Well that was an intense fortnight! Thank you so much for taking part in the Stem Cells Zone of I’m a Scientist: Get me out of here!. It was a really great experience and I feel very lucky to have been able to chat with you all and answer your questions. I was so impressed with the questions you asked and how engaged you are with science. Some of your questions really made me think about what I do and what we might achieve in the future and some of them were so fantastically creative that I’ve had to think about science in a completely different way.

I hope you have all got as much out of this event as I have, I am really excited about taking my work forward and trying to develop the therapies that you were asking about. It’s great to see that there are so many young people who are interested in science and I hope that we have been able to explain a little about what we do and help you understand stem cells and stem cell therapies a bit better. I also hope that we’ve shown you that scientists are normal people with lives outside the lab.

I want to say a big thank you for voting me the winner of the stem cells zone, the other scientists who took part would all have been more than worthy winners and I’m really honoured that you chose me. There are a few other people I also want to thank; firstly the other scientists for being generally awesome and making the stem cells zone a really friendly environment. The organisers of the event, especially the chat moderators, it all ran like clockwork with hardly any problems. I also want to say thank you to your teachers for making the chat bookings and seeing the value in you guys talking to us.

As I said during the chats and on my profile I am going to donate the money to my local primary school in Sheffield. They put on some fantastic events for the children to make primary school more memorable and hopefully the money can be used to add some more science to those.

Lastly I want to say thank you to you again, without your questions and enthusiasm this event would be nowhere near as fun and enjoyable. You have made this an experience I won’t forget and I hope you all feel the same!

Matt