Most of the graduate students I work with are spending the bulk of their time in lab, teaching or preparing for required departmental examinations—ultimately, preparing for future careers. During our undergraduate training and even at the graduate level, most of us are led to believe our career options are limited to academia, industry, government or alternative careers. This narrows the areas of science we are exposed to—including science policy.

The cornerstones of science policy include, but are not limited to: science advocacy, scientific communication and science-based policymaking and legislating. As most of us matriculate through our graduate school careers, we begin to notice the need for increased funding in science, a disconnection between science and the public, and a host of other issues—issues we can fix.

I believe that communication is the single most important skill that scientists need to succeed in their work. While it's not always recognized and valued for its immense importance, it may well be what determines whether you get the job after your next interview or whether your receive the next grant you apply for.

After all, the only value your work will have in the world is the value that you can succeed in communicating. Even the most rigorous, insightful, and novel scientific research will be wasted if you cannot convince others that it is important and relevant to them.  

On the surface, Professor John Craig Freeman’s augmented reality installation Imagining the U.S./Mexico Border: Migration Stories has more to do with political science than natural science.

But Freeman, a public artist who teaches in the Visual and Media Arts Department, and School of Communication Dean Raul Reisbelieve that augmented reality (AR) and its close cousin, virtual reality (VR), have vast potential for telling the most pressing stories of science—climate change, public health, biotechnology, renewable energy, etc.—in a way that absorbs and engages the public.

Freeman will give a talk on Imagining the U.S./Mexico Border during Communicating Science (ComSciCon) 2018, a national workshop series to advance storytelling in the “hard” sciences. Founded by graduate students at Harvard University and MIT, and organized by graduate students across the country, the series is being hosted by Emerson College June 14–15.

Learning how to communicate science to the public is vital for graduate students today; however, many programs do not offer formal training in communication. This gap has been filled by ComSciCon, an annual science communication training conference organized by and for graduate students interested in learning how to share their science knowledge with the wider world. ComSciCon is a national body which has given rise to a handful of regional meetings now joined by ComSciConATL. Organized by four graduate students (including our own Anzar Abbas), ComSciConATL brought together 50 graduate students from the Atlanta area and greater Southeast region in early March to learn science communication skills through interactive workshops, panels and networking with local experts, and collaboration between fellow attendees.

During the second year of my PhD program in psychology, I found myself on the verge of quitting. I was overwhelmed by the pressures of graduate school, feeling bouts of imposter syndrome, and struggling to do research independently. I had considered other non-academic jobs but never had the gumption to discuss it with anyone, especially my adviser. Those were dark days.

In February of that same year, I learned of an opportunity outside academia. A university email mentioned that applications were open for a national science communication conference called ComSciCon. The goal: to teach STEM grad students how to better communicate complex and controversial scientific topics to non-scientific audiences.

The 6-hour round trip from Beaufort this weekend was worth it to take part in ComSciCon – Triangle, a science communication workshop “for graduate students, by graduate students.”

ComSciCon participants’ goals are to further improve how we communicate science to the public, to network with other like-minded professionals and to discuss the field of science communication. UNC graduate students planned the entire event, which included an amazing line-up of panelists and speakers. Check out #comscicontri on Twitter to see first-hand perspectives of attendees and speakers. This weekend was just Part 1 of ComSciCon Triangle, with the next part taking place on April 7.

This all happened because a twitter post, and a whim. I didn’t know what applying meant. I didn’t know what to expect once I got there. But because of that I found myself waving to the crowd like a debutante in a parade.

I’m naturally extroverted – off the scale really – but I didn’t think that my wave would make me have to speak in front of everyone. At least not again. I already did that in the 1-minute impromptu pop talk where I called HIV, the virus responsible for AIDS, “bad news bears”. But unbeknownst to me a microphone stand had spontaneously spawned into the middle of the room and I was suddenly surrounded by the unbridled cheers of >50 people I met just the day before.

“Whose advisor is unhappy that they’re here today?” asked Leanne Chukoskie, an assistant research scientist at the Institute for Neural Computation at UC San Diego and an affiliate of the Qualcomm Institute. Looking around at a sea of raised hands, she continued, “Know that the act of writing clearly for the public and preparing well supported arguments is an incredibly important skill.”

San Diego’s second annual Communicating Science workshop (ComSciCon) was held September 15-16th at the University of California San Diego Qualcomm Institute, drawing researchers (primarily graduate and postdoctoral) from all over Southern California who wanted to hone their communication skills through a combination of lecture, discussion, and hands-on workshops.

"At the Qualcomm Institute, our approach is to be somewhat blind to disciplines, to do research that doesn't necessarily begin with a particular discipline as a starting point," said Ramesh Rao, director of the Qualcomm Institute. "Even if you're an engineer, for example, and you want to get into the neurosciences, here you can wade right in. But it also requires that researchers learn to communicate in other 'languages,' so to speak. Knowing the key terminology and ways of thinking in other disciplines is a pathway into that discipline."

ComSciCon began in 2013, and the first national conference—sponsored by Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology—was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since then, a growing number of local ComSciCon workshops have been popping up all over the country.