I ask this question to everyone, I'm going to ask you as well.
What got you into STEM?
I have always been such a curious person. When I was in year three at school,
my teacher actually said to my parents, "Vanessa asks too many questions".
Like that is a bad thing!
That is the best quality that someone can have when they're a kid!
When I was 10 years old,
our teacher asked the class to draw a picture of what we wanted to be when we
grew up. We had a worksheet with this big box on it. And in it,
I drew a marine biologist, a woman who was swimming with heaps of jellyfish,
and a dolphin. But I wanted to be more than one thing.
So I flipped the paper over,
I drew another box and in that I sketched a TV news
presenter, a woman standing in front of the camera.
And now I have grown up and I make science videos
and documentaries.
A lot of you know me as BrainCraft lady or YouTube psychology host,
but actually my name is Vanessa Hill. It's nice to meet you.
And I'm a behavioural scientist and the creator of BrainCraft.
But what you might not know is how I got here.
I kind of had to make my own path. When I got to uni,
I still loved animals and nature. So I started studying biology.
But over time I became more curious about people and our brains and
behaviour. And trying to predict how people act and behave,
that is somewhat of a mystery. So I wanted to understand that.
I started teaching science in classrooms,
and I realised that there's so much about your brain that isn't taught in
school. How to understand your personality or procrastination or perception,
even how to deal with anxiety and emotions,
or how to improve your memory focus and even sleep.
More and more people were turning to the internet to understand themselves and
their brain and their health.
So I started a YouTube channel to share psychology and neuroscience research.
BrainCraft was born. But I didn't know how to make videos.
So to learn, I watched YouTube tutorials. One night,
I was coming home from a friend's wedding on the train.
I checked my phone and I had thousands of email notifications from
YouTube. My video on sleep deprivation had gone viral.
In the time it took for my friend to get married,
the video had gotten 500,000 views. At that point,
I decided to be a professional YouTuber. BrainCraft
was picked up by PBS, which took me from Australia to New York City.
Working in public media,
I saw that content has the power to impact people's lives.
So I endeavoured to create science content that pushes the boundaries of what
science media looks like.
And I created projects that could really impact people's everyday wellbeing.
I was experimenting, trying different things,
and I created the world's first reality show about sleep.
The content everyone dreams about!
Where the contestants had to compete to improve their sleep quantity
and quality. When the show came out, I noticed a pattern in the comments.
The audience was like... Going to bed early is too hard.
You have to be in Buddha not to use your phone. I'm watching this at 3:00 AM.
I struggled to form good habits. I can't change.
And I couldn't find any good information to reply with.
We know that sleep is super important.
Behaviour change is a whole field of science,
but even experts don't know the best way for people to change their bedtime
behaviours. So I decided to study it.
Now I research how people can change their evening habits to improve their sleep
quantity and quality,
which is super important for our physical and mental health.
I must be one of the only researchers who has formed their research questions
from YouTube comments.
My work has always explored the space in between science and art,
but my mission is to use media to help people positively change their behaviour.
And on my way here,
I didn't follow the traditional path to being a scientist or even a video
host. And that's okay.
There are lots of different ways to have an impact in science.
Everyone who's a scientist doesn't work in a lab with test tubes or even swim
with dolphins. This is one that kind of bizarre path,
of using science to change the world. But it's my path!
It's my story. So what's your story going to be?
I think we can, uh, we can wrap now. Thanks for watching.