URI Scientists Recognized as National Leaders in Communicating Science

You may have heard of the ten-billion-dollar particle accelerator in Switzerland or NASA’s rovers on Mars. But do you know what happens in the laboratory benches and supercomputing clusters of the University of Rhode Island? Leanna Heffner and Carrie McDonough think you should — and they are working to make sure you do.

Young scientists studying oceanography, Heffner and McDonough recently represented URI at the Communicating Science (ComSciCon) workshop in Cambridge, MA. They were chosen to participate in the conference from a nationwide pool of Ph.D. and Masters students across all fields of science and engineering. With over 700 applicants and 50 spots, the conference was more selective than admission to Princeton.

If the word “scientist” makes you think of Sheldon Cooper from CBS’s The Big Bang Theory, think again. Heffner, McDonough and the other ComSciCon participants are on a path more like Carl Sagan — highly talented scientists with a knack for helping others understand what makes their research so fascinating.

Heffner and McDonough were invited to the workshop in recognition of their devotion to making scientific research more accessible to the general public. Heffner has led workshops for journalists covering the environment to understand research and data produced by scientists in the field. McDonough is helping to develop a workshop for high school girls to encourage them to pursue careers in environmental science.

As participants in the conference, Heffner and McDonough interacted with 50 other young science communicators from across the country as well as 21 professional leaders in the field. The professional experts included authors such as Marcia Bartusiak (Einstein's Unfinished Symphony, The Day We Found the Universe, etc.), journalists such as Daniel Engber (The New York Times Magazine, Wired, and others), and even Science Fiction Grand Master Joe Haldeman.

Each workshop participant also wrote an original news piece during the event, and a number of popular science-focused outlets will be publishing their work this summer.

The organizers of the Communicating Science workshop (which was sponsored by Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Microsoft Corporation) are all science graduate students as well. A lead organizer, Nathan Sanders of Harvard, expressed his hope that they will be able to hold the workshop annually. “We’re excited to empower young scientists to serve as public ambassadors for their field.”

One speaker, Professor Robert Lue, Director of the Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University, echoed the motivation for the conference and the role of its participants, "Anything that weaves science a little more closely into the fabric of the world is worthwhile."

The participants of ComSciCon are working to make that happen — and if every university produces students like URI’s Heffner and McDonough, we’ll never be left to wonder what goes on its laboratories.