Profile – Chlorine Zone

Education

Doddinghurst Junior School 1987-91; Brentwood County High 1991-2; Brentwood School 1992-98.
Qualifications

*University College London: BSc Biological Anthropology & Geography; *La Sorbonne Paris V (ERASMUS term abroad); *Imperial College London MSc Conservation Science; *PhD (currently) Institute of Zoology and The London School of Economics and Political Science.
Work History

My best jobs have been in Indonesia working for National Geographic; and in Gabon working for the Department of Climate Change, Government of Gabon. But I’ve done other stuff too like running a little start-up education company, and was also self-employed photographer for a while (I still love photography!)
Current Job

I’m currently working full time on my PhD. Here’s my personal webpage: http://personal.lse.ac.uk/collinsm/. I am funded by NERC-ESRC (http://www.nerc.ac.uk/funding/available/postgrad/schemes/jointesrc.asp)
Employer

I am very lucky to be funded by NERC-ESRC to work at The Institute of Zoology and The London School of Economics and Political Science.

Favourite thing to do in my job: Fieldwork! I love wondering around in the rainforest and seeing what interesting animals and plants I can find. But I also get tired and really hungry being in the middle of nowhere, so I look forward to going to a town to have a rest and some nice food too.
My Work: I’m trying to understand how tropical rainforests can be better managed to reduce carbon emissions, and to keep a place for wildlife to live.
My Typical Day: In the jungle: wake, start a fire and cook breakfast, go looking for exciting animals. In London I’m at the zoo or LSE reading and writing.
Read more

If I won the money I would use it to buy a special video camera so I could show people what it’s like to walk around in the jungle. I really want to get a head-cam, which is a special video camera you wear on your head, leaving both hands free to carry stuff and hold onto trees when you’re falling over, and getting stuck in the mud…maybe one like this: http://www.sport-cam.co.uk/proddetail.asp?prod=scextremehd
I think this would be really cool as sometimes it’s hard to imagine what it’s like being in a remote rainforest. This is a video I made last December when I went to visit my study site in Sumatra: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UuYlAqlfes.

Murray Collins