because science is fundamental in the 21st century
Our mission is to give the people a voice who are working on making the world better using evidence. With the twitter rocur account @SfPRocur we simply hand over the mic!
Email us who you are and what you want to tweet about to info@scienceforprogress.eu! We will check if it's a good fit!
Dr. Isabel Torres is a science editor and freelance science writer with a passion for science communication. She discovered her love for writing when she started a science blog for fun during a maternity leave.
Isabel believes that critical thinking is not only at the heart of the scientific method, but is also an excellent tool in our everyday lives. It can help us navigate the sea of (mis)information online and also help making informed decisions on important areas of our lives, such as health and parenting. This is why she decided to create Pretty Smart Science, where people can learn about science and scientists in a fun and accessible way. Caring deeply about women’s rights, Isabel also uses her platform to advocate for gender equality and the promotion of women in science.
Dr. Olivia Guest is a PhD in Cognitive Science and, originally from Cyprus, works as research scientist at University College London. Her work involves building computer models and applying artificial intelligence (deep learning) for various purposes, including research on gerrymandering/redistricting, or analysis of brain imaging data.
Apart from her research, Olivia is interested in how science is perceived by society and how it is portrayed in the media, but also how social issues can impinge on science. Racism and sexism exist in academia just as they do anywhere else, and they can affect scientific research, the interpretation and (public) reporting of scientific results, and the scientists personally.
Olivia will tell us about her own published research, and will further talk about social issues within and surrounding science.
Simona Falanga is an archaeologist in the UK who previously explored many career directions, including the education and communication sectors. She co-hosts the podcast “ArchaeoAnimals” about zooarchaeology together with
Alex Fitzpatrick, who was on @sfprocur, previously. Zooarchaeology is the study of animal remains in archaeology – which you hardly ever hear about.
During her curation, Simona will talk about archaeology and the different specialism within the field.
Dr. Chinmaya Sadangi is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto. He further is an ambassador for the open access journal “elife”, community leader at the Society for Neuroscience, and an early career research adviser at the open access journal “BioTechniques”.
As a science communicator, Chinmaya does not only want to inform non-scientists about science, but to create awareness for how scientists use public funding. Since 2018, Chinmaya runs “The Addictive Brain“. On the website where you will find jargon-free explanations of complex science phenomena, techniques, and principles, presented by scientists inside and outside academia. These contributions to “The Addictive Brain” can take many shapes. From articles and short post, to art, and videos – or by a live question and answer session. Chinmaya also hopes that his project will encourage young students, women and underrepresented minorities to study STEM subjects.
During his curation, Chinmaya wants to talk about his project Addictive Brain, science communication, his research in neuroscience, and new research techniques.
Dr. Jenny Molloy is director of the Open Bioeconomy Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, UK. Her research group addresses a lack of access to research tools in low-resource countries. She is passionate about enabling more people to shape the future of biotechnology. To realize her vision, she focuses on building open source biotechnology tools for molecular biology research (e.g. OpenPlant). Jenny also promotes open source as a feasible model for biotechnology businesses. She facilitates collaboration in science and helped develop tools for transferring know-how and materials between researchers around the globe.
In her curation week, Jenny wants to show us great research innovations in molecular biology by scientists in the global South. She will also talk about the hurdles these researchers encounter due to insufficient access to laboratory materials. This limited availability of basic tools affects not just the pace of their research, but also topics they can address. Jenny thinks that open source materials could help fix this inequality, but making ‘open source’ work for hardware and biology is much more complicated than it is for software.
Jenny will also discuss how biotechnology entrepreneurship is currently very focused on patents, rather than open exchange. She will show how a more open and collaborative approach to intellectual property may be beneficial for particular types of businesses. Jenny also has ideas about how we can figure out which business models work best with open exchange of knowledge.
Maxie Gottschling and Helene Brinken work at Göttingen State and University Library for the project FIT4RRI in the field of “Open Science” and “Responsible Research and Innovation” (RRI).
Maxie has a Master’s degree in Cultural Anthropology. She has been working in Open Access related projects since 2010. With a background in Information Science, Helene started her activities for Open Science and RRI in 2017.
Together they work on promoting and sharing best practices on responsible research. A RRI-way of research means to involve all actors influenced by ones’ activities and to make sure the processes are inclusive, reflective, transparent as well as adaptive to change. Helene and Maxie hope to inspire scientists to start their journey towards practicing RRI. At the same time, they would like to raise awareness to the public that citizens are a major player in science; they can and must be involved in research that frames their future. Aligning research with the values of society is a key principle of RRI.
Linda Amarante and Samantha White are two PhD students at American University in Washington, D.C., USA. Besides researching the role of the prefrontal cortex in decision making in rats, they help run the OpenBehavior website and its @OpenBehavior twitter account. There, they share and promote open source, low-cost software and hardware that can be used for behavioral neuroscience.
Linda and Samantha are excited to make scientists and non-scientists aware of the benefits of open science. They’ll show examples of how these creative projects can be used in neuroscience and other scientific disciplines, but also how they are interesting for the DIY hobbyists as well. In their week on @SfProcur, they hope to inspire us all with new ideas for scientific research and collaboration.
Lauriane Nallet-Khosrofian is a PhD candidate in Neuroscience in
Zürich, Switzerland. As we talked about in a previous podcast episode, she is concerned about mental health of PhDs and Postdocs. She is further interested in the place of gender equality in academia, and science communication. Lauriane tries to participate in different projects regarding these topics: interviews, podcasts, blogs… Recently, she started the launch of the scientific festival “Pint Of Science” in Zürich.
During her week on @SfPRocur, she will talk about skills of academics that are transferable to other workplaces, and different ways of personal growth outside of the lab.
Dr. Cleyde Helena is a neuroendocrinologist from Brazil, who moved to the USA eleven years ago. She currently works as an Academic Account Manager, and she also consults about sales for protocols.io. She believes in the company and in their motto for increasing the quality and reproducibility of science.
You may already know her from our podcast episode on the Recovering Academic Podcast. In this podcast, she and the other two members of their team talk about the experience of leaving academia, and how to manage the career transition period professionally and emotionally.
Dr. Mathis Riehle is Reader in Cell Engineering at the University of Glasgow. By documenting different things from a typical week of a Principal Investigator (PI), he will show how diverse the job of a scientist can be. His other passion are scientific sketchnotes that he takes while attending talks.