A University of Michigan senior has won the National Geographic Channel's Expedition Granted contest.
Charlie Engelman bested more than 700 other people to win a $50,000 prize.
Engelman says he'll use the money to put a team together to travel around the country. They'll visit forests, and produce 20 to 30 short online science-based videos.
"We're going to do some tree climbing, some extreme tree climbing, we're going to climb the redwoods out in California, which is going to be pretty epic," Engelman says. "We're going to do some paramotor ultralight aircraft flying over forests. It's going to be really cool, pretty epic. But the main point is to produce this 20 to 20 episode nature series that teachers, professors can use to teach kids about the environment."
Engelman says he hopes regular people will also be entertained by the videos, and maybe learn something, too.
He's already been producing short nature videos as part of his honors thesis at the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
Engelman expects to head out on his adventure in late spring or early summer next year.