Walking into MIT can feel like entering a foreign country—one with a number for every building and an unwieldy acronym for every organization. Deeper conversations are even more opaque, as fields and subfields command their own complex scientific argot. But if the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that bridging the gap between scientists and their wider society is more important than ever. The School of Engineering Communication Lab, in partnership with the MIT Libraries, is working to bridge that communications gap and help research scientists translate their findings for lay audiences in a series of talks called “Science Snippets”.
“A lot of our work is scientist-to-scientist communication, such as invited talks, poster presentation, thesis defenses, etc., but I also have experience in teaching researchers to communicate with lay audiences,” says Deanna Montgomery, the manager of the EECS Communication Lab and the mastermind behind the “Science Snippets” talks and related IAP workshop. “There are skills that overlap, but we wanted to focus on outreach: how do we get outside MIT and the ivory tower?”… click to continue reading