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Sarah McLusky is a Research-Adjacent Trainer and Consultant who works with universities in communications and engagement, education and curriculum enhancement, training STEM ambassadors and organising large scale outreach events, as well as hosting the recently-launched Research Adjacent podcast, among others.  In this episode of Research Comms, we shine a light on the army of professionals who make communications in research and innovation happen in the burgeoning space within the sector known as ‘research-adjacent’. We unpack exactly what the term means, why it’s important and how to achieve greater recognition for those professionals, as well as best practices for evaluating the success of research-adjacent endeavours.  

Celestine Cheong is Head of External Communications at the UK Atomic Energy Authority. In this episode of Research Comms she talks about the work of UKAEA to push for the delivery of sustainable fusion energy, about the challenges of communicating science that is at times, very complex, and about managing public expectations around the development of technologies that have the potential to transform society. LINKS UK Atomic Energy Authority News article on Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory breakthrough https://www.newsweek.com/energy-saving-tokamak-heat-barrier-solves-achilles-heel-nuclear-fusion-1784256 An animation explaining fusion energy  

Sophie McIvor is the Director of Communications and Engagement at the Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence. She has been in the role since the Institute opened in 2015 and is spearheading its new strategy focused on public engagement with AI. In this episode of Research Comms we discuss why the public needs to be engaging with emerging technologies like AI, how people have more power than they think when it comes to influencing the progression of such technologies, and the importance of participatory research.   LINKS https://www.turing.ac.uk/

In March 2022 the British Science Association published a report examining the attitudes of young people in the UK to science. In this episode of the Research Comms podcast, the BSA’s outgoing Chief Executive, Katherine Mathieson, talks about the reports findings, speculating on why young people do not feel sufficiently engaged with science, the impact of the Covid pandemic on their appetite for science, and why now is a golden opportunity for us to rework young people’s relationship with science.

It's been more than two years since the Covid pandemic took hold. And although it may have more surprises in store for us, there is hope that the worst has passed. So now seems a good time to start thinking about what lessons we can learn from the experience to better prepare us for future pandemics and public health crises. How we communicate the science, risk and recommendations is one of the most critical things to get right. Glen Nowak spent 14 years working at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) where he was director of media relations and director of communications for its National Immunization Program. Today he is a professor of advertising and public relations at Grady College, where he also manages their new Center for Health and Risk Communication. In this episode we talk about: - Glen's take on how well organisations like the CDC have done over the past two years - the core concepts that underpin crisis communications - the importance of documenting research during crises - the special challenges of a virus with unexpected longevity and messaging around the inevitable unknowns  

In this episode of Research Comms, Laura Hannan shares the wisdom that she’s gleaned from 15 years of experience on Linkedin and gives her top tips on how communicators can make the most out of the platform to grow their network and drive engagement with their organisation’s research.

In this episode of Research Comms Amy Mollett talks about the exciting early days of blogs and twitter, of her social media work at LSE, of the digital services team in Parliament. Tips for getting started, maintaining digital wellbeing and tracking what’s important abound.

In this episode of Research Comms, Suzanne Fisher-Murray talks about the differences between communicating research in the development sector and academia, the power of radio for sharing stories and influencing behaviour, what truly participatory communications look like and the value of creating personas for strategic communication with communities that care.

Managing Director of the Texas Innovation Center, Ashley Jennings, talks about the thriving innovation and startup scene in Austin (and across Texas) and how the innovation center is helping transform great ideas into valuable products. A big part of that is training founders in how to tell their stories in a compelling way, to raise awareness, generate interest in their technology or product, and to build relationships of trust with funders and future customers.

Matt Russo is an astrophysicist, musician and sonification specialist. He teaches physics at the University of Toronto and has toured schools with sonifications that bring parts of the universe to life. He founded the sci-art project SYSTEM sounds, through which he works with NASA to sonify data collected in and about the cosmos. In this episode of Research Comms Matt Russo talks about what sonification is, the skills required to create sonifications, his work engaging students with data about the universe through sonification, and the musical solar systems that Pythagoras and Kepler were looking for.

Tom is science editor for the digital news magazine UnHerd. His writing has featured in The Guardian, Telegraph, New Scientist and BuzzFeed. He covers an array of subjects, mostly science, but he also delves into politics, foreign affairs, sport, culture wars - pretty much anything that piques his interest. He's won two statistical excellence in journalism awards from the Royal Statistical Society, but he's not stopping there. He wants all journalists and consumers of news to share his appreciation for numbers and to learn how to use them. In this episode of Research Comms Tom Chivers talks about the media during the pandemic, about the pre-requisites for journalism and the tension between attracting a readership and writing serious news stories and he discusses his book How to Read Numbers: A Guide to Statistics in the News (and Knowing When to Trust Them) Presented by Peter Barker Produced by Orinoco Communications www.orinococomms.com --------- LINKS Tom’s website Tom’s work on UnHerd How to Read Numbers: A Guide to Stats in the News (and Knowing When to Trust Them)

This week’s guest on the Research Comms podcast is Dr Kanta Dihal, a Senior Research Fellow at Cambridge University’s Leverhulme Centre for Future Intelligence, where she runs 'Global AI Narratives', a project exploring the many ways in which artificial intelligence is perceived by cultures around the world. Presented by Peter Barker Produced by Orinoco Communications www.orinococomms.com --------- LINKS Global AI Narratives Leverhulme Centre for Future Intelligence The Whiteness of AI Kanta Dihal TEDx talk: Is the Robot Revolution Inevitable?

This week’s guests are data designer, Stefanie Posavec, and data journalist, Miriam Quick. We talk about their new book, about how constraints can encourage creativity, and they give their tips on how researchers and communicators can improve their own data visualizations. ------------ Presented by Peter Barker Produced by Orinoco Communications www.orinococomms.com ------------- LINKS To buy the book ‘I am a book, I am a portal to the universe’ Stefanie Posavec TEDx Talk Stefanie Posavec Website Miriam Quick website Dear Data Air Transformed necklace project People Like You Visualising Data Our World in Data

Dr. Jamie Gallagher is a science communication and evaluation expert. In early 2020 Jamie’s freelance schedule, which was dominated by live workshops, talks and events all over the world, emptied. In this interview I talk to Jamie about how he pivoted to take his science communication business online and how he’s been helping others navigate that transition to our new virtual world. We also discuss his pre-pandemic career in science communication and how he made that transition from scientist to public engagement professional. Presented by Peter Barker Produced by Orinoco Communications -------------------- LINKS Jamie's Website Jamie on Twitter Curiosity Box Animal Research Nexus - Psychic Fish

This week’s guest on the Research Comms podcast is Alex Buxton, Head of Strategic Communications at the University of Oxford. We discuss what it was like to be parachuted into his role just after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and to do so at a time when the University was involved in one of the biggest news stories of our times - the race to develop a vaccine to combat the disease. Presented by Peter Barker Produced by Orinoco Communications www.orinococomms.com

This week’s guest is Professor Andy Miah - Chair in Science Communication and Future Media at the University of Salford. In our conversation we discuss how best to engage people with unfamiliar technological advances, why it’s so important for all academics and researchers to have some kind of a public presence, as well as delving into what Prof. Miah means when he says that we’re undergoing a crisis of science communication. Presented by Peter Barker Produced by Orinoco Communication www.orinococomms.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ LINKS Andy Miah’s website You can follow Prof. Miah on Linkedin, Twitter, TikTok

This week’s guest is Dr. Anna Blakney, a vaccine scientist and recent viral sensation on the social media platform, TikTok, where her videos about vaccines have racked up millions of views since she started creating them just a few months ago, gaining her hundreds of thousands of followers. She uses her platform to teach people about the Covid-19 vaccines as part of an initiative called Project Halo that was set up last year by the UN and the Vaccine Confidence Project, with the goal of giving the public a better understanding of how the Covid vaccines were developed. Produced by Orinoco Communications www.orinococomms.com For more info about our video abstracts service: Orinoco Video Abstracts ------ LINKS Anna’s TikTok BBC news report on scientists using TikTok for public engagement  

This week’s guest is Raven Baxter, aka Raven the Science Maven. Raven is a molecular biologist and science communicator who, as well as sharing her love of science with the world, is also a huge champion of greater diversity in the STEM sector. One of the most notable ways that she’s challenge stereotypical ideas of what a scientists should look and act like is a rap song that she recorded and produced a video for called Big Ole Geeks.  She also recently gave a TEDX talk about the narrow way in which scientists are represented in the media and the damaging effect that the lack of representation of Black and other minority groups in the STEM world is having on Black people who are trying to forge careers as scientists, and also on the STEM sector as a whole. Her latest venture is as lead organiser of #BlackInSciComm Week that starts on Sunday 4th October and runs until 10th October 2020. As we hear from Raven, it’s been created as an opportunity for Black science communicators to recentre themselves after the traumatic events of past months, to amplify existing Black scicommers and to provide support and training for new, upcoming Black communicators of science. Presented by Peter Barker Produced by Orinoco Communications ----------------- LINKS #BlackInSciComm Twitter BlackInSciComm website Raven The Science Maven website Raven's 'You Don't Look Like a Scientist!' TEDx talk Big Ole Geeks music video

This week’s guest is Dr Susanna L Harris, a former microbiologist turned science communicator. Susanna has been developing a large, engaged community of followers on social media ever since she started PhD Balance, an organisation that she set up in 2018 to address the needs of graduate students who are experiencing problems with their mental health. Presented by Peter Barker Produced by Orinoco Communications www.orinococomms.com To find out more about our new video abstract service go here: http://orinococomms.com/vid-abstracts OTHER LINKS Dr Susanna Harris website: https://susannalharris.com/ Twitter: @SusannaLHarris Instagram: @susannalharris PhD Balance: https://www.phdbalance.com/ ComSciCon-MI 2020 Keynote Address on YouTube: https://bit.ly/303yho9

COVID has meant that scientific conferences, as we’ve previously known them, have ceased to exist. Many events have responded by shifting their activities online, creating new virtual conferences, where attendees can join from the comfort of their own homes, wherever they might be. So what does this mean for the communication of research going forwards? Is it possible to replicate the special magic of an in-person event online? Can meaningful collaborations be forged in chat rooms? Will it ever be possible to return to the old days? Do we even want to? Or has that pre-pandemic conference model already had its time? That is the topic of this week’s episode and over the past couple of weeks I’ve interviewed a number of experts to try and answer some of those questions. - Susanne Buiter, former Chair of the Program Committee for the European Geosciences Union - Johnny Palmer, founder and CEO of Pytch, an events and experiences company - Lauren Parr, Vice President of Meetings at the American Geophysical Union ---------------------------------------------------------------- Presented by Peter Barker Produced by Orinoco Communications *Video Abstracts* For more info on our new video abstracts service check out our webpage: https://orinococomms.com/vid-abstracts