We asked 11 – 19 Zone winner Pete to write a message about his prize money plans and say thank you to students for voting him the winner! Here’s what he said…

Hi everyone!
Wow, I never thought I’d win! Thanks to everyone who voted for me – it really means a lot to me! When I first started In the Zone, I was really nervous – I’d known people who had done the main 2-week event before, but doing it for 11 weeks was something that had never happened. I was one of the scientists chosen to take part in the first week, which meant that I got questions from students all the way through. Far from getting nervous about it though, I found that In the Zone became part of my day-to-day routine – I’d be checking for new questions every day, and it was great fun to see how everyone else was getting on! It’s going to be really weird not having it as part of my life any more, and I’m going to miss it lots.

I plan on using the money to create a series of videos, about different sorts of Psychological research – some well known, others not so much! Psychology is a hugely varied discipline, and sometimes gets a bit of a hard time for being a ‘soft’ science. Usually, it’s because people don’t quite realise the sort of work that Psychologists do. So I’m hoping the videos will be fun and educational for everyone! Once they’re done, I’ll be putting them up on a brand new website, so that anyone can swing by and see them. If anyone’s got any suggestions for what they’d like to know about, I’d love to hear from them!

Finally, I wanted to say a big thanks to the entire I’m a Scientist team – they’ve done a fantastic job behind the scenes, and without them I’d never have had the chance to meet all the students and find out so much cool stuff about science. They rock!