Wendy Nilsen

Title: The Challenge of Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Can I Collaborate on My Own?

Abstract:

While collaboration has become a central principle in much of the scientific community, the ability to partner across fields has remained challenging. There are well documented issues of language and culture varying across disciplines, but also an acknowledgement that creating effective interdisciplinary teams requires a set of skills that is not traditionally taught in academia. This talk addresses some of these difficulties and showcases some of the approaches developed to create gateways between communities.

Wendy Nilsen, Ph.D. is the Deputy Division Director in the Information and Intelligent Systems Division of the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate at NSF. Previously, she was the lead Program Director in the Smart Health program.

Nilsen's work has focused on interdisciplinary science, especially at the intersection of computing and human functioning. Her interests span the areas of sensing, cyber-physical systems, machine learning, artificial intelligence and robotics.

Nilsen also serves as numerous federal technology initiatives. Prior to joining NSF, she was at the National Institutes of Health.

Joe Palca

Title: The Truth About Science Communication.

Abstract:

Lessons learned from a four-decade career communicating science to the public. Some insight about when science is news and how to make an obscure topic interesting. Thoughts about the importance of a PhD to being a good science journalist.

Joe Palca, Ph.D. is a freelance science writer. From 1992 to 2022 he was a science correspondent for NPR. He came to journalism from a science background, having received a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California at Santa Cruz where he worked on human sleep physiology.

Palca has covered a range of science topics — everything from biomedical research to astronomy. He is the founder of the NPR Scicommers program, a collective of science communicators. In 2021 the program moved the Boston University where it continues to thrive.

Palca has also worked as a television science producer, a senior correspondent for Science Magazine, and Washington news editor of Nature. Palca has won numerous awards, several of which came with attractive certificates. In 2019, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Palca is the co-author of Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us (Wiley, 2011).

Alex Wright

Title: Design for Understanding

Abstract:  In a world of too much information, what role might design play in making science more accessible to the public? This talk will explore the possibilities of design thinking and user-centered design methods in shaping our approach to scientific knowledge sharing, along with case studies and a few historical examples of past attempts to tackle humanity's age-old challenge of organizing the world's information.

Alex Wright, Ph.D. is a researcher, writer, and designer who is currently the head of News UX at Google in New York. He has previously held leadership roles at Instagram, IBM, Etsy, and The New York Times, among others.

Wright is also the author of two books on the history of the information age as well as more than 100 published articles. He holds a Ph.D. in Transition Design from Carnegie Mellon, and currently lives with his family in Brooklyn NY.