Apply Now for Communicating Science 2013!

If you’re a long time Astrobites reader, then you know that our mission is to lower the barrier to entry for undergraduates starting their careers in research. But, we have a top secret, heretofore-unannounced ulterior motive. We want to help graduate students hone their writing skills and improve their ability to communicate research, to become ambassadors for their work and for science generally.

Although writing skills are crucial for success in research, most graduate students I know haven’t had formal instruction in writing since they were college freshman. Writing for Astrobites gives all of us the chance to write about research methods and findings and receive feedback from our peers, and we’d like to extend that opportunity to as many graduate students as possible.

That’s why, together with our colleagues at Chembites, we’re organizing a science communication workshop – and all graduate students at US institutions in any field of science and engineering are invited to attend!

The Communicating Science 2013 workshop will be held in Cambridge, MA, June 13-15 2013. The workshop will give you the chance to hear from expert communicators including journalists, press officers, educators, and authors about how they express complex ideas to their peers, experts in other fields, and the general public.

Don’t live near Boston? Not a problem! We have funding available to support travel expenses and accommodations for 30 out-of-state graduate students.

Workshop participants will produce an original written piece and interact directly with professional science communicators to receive feedback. Make sure to stay for the technical session on the last day of the workshop – this will be your chance to interact with other graduate student communicators from around the country and spawn new outreach projects.

To learn more about the panel discussions and activities planned for the workshop, visit the workshop website. If you have questions about the workshop, be sure to visit the Astrobites booth at the AAS meeting in Long Beach (see our upcoming post for more details). If you’ve heard enough, apply now!

About Nathan Sanders

I am one of the members of the team that founded Astrobites in 2010 and a co-founder of ComSciCon, the Communicating Science Workshop for graduate students. I earned my Ph.D. in astronomy at Harvard University in 2014, focusing on observations of supernovae and their host galaxies; investigating how massive stars explode and enrich the interstellar medium. I did my undergraduate work at Michigan State University.

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  1. One week left to apply for Communicating Science 2013! | astrobites - [...] January, we announced the Communicating Science 2013 workshop. Now there’s just one week remaining before the March 1st application…
  2. Grad students can apply now for ComSciCon’18! | astrobites - […] Astrobites readers may remember that ComSciCon was founded in 2012 by Astrobites and Chembites authors.  Since then, we’ve led…

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