Sharing your research for impact and engagement
Name of the Speaker: Pallavi Eswara
Title of the Seminar: Sharing your research for impact and engagement
Date and Time: 23 December 2022 (Friday), 4:00pm
Online Platform: MS Teams (link to the video of the seminar)
About the Speaker: Pallavi Eswara (she/her) is the Director, Postdoctoral Affairs at Boston University (BU), Boston, Massachusetts since June 2022. In this role she manages both the administrative and professional development aspects of postdoc training. Some of the programs she has created so far at BU have been around preparation for academic careers and grant writing. Prior to that she worked briefly at Northeastern University, Boston in Graduate Operations. Majority of her professional career was at the Pennsylvania State University where she was the founding staff member in 2007 of the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs (OPA) and led the office as the Director from 2016-21.
During the 14 years of her tenure in OPA, Pallavi created and established the annual postdoc research exhibition where postdocs from different disciplines shared their research with faculty, postdocs, graduate students from all disciplines, scientists and nonscientists. She also created a Science Cafe program where postdocs would share their research to lay audiences at a local coffee and community center. Additionally, she created a science outreach grant program to allow postdocs to create activities for local area school children.
She has been invited to present on topics of professional development to both graduate students and postdocs. She has served in leadership roles in her community and in professional societies such as the National Postdoc Association and Graduate Career Consortium (GCC). Pallavi currently serves on the Executive Committee of GCC. Further details of her work and past scientific contributions are at https://www.linkedin.com/in/pallavi-eswara-86b59a11/
Abstract: There is an increasing need to engage with broad audiences to convey the findings, importance of scientific research and motivate younger generations to be involved with science. Academic and research institutions, funding bodies and government agencies are very interested in scientists being able to engage widely with the public.
When it comes to sharing about their research to a broad audience- be it educated people, lay audience or school children it is indeed a challenge for scientists to convey the hypothesis, methods, findings and conclusions without technical jargon or feeling like they are “diluting the science”.
In this talk, we will discuss the state of science communication, principles and best practices for communication to a broad audience. Benefits of this kind of engagement to the scientist and society will also be presented. The presentation will also discuss how scientists can use science communication as a tool to further interdisciplinary research collaboration and non-traditional stakeholder collaborations.
Date/Time
Date(s) - 23/12/2022
4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
