When I was in elementary school, my mom showed me a clipping from a magazine calling for someone to write a story about the lifecycles in a nearby pond that our troop had visited. It was a fun and satisfying project to observe and describe the stages of the lifecycles of the various animals and plants that we encountered, then later to see my thoughts published in the little magazine.
I did not know the name for the career I was always working toward until long after I found myself doing it. When I learned about science and the wonders of the natural world, I had no interest in being holed into one specific area of expertise. I wanted to learn everything about everything. That impulse still shapes my everyday life and always will.
My career started in higher ed textbook publishing, where I was able to work on chemistry, physics, and astronomy books and help authors and experts communicate exciting developments in those spaces.
My journey into science communication
After several years working in publishing, I was lucky enough to work in several exciting departments at MIT, including the Center for Biomedical Innovation, the now updated Engineering Systems Division, and Aero Astro. Throughout my time there I never stopped learning about, writing about, and drawing science.
I spent several years in software spaces, and I loved learning how to use physics equations to make art with multiphysics simulation software. The pull to learn about, find the wonder in, and communicate the latest exciting discoveries in the world of science was so strong that it led me to eventually find a deep well of community in other polymaths—writers and artists obsessed with equations and discoveries, as well as lab-hardened scientists bursting out of their research stations armed with drawings and cartoons, excited to share their findings outside of the troublesomely particular audience of only their professional peers.
When I worked in publishing, I was immersed in the sprawling wonder of our Astronomy books and their bodies of supplemental material. As I was studying writing in college, crossing campus with giant stacks of poetry and classic fiction, I spent most of my time with the physics club and working at the observatory.
I was writing my thesis about linguistics while I took a private pilot ground school class to study how jet engines work. While working at MIT’s Engineering Systems Division, I attended a conference where I learned about a scientist who wrote poetry directly into DNA.
I decided to voraciously seek out scientists who use their work to create art, and artists who obsessively learn about a particular science and fold its intricacies into their pieces. Almost all of my downtime is spent drawing and observing, taking in bits and pieces of the natural world and trying to capture its inner color and vitality. Last summer, I got to interview a scientist who is working on tiny robots that give the bees a hand on their pollinating journey.
Using science to advance society
There is an unmatched hope and joy in the scicomm community—the urge to parse out the helpers is overpowering. It’s because of my network of scicommers and their optimism that I found out that while all of the rest of us were panicking that the bees were dying out, a small number of brilliant humans just quietly built them some robot helper pals.
This was also how I learned about a team of folks who are methodically and painstakingly returning the color to the coral reefs. Sometimes scientists spend so much time in lab settings unlearning fluffy concepts like poetry and magic, that they forget that what they do is poetry and magic. I like to think that in a small way my work can remind them of that fact, can remind them of the real power of their humanity.
And now, more than ever, I see the same people who I have been quietly following and praising in a moment of extreme threat. The very nature of science communication depends on the importance that the whole of society places on understanding the natural world. And right now all of that is under threat.
Layoffs, cuts to grant programs, shuttering of lab spaces and offices. Highly powerful propaganda and misinformation campaigns, and general disdain for education and research are all very concrete menaces to the fabric of this important space.
Devastating walkbacks of essential inclusivity programs are a detriment to the very nature of a universal need for sharing and communicating knowledge. It’s a time of very real darkness, but there is always a place where the light shines through. I know this in my bones.
Information, understanding, and discoveries belong to everyone, regardless of our background, identity, or path through education and career spaces. Real, sustainable, accurate science communication will be more important in the next few years than ever before.
