Communicating Science
Communicating science is a top priority for the ASBMB Public Affairs Advisory Committee. By working with Science in the News, the PAAC recognizes graduate students’ energy and passion for communicating science and aims to engage growing numbers of participants across the country — scientists and nonscientists — to talk about science and to enhance the public’s perceptions of scientists and the importance of our work. PAAC will continue to identify and explore effective sciencecommunication programs and initiatives, examples of which will be reported in future ASBMB Today features or in the SciComm section. In addition, an ASBMB symposium at the 2012 Experimental Biology meeting in San Diego will highlight science communication. We welcome your feedback on science communications issues at publicaffairs@ASBMB.org.
—Lee Gehrke
"We've been invited to speak to New Haven high school students in summer programs and during the school year this fall," Winograd-Cort says, "and we are dedicated to keeping our program running for years to come."
Winograd-Cort insists that collaboration between the Yale and Harvard groups ensured success of the fledgling program: "Harvard's SITN program gave us all kinds of support, from outlining where they spend their money to giving us funds to obtain and distribute advertising postcards. Ultimately, it was the knowledge that something like SITN existed that made us believe we could pull off such an undertaking."
To read more about SITN and find out how you might start an outreach program in your own community, visit http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu.
Morgan Thompson is a graduate student at Harvard Medical School and served as co-director of Science in the News for two years beginning in January 2008.