Events

The Broader Impacts Group joined forces with MIT/WHOI Joint Program representatives to sponsor a pizza and bowling night at Trade Center Bowl in Falmouth. The event had a great turnout of incoming and current graduate students, including the MIT Graduate Student Council President.  BIG representatives disseminated information about the nature of the group and how to get involved and managed to…

Communicate important science! Do crafts, look through microscopes and cuddle giant microbes! The Broader Impacts Group (BIG) will be doing demonstrations and activities at the New England Aquarium on World Oceans Day. Our booth “Making the Invisible Visible: The Secret, Bizarre, and Amazing World of Plankton” is complete with giant microbe plush toys, microscope demonstrations, build-your-own-super-plankton craft activity and jaw-dropping plankton…

On a rainy Cambridge night, a couple MIT students met up with science writer John Bohannon for an informal “science communications happy hour” at the Miracle of Science near MIT. Amid conversations about how to communicate about climate change to the public, what the greatest science communications challenges are, and how John got to where he’s at (a freelance science journalist…

Panel Discussions at the Museum of Science: March 3 – 1pm-2pm – 2pm-3pm Free with Exhibit Halls admission Explore the planet’s last true frontier – the ocean – and encounter swirling currents traced in light, mysterious seascapes rendered in paint, and delicate marine life etched in vibrant color. At Ocean Stories you will find works of art infused with a sense…

On Monday February 11, the Broader Impacts Group hosted a Cambridge Kickoff meeting at the MIT Museum. The meeting featured speaker John Bohannon, a creative communicator of science who has engaged the public not only via science writing, but through the cutting-edge medium of dance. About 25 participants attended, coming from a range of MIT departments, from earth science to science…

“It’s so great that the BIG scientists are taking the initiative to improve how they and their colleagues communicate.” – Diana Kenny, workshop participant Participants in the two BIG communication workshops last week learned effective approaches to presenting scientific material, both to academic and public audiences. In the first session, communications professional Linda Pogue emphasized setting goals for what actions the…

BIG held a successful blogging workshop on Tuesday January 15 from 5-6:30pm in the WHOI student lounge. Science writer Ken Kostel from the WHOI Communications Department and students Sarah Rosengard and Ben Linhoff lead an open discussion on the experience of blogging as a young scientist. Workshop participants also engaged in hands-on, interactive practice in concise science writing.

Three MIT/WHOI graduate students, Alice Alpert, Bethanie Edwards and Julie van der Hoop, and a several other MIT students are in Geneva, Switzerland, attending the UN Environment Programme’s fifth and final meeting to finalize a legally-binding global mercury agreement. They are blogging at mit.edu/mercurypolicy and will be tweeting live from sessions, sharing their experiences as we observe the treaty-writing process and as we communicate the…

Andrew Dessler will be visiting Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution from August 20th through 22nd as a visiting scholar. A Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University, Dr. Dessler’s research focuses on water vapor feedbacks in the atmosphere and the role of clouds in climate variability. Dr. Dessler has served as a Senior Policy Analyst in the White House Office of Science and Technology…

The Broader Impacts Group will host a Radio Sound Bites evening with Ari Shapiro, a former Joint Program student and WHOI postdoc and current science radio journalist, and Emily Moberg, a current JP student. Ari and Emily will talk about what goes into radio journalism and how they think about stories and communication when they do radio. They’ll also be showing…