"I love Leeds University and I am still in awe of the reach and spirit of the place."
Those were the words of Piers Sellers, just six months before he tragically passed away at the age of just 61.
The University of Leeds alumnus left behind an incredible legacy though and the staggering impact of his work here in Leeds, across the world and even in outer space is still held up as a shining light of what others strive to achieve.
Sellers was born in Kent and just like every boy, he had dreams of one day becoming an astronaut. Unlike so many others though, he made it his mission to make that dream a reality.
From the age of six, he started to make space flight models and then moved onto flying his own model aircraft as a teenager. By the age of just 17, he had got his private pilot's licence.
Sellers moved to Scotland to study ecological science at the University of Edinburgh before relocating to Leeds. It was here that he met his wife, Amanda Lomas, who was a nurse from Hebden Bridge.
After graduating with a PhD in biometeorology from the University of Leeds in 1981, his next steps would quite literally propel him into the stratosphere.
Sellers and his wife moved to the USA after he was offered a job with NASA at the Goddard Space Flight Center near Washington
He excelled in studying the reaction between the Earth’s biosphere and atmosphere and quickly become one of the world's leading experts in the field.
His dream of becoming an astronaut was tantalisingly close when he joined the astronaut corps, but he had to complete two years of intensive training before finally being selected to go into space.
Over the next few years, Sellers was selected for three separate space flights and spent a staggering 559 hours in space.
His first mission to the International Space Station (ISS) was in October 2002, when Sellers and his crew members were tasked with delivering and installing a complicated piece of kit. The mission lasted for almost 11 days, in which times they orbited Earth 170 times and travelled 4.5 million miles.
It was the first time that Sellers had been to the ISS, but he performed three separate spacewalks outside the shuttle, completing 19 hours and 41 minutes of extravehicular activity.
Four years later, Sellers was back in space for another mission to the ISS. This time, the crew's role was to make the shuttle safer for future space missions and carry out vital maintenance.
Sellers once again performed three spacewalks over the course of 20 hours to test whether a 50-foot robotic arm boom extension could be used as a work platform.
The third and final space mission conducted by Sellers was in 2010. Not only was it Sellers' final trip to space, but it was also the last time that the STS-132 Space Shuttle Atlantis was used.
He retired as an astronaut in 2011, but embodied in all his work was a passion and drive to research the impact of climate change and to alter people's perceptions on global warming.
He went on to serve as the deputy director of sciences and exploration at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre where he oversaw research and mission design. His work with NASA led him to the most unlikely of connections with Hollywood royalty in the form of Leonardo DiCaprio.
Most people know DiCaprio for his role as Jack Dawson in Titanic or Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street, but when he's not shooting movies he is often campaigning to save the planet.
In 2016, DiCaprio released a documentary on global warming that he produced alongside Martin Scorsese.
Filmed over the course of three years, DiCaprio travelled all over the world to speak to high-profile guests such as Barack Obama and Pope Francis, but also a select few experts - including Sellers.
Watch Piers Sellers in Before The Flood
While speaking to DiCpario, Sellers describes the exhilarating feeling of watching the world go by from hundreds of kilometres above.
"When you're up there in orbit and you can see 1,200 miles in any directon," he says. "I mean, let me tell you, it's kind of a revelation.
"I saw the Amazon River go between my feet for like five minutes. A whole green carpet either side - just beautiful - all the way out to the sea. And there was a sun coming up over the Amazon."
He also describes how his life's work was brought into sharp focus when he realised just how "fragile" the Earth's ecosystem is.
He says: "I've realised that as a science community, we have not done the best of job, frankly, of communicating this threat to the public.
"When you go up there and see it with your own eye, how thin the world's atmosphere is. A tiny little onion skin around the Earth. So that's all the oxygen that we breathe, the CO2. Everything we burn goes into it. It's an astonishingly fragile film.
"It's like being an ant trying to understand what an elephant looks like by crawling all over the elephant."
Tragically, Sellers died just two months after the film was released, following a year-long battle with stage four pancreatic cancer.
However, his legacy lives on in the form of a world-leading climate institute at the University of Leeds.
The Priestley Centre opened on campus in 2016 and recognises the achievements of one the university's most famed alumnus in the form of the Piers Sellers Prize. Each year, someone in the world of science is given the title for their "contribution to solution-focused climate research".
In truth, any recipient of the award is highly unlikely to come anywhere near matching the achievements of Sellers, who not only achieved his dreams, but also spent his whole life trying to understand how to preserve our planet for many generations to come.
