A
taste for adventure  |
Dr Janet Sumner has a huge passion for the natural
world.
She says that one of the best things about filming Nature's Calendar
was getting so close to the animals. | | Janet Sumner
goes wild in the summer countryside |
Wildlife
adventurer Janet's most thrilling moment during the filming
of Nature's Calendar was scubadiving to watch springtime 'fishy courtship' in
the waters around the Channel Islands. Other highlights included learning
to stroke a bumble bee, walking in the footsteps of dinosaurs on the Isle of Wight,
and going in search of a wide variety of wildlife including small mammals and
reptiles.  Volcanoes
and lava flows
Janet is a Research Fellow at the Open University
in Milton Keynes, and Project Leader for joint ±«Óãtv-Open University Science Broadcast
Projects.
She is usually to be found scrambling about on, or inside, active
volcanoes such as Stromboli or Etna, where she does her research, or even fire-walking
on the lava flows of Hawaii. Born in Crewe, Cheshire, she did her degree
in Geology at Sheffield University, and her PhD in Volcanology in Germany. For
the last 10 years she has been travelling the world researching volcanoes. Janet's
work is very much based on field research, but also encompasses laboratory experiments
and computational fluid dynamics, which is not as dull as it sounds given that
she works with buckets of golden syrup and even cream eggs!  Adventurer
Janet's
taste for adventure is not restricted to her work.
She has tried most extreme
sports from skydiving and paragliding to pot holing and scuba diving, but has
settled on free climbing as her sport of choice, because the abseiling is useful
for getting down into volcanoes. Janet is passionate about communicating
science to the general public in an exciting and hands-on way. She has also
presented on ±«Óãtv2's 'Science Shack' and 'What the Industrial Revolution did for
us' together with Adam Hart-Davis, and 'The Natural History of Great Britain'
with Alan Titchmarsh. Meet the rest of the Nature's Calendar team: Chris
Packham
Sanjida
O'Connell
Mike
Dilger
Meet the web team:
Sue
Wilkinson | 
