracting most attention today is Alice Bell in the Guardian on why she thinks IaS is the way to celebrate Universities Week (although she passes no comment on her views on sticking cats to the ceiling).

Back to 2011 and the event has become such a success it has ballooned: there are currently 115 scientists in 23 Zones taking part. As this is the London Blog, I came to this post intending to list our local candidates, but with 115, it would be a rather epic task! Suffice to say all the major London institutions are represented, and instead I will loosely relate it back to London by pointing in the direction of two questions currently posed, enquiring ‘What are the pros and cons of studying in London?’ and ‘Do you have any regrets about going to university in London?’

A week still to go on this competition: you can follow it on the website or using the Twitter hashtag #IAS2011.

I’m a Scientist is run by Gallomanor Communications and supported by a range of research bodies including main funder the Wellcome Trust. It runs Monday 13th – Friday 24th June 2011.