Episode 23 – Interview with healthcare Managing Director Dr Michael Winlo

This week, Jen and Michael were delighted to speak with Dr Michael Winlo. Michael is Managing Director at Emyria, a data-driven, drug development and clinical services company focused on improving care of patients with unmet needs. Emyria leverages the clinical evidence created with patients to launch and register novel drug development and treatment programs with global regulators.

Michael is also a Director at Linear Clinical Research – Perth’s only dedicated early phase cancer and clinical trial unit. Michael was previously CEO at Linear which, under his leadership, was the first site in Australia to complete a comprehensive digital transformation. Prior to Linear, Michael lived and worked in Silicon Valley leading the Health team at Palantir working with major healthcare institutions in the US and UK to solve complex data integration and analysis challenges. Michael is a medical doctor with an MBA from Stanford and holds several data analysis patents.

You can learn more about Michael and Emyria here:

Transcript

Jen (00:00:00)
Welcome to Let’s Talk SciComm, a podcast by the University of Melbourne Science Communication Teaching Team.
I’m Dr Jen Martin and my co-host is Dr Michael Wheeler and we believe science isn’t finished until it’s communicated.

Jen (00:00:40)
Hello and welcome to another episode of Let’s Talk SciComm.
I’m Jen and as always, I’m joined by my wonderful colleague and friend Michael. Hello Michael.

Michael Wheeler (00:00:54)
Hey Jen, I’m very excited for today’s episode. We’re going to be talking all about an area that’s not often discussed, which is the intersection of science, communication, and business. And today, we have the pleasure of chatting to Dr Michael Winlo, CEO of Emyria Limited. Michael, welcome to the podcast.

Michael Winlo (00:01:13)
Hey, good morning, thanks for having us.

Michael Wheeler (00:01:14)
Thanks for coming on. So Michael, we reached out to you because your job is very interesting for a number of reasons. So first of all, you’re a CEO, which we’d love to hear more about from a communication perspective. But second of all, you’re a CEO of a science-based company that is investigating the therapeutic potential of cannabis and psychedelic. So I would imagine when you’re at a barbecue Michael and someone says “So what do you do?”, that’s an interesting conversation.

Michael Winlo (00:01:41)
Absolutely. I often find that a very difficult question to answer because I’m not sure what that individual’s intentions are sometimes or their prior knowledge.
But no, I usually keep it simple and say I’m involved in medical research or drug development and, and that usually either causes the pause or I get further questions.

Michael Wheeler (00:02:05)
So I’m really keen to hear more about your current role, but I’d love to know first why you became interested in medicine and combining that with business and science to get to where you are today?

Michael Winlo (00:02:19)
Yeah, as you mentioned, I started my career as a medical doctor. But you know, throughout medical school where I had a little more time on my hands, I was really interested in making music, making short films and kind of fell in love with that idea of taking a concept or an idea and seeing it sort of manifest and play out in the world.
I sort of carried that with me into medicine, where I encountered all of this extra friction in getting things done in a busy, complicated health environment. And it seemed to me that there was just so much effort into doing even the simplest things, ordering blood tests, getting things done. Not to say great outcomes didn’t happen, but man, people put a lot of effort into getting even simple things done.

Michael Wheeler (00:02:56)
Oh yeah.

Michael Winlo (00:03:01)
And so, as people were, you know friends of mine looking to apply to different specialist colleges, my interest was like wow, there’s so many problems here. All of these look interesting. Could something be solved here? Could someone build, could I build something that can actually live and persist and actually make a difference? And so kept my eyes wide open for an opportunity. And really the first one then I thought was profound enough led me to quit medicine full time and go part time as a doctor and pursue a medical device concept which was tackling an area of complicated wound care.
So at that point I formed a company, huge thrill in in, in that feeling again of being creative, building something, seeing something new come together. I was working with my best friend, raised what I thought was a fortune, $500,000 from small local venture capital. I spent through about half of that and then discovered to our surprise and shock that there was a company out there in the world who just raised $60 million, a company called Spiracur out of the US and you know, based out of Stanford. And I thought it immediately gosh, we just don’t have the firepower to take on that.
And so that inspired me to apply for my MBA at Stanford, which I got into and completed. Through that experience in the US, I obviously got to see so much of the emergent fields that were having an impact in healthcare, particularly data science, AI and digital health. And so my first career move after my MBA was to join a big data company called Palantir who were just starting to get interested in healthcare, applying their data, integration and analysis tools initially developed for the law enforcement and intelligence community and apply them into healthcare.
And that was a really thrilling time. And so, as the I guess, quasi-clinician, as a data-scientist, my role was to try and figure out which health problems [are] worth tackling, how could data be used to help them. And through that, got to work on some really fascinating and complicated data problems in Big Pharma, around compound discovery, lead generation, trial site selection. Health insurers around what fraud, waste and abuse, health gap analysis, health service delivery providers, national institutions. Many, many problems that we worked on and got a really deep appreciation for the role and potential that well-organised data could have on that.
Eventually though, it came time ’cause I had dragged my wife to the States and we had two children in America that you know, family support was, was needed and so we came back to Australia and I took up a role as the CEO of a clinical trial site, which was a little bit of a, a sideways move, perhaps in some ways. But I saw an immediate opportunity to try and take the lessons I had learned from Palantir, the value in well-organised data, well-structured, ensuring that data would be captured efficiently in the trial experience.
And I could see my role, my mandate really was to try and digitise what we were doing in a largely paper-based system. And so that was really what I’d sort of continued to do, you know, subsequent 4 years. And it was through that experience that got sort of my final insight, which led me to Emyria which was that clinical trials are a great place for capturing data. The emphasis is on getting high-quality answers to single questions usually.
In health care delivery, far messier. The objective is to get good health outcomes. The emphasis is not so much on data capture integrity and there’s lots of reasons for that, the pressures of treating patients you know, complicated systems to work with. But it was really really stark to me of having had time in both those worlds, how poor a job healthcare typically does in collecting really good data, in learning from every patient and applying those lessons, and how good trials were at collecting data. But their goal was not to treat patients. That was a happy byproduct, an accident really.
Your experimental drug happened to be effective, and so Emyria was really born out of this, sitting between these two worlds and saying right, what can we take from the clinical trial experience, the infrastructure, the disciplines of collecting data well? How can we apply that to health care and actually develop a clinical service that can treat patients, does a better job from learning from those patients, and then brings that data to life and uses that information to develop better treatments and therapies? And the cannabinoid medicines were just becoming legal, clearly an opportunity there to improve our knowledge about where these treatments work best. So that was where we started, where we’ve started first.
We’ve now extended obviously that interest into the emerging field of psychedelic assisted therapy, fraught with the same problems as cannabis. Nobody knows where to use them most effectively. But we think our infrastructure could be applied really to any emergent treatment where you want to be able to provide patients who have not gained benefits from their current treatment, provide them access to something new and promising, but at the same time ensure you’re learning from those patients to improve their care and drug development. So all of those sort of weaves together the interests. Yep, and that’s where I am today.

Jen (00:07:50)
What an amazing sequence of jobs and insights and experiences also in the education system to lead you to… It sounds like work[ing] out where you could really have impact using your interests and your values and your skills, you’ve honed in on something that really matters to you. And I guess, I’m interested to hear, you started off by saying the whole barbecue conversation, people ask you what you do, and you sort of wonder what vested interest they might have.
I’m interested because what you’ve chosen to do in terms of MBA at Stanford and you’re a doctor. That’s all very high brow, and now you find yourself working with cannabinoids and psychedelics, which obviously, there’s a lot of stigma there. Tell us more about how you feel about… you know, when people ask you what you do, you’ve just explained very clearly your motivation. How do you get across to other people where you’ve come from and why this is important to you?

Michael Winlo (00:08:38)
Yeah, it’s a really good point because I, I do know that terms like cannabis are very evocative, they’re controversial, psychedelics even more so. And I think that creates a challenge for us in the industry, those of us out here trying to do the credible research trying to apply our talents and resources to truly legitimise where these treatments can work best. And taking a pretty traditional view of things we recognise, we need to take these treatments through proper evaluation. On… sitting beside us are groups out there, happily waving the green flag and any resistance to embracing these treatments is a result of difficult doctors or stubborn, and the stubborn regime.
And so people wonder where we sit in that conversation. Are we, are we pro the drug, or are we pro establishment? And so, that’s where I first have to navigate through and explain that at the end of the day people… As exciting as cannabis seems to be, ultimately, we’re talking about patients where other treatments haven’t worked. And so I keep steering the conversation back to patients wanting to get better. They don’t just want a fancy drug or you know, the next shiny thing that might be, that might draw their interest into a new field. But at the end of the day, there’s something that they’re trying to improve about their life, about their health. That’s really motivating them, and we try and keep the focus back on that.
And so really the you know, I start with saying well, what I’m trying to do is develop better treatments. These look promising, but we don’t know where they work best, and we’re trying to do a better job learning from patients and guide our story or guide the development of these treatments forward. So it’s a little bit of I have to show that I’m not put off by cannabis. I mean, I embrace it, I’m comfortable about that, I see that it has potential. But also need to… depending on who I’m speaking to remind them that there’s a little bit more work to be done. We can’t be, we’re not, we’re not yet cheerleaders for this drug alone. We’re trying to do the proper evaluation.
Sometimes I find it helpful to remind people that 40% of our drugs, our approved drugs and some of the most common ones have had their origins in plants. Aspirin came from the bark of a willow tree. Digoxin’s from a flower that helps with heart conditions. We have penicillin from the penicillin mould. I mean statins are from a fungus, so we can, they’re oyster mushrooms. And that’s sometimes a way to sort of popularise you know the conversation too and explain that many of our drugs inspiration comes from nature, but we don’t, we’re not brewing teas of willow bark, we’re not growing our own mould in the backyard. We actually, we, there comes a point where we, we expect a certain standard of quality and reliability and that convenience. And that effort is part of what we’re involved in to you know, bring that safety and quality to the space. And there’s a bit to cut, you know, to cut across there.

Michael Wheeler (00:11:14)
Yeah, that’s, that’s very interesting. ’cause I suppose what you’re touching on there is the therapeutic use of these compounds is it looks very different to their recreational use and I would imagine they’re, they’re worlds apart.

Michael Winlo (00:11:28)
Quite different, absolutely.

Michael Wheeler (00:11:30)
What does that actually look like? The therapeutic use and the research around that?

Michael Winlo (00:11:34)
Yeah, so it’s a really good point. So one of the first things I do like to say to people go like ahh, should I be smoking this for my back pain? Is just remind them that it’s really the dose that makes the poison. So when you smoke a joint we got a couple of challenges. 1: We don’t know what dose you’re getting, but it’s guesstimated between 150 to 200 milligrams of THC. That’s sort of a quantity of the psychoactive, main psychoactive component of medicinal cannabis in our drug treatments, though we’re using highly refined purified GMP grade medicines, so these have been carefully manufactured, standardised.
We’re trying to manage someone’s pain or improve their sleep, and so we’re working with a much smaller dose and we’re working with different dose forms, dose forms that are consistent. And that’s important for our research ’cause we want to understand what the effect the treatment’s having. And if we conflate that with recreational use, which much of the prior research has done, very hard to draw a conclusion about where these treatments can work best and for whom.

Jen (00:12:32)
So Michael, I’m really interested in your kind of day to day as a CEO. You’ve obviously had lots of different roles in your life and this is a podcast about science communication. So we’ve discussed a little bit you talking about your job with friends and family. But in your actual, day-to-day role as a CEO, how much of your time is spent communicating about science with different audiences?

Michael Winlo (00:12:54)
Right, you’re constantly communicating, and I think that’s one of the I guess warnings they give you in business school that it’s all about people, it’s all about communication. Yes, you can do your financial modelling class and you know business strategy, but at the end of the day, communication’s so important.
So I spend a lot of my time communicating the science and in… to be something. So I was thinking about this, anticipating this question in some ways that much of the time is spent getting the story straight in your own mind because you can shift. And at different times you need to introduce different, different points of view to the world.
So we started as a company saying we’re going to do the data, we’re going to do the research. Our initial clients, if you will were expected to be the producers, the growers of these drugs, ’cause hopefully we have less of a time convincing them that good evidence would be necessary and valuable to them. That really didn’t land, so we had to sort of mature as a company and realise well actually, now we would just get into our drug development, will actually show that our data can make an improvement to drug development. Let’s, let’s go up the chain and start to do more drug development.
So then our messaging needed to shift into why drug development was important and what was required for that. So some of that is communicating the purpose of those changes to your own company, to your board, rallying support around you from the board level, have ultimate accountability for the company. Your executive team, who need to execute on that mission, the broader staff explaining the why behind those changes. And then ultimately giving a simple message to the market, to your investors so they can get excited about what you’re trying to achieve as well.
And that’s probably where most of the challenge and probably most of my mistakes have been, in trying to get a message simple enough that investors can see how exciting it is, but not shrinking it back so much that you’re just a caricature of who you want to be. And that you know, that balance is is, is really difficult, I think it’s always an imperfect process. But one, that one has to constantly think about in their messaging.
So my audience is broadly our investors who may have very little scientific background, and so they need to see what’s this big problem you’re trying to solve and and why should they care and why there are returns to be made, why is there value to be captured. If you can solve the problem to a more sophisticated, say investors who want to dig a bit deeper and understand why you’ve got your competitive edge, what it is that that makes, make you stand out and then you know, to your team inside as well.

Michael Wheeler (00:15:12)
Yeah, there’s so many parallels to what we teach Jen in terms of you know, getting your message clear. But the stakes are so much higher, you know.
If you’re writing a blog for example, about your area in science, you want to get your message clear. And that will decide how many people read that blog post.
But for you, there’s a lot more at stake. How do you evaluate whether your message is landing and being effective?

Michael Winlo (00:15:41)
I mean one of the obvious measures we have which is this share price to some extent, our investors’ drawn to. Do they believe your story? Are you getting more believers than, than doubters if you will, that can move your price around. But it’s important not to tie too much of your self worth to that ’cause so many things, especially you know, as a small company trying to find your feet, so many things can move you up and down. You’re a small boat in a very wild and rough ocean, and so sometimes you realise that as long as you’re on track, you shouldn’t be too influenced by what the sentiment might be. That’s one way to do it.
I think also just getting lots of real-time feedback, putting a pitch in front of people, seeing where the questions come back. If you get the same kind of question multiple times, maybe address that upfront earlier on in your presentation. Many of the times you need to build a foundation for people to work from, and so it’s important to figure that out early. Sometimes that’s trial and error. So for example, when I was saying data’s really important, you get of course, Why? Oh, because you need to know if your drug, drug’s working. Why is that important? Ah, because maybe you’d like to register it with the TGA. Why is that important? Oh, because then doctors will prescribe it and they’ll be, you know, they have the confidence that it’s actually a validated treatment. And also maybe payers will cover the cost. So you realise that there are maybe four or five layers deep you need to go and so it’s a matter of understanding what those foundational layers are to your pitch, and addressing them quickly.
Now if there is too many layers you have to think of a different approach. In our story, there was because we had to convince somebody of registration of data, of our data and so on and so we got really complicated. Now I loved geeking out about how smart we were and how clever we were about setting all that up right. At the end of the day, I put that to the side. Now I actually just say, hey, we’re developing a treatment for this really big problem. Great, and if they get it, they get excited by that. If they would like to dig deeper, then they can see how how we’re achieving what we’re doing, but I start with the, the problem first.

Jen (00:17:30)
So I think you’ve just shared some pretty awesome advice and fundamentals for effective communication. And as Michael said earlier you know, a lot of it resonates so clearly with what we teach. But I guess something that’s different in your situation is that when we’re training research active scientists how to communicate about their research, generally they’re not dealing with social stigma. Sometimes they are, but generally they’re not.
For you, when you are thinking about how to pitch to an audience and how to get it clear in your own mind, this big, big picture of What’s the problem? Why does it matter? Why are we the people to solve it? Do you start in on addressing the potential stigma somebody might feel. Or do you just assume that they realise this is absolutely legitimate and you’ll deal with it later if they’re concerned about it? So you know where do you put that in your order of priorities to address?

Michael Winlo (00:18:20)
Yeah, I think we’re, we deliberately try and give people the right impression of the approach we’re taking through our website, through our public facing materials. So we are not, you’ll notice we are not green, we are not a company with a can in our name. You know, we don’t have the the, the model leaf you know layer, or illusions to thereof. So we’ve got to get the posture right.
And I think some of that comes from getting your brand message and, and I would say I think many people under-invest actually in their brand and just general marketing and so on. So we try and send out the right warnings ahead of time if you will. And then in the conversation we talk about the things we really care about. We sound, we talk about drug registration and clinical studies and evidence. And yes, we are aware they are sometimes boring words, but we explain that excitement comes in both what would a solution mean for this big problem and also look at the things that we’ve done that make us a different, exciting, interesting company. You know, we’ve got thousands of patients that we’ve seen. We’ve got this tremendous data registry. We’ve been able to draw out incredible insights that have never been possible before. And that draws people in, in, into our story. So I think those things are important, resisting the temptation to spruik things too much.

Michael Wheeler (00:19:29)
Hmm, yeah. And I suppose I guess it’s also possible through your communication you know, if you’re doing it for a long enough period of time, that it’s possible to educate people and educate various different audiences about what you’re working on. Have you seen that at all?
I mean, in any of the stakeholders that you’re talking to, regulatory bodies about the area that you’re researching, but also the type of evidence that you’re producing as well. Because I know that clinical trials are often held up there as the, the gold standard, but you’re saying that perhaps there can be just as much value in real world evidence.

Michael Winlo (00:20:07)
Absolutely yeah.

Michael Wheeler (00:20:10)
Is that recognised?

Michael Winlo (00:20:12)
Increasingly so. And we, I guess we take out inspiration and leadership from some of the more larger and more established regulatory agencies, groups like the FDA in the US and the European Medicines Agency have been very upfront about their interest and their preference for real world evidence when evaluating whether a treatment is effective or not.
There’s been a… And I think that TGA is getting there too. They’ve certainly made comments to that effect in, in cancer research, for example. ’cause there’s a growing recognition that clinical trials by design needs to be so well controlled, so tight in the inclusion/ exclusion criteria that the patients who respond to those treatments don’t look like your average patient turning up to your clinical practice. People have long recognised this and you know, in trials you have to follow protocol. In clinical practice you can follow, exercise your profession and go off script and do other things. And so all of that variability is better captured in something like real world evidence, in evidence that’s gathered on patients out there in the health system.
And therefore the insights from the analysis of that data is more generalisable. So there’s a growing recognition of the, of the value of real world evidence. I think we lean on that, we point to the leadership from big groups like the FDA. You know, if we’re talking to people in Australia.
You talk about the ‘ah ha’ moments, do people get it? It does take me longer than I wish still. I don’t mind that because normally I try and find like, you go where the doors are open. You know, when I’m talking to a big pharma company in the states they get it, they really get it. They’re already, they’re already 10 steps in. So have a less of a hard time and I can feel really good about how we’re doing things. Yes, I got a bit more work in Australia with it, with you know, had to do a bit more hand holding maybe to take them to that point of realisation. If I can get more time with people I know I can get there.
But I just you know, right now it’s hard to do that in a 5 minutes with somebody, and so I don’t give myself the pressure to try and get it across the line in five minutes. I just know it’s a long term game. If I can create multiple opportunities to kind of hear the message and and, and dig deep, that’s probably the, the best strategy that we can take.

Jen (00:22:09)
Is there something you learned along the way Michael about communicating your message clearly that really surprised you?
Do you feel like you’ve learned something in the last period of years that you just never would have guessed would have been a good tool?

Michael Winlo (00:22:24)
It’s probably been the other way. I’ve stated things. I’ve said things out loud which I thought wow, this is gonna blow them away and then, and then no reaction whatsoever. Then there is OK, what have I missed? A simple fact that the industry and medicinal cannabis has been very proud of itself for growing from 0 to say 100,000 scripts in the year. And I’d say well over that same period of time, there were 23 million prescriptions written for antidepressants, 22 million prescriptions written for pain medication. You know, the industry is, it has a long way to go to being mainstream. We’re not there yet, despite the fact that if you zoom in on a small curve it looks exponential. But if you zoom out in the greater context, you’re far away. So I would make statements like this and think, think surely people would get what we’re trying to do. But that’s been one thing.
I think I’m explaining to people that our drug treatments don’t normally stay stuck at their plant origins, and eventually there’s a purification or refinement that takes place to mainstream medications. I think people are starting to appreciate the necessity of that as well, but I’m constantly looking. I’m also not putting myself under too much pressure to get it right all the time. It’s, it’s a constant experiment. I’m learning as I’m going, and so sometimes that just take the pressure off to be perfect each time and realise that you know, as long as it’s iterating and getting better, evolving, then that’s, that’s what you can hope for.

Michael Wheeler (00:23:34)
Yeah, yeah exactly. And so Michael you, you’re someone who has moved from medicine into business and just curious whether you have any advice for any of our listeners who might be researchers, who might be thinking about maybe a move into business, maybe combining their research with business or working with industry, that type of thing. Would you have any advice for anyone who’s thinking about that?

Michael Winlo (00:23:59)
Yeah I would, I would absolutely explore it. Honestly, I think if you’re interested in seeing your idea, your research or your talents translated into products, services that can benefit lots of people, there’s certainly an academic grant which can take you there. But there’s certainly lessons and advantages to the business world.
Typically I think someone starts an academic career and even training in medicine is like this, where you’re on this side and business is on the other side, and clearly the incentives are not well-aligned and you’re crossing to the dark side if you take an interest in business. I think I I, I think some of that misperception still exists.
There are very good, very highly motivated people trying to do the right thing, trying to do great from the world, but are able to leverage a different set of resources on the business side to make, make those things come to life in the world.
At the end of the day, whether you’re an academic or in business, you want to see the, the product of your efforts benefiting people and you want to see your knowledge translated. I think you share that with you know, both sides, share that same mission, just have different approaches of getting there. Both have a role to play.

Michael Wheeler (00:25:00)
Yeah, fantastic. I’m just noticing the time here. We could keep chatting for, for ages I think.
It’s time to move on to the next section of our podcast, the rapid fire questions. Are you ready?

Michael Winlo (00:25:13)
Oh dear.
Yeah, go for it.

Jen (00:25:19)
Woo-hoo.

Michael Wheeler (00:25:28)
OK, so just easy, relaxed answers, don’t think about it too much.
First question off the rank Michael. If you had to pick an alternative career to what you’re doing now, what would it be?

Michael Winlo (00:25:39)
Be a rock musician. Easy. Yeah.

Jen (00:25:41)
Hang on. Is this lead singer? Bass? Drums? You gotta tell us more.

Michael Winlo (00:25:50)
Oh, this is good. Guitarist *inaudible*.
I’ve got a number of guitars and even a few didgeridoos, but I think guitar’s probably my thing.

Jen (00:26:05)
OK, that’s the best answer yet I think Michael.
Don’t you?

Michael Wheeler (00:26:07)
That’s the coolest answer we’ve ever had.

Michael Winlo (00:26:11)
Yeah yeah yeah, nice.

Jen (00:26:15)
OK question 2. What’s been your proudest professional moment?

Michael Winlo (00:26:21)
Ooh, probably converting one of our earlier projects in Palantir, wasn’t, it was, it was an experiment to see whether Palantir could solve a really meaty health problem. We were able to do that with this great sort of collaboration, required tremendous effort. And it was on a really meaningful health challenge and made a big difference there. So that led to a pretty massive contract, bigger numbers that I’ve ever seen in my life and I thought that was great recognition, yeah.

Michael Wheeler (00:26:43)
Wow, fantastic.

Jen (00:26:44)
Absolutely.

Michael Wheeler (00:26:45)
Next question, Twitter or Instagram?

Michael Winlo (00:26:47)
Ah, Twitter. I don’t know how to use Instagram. I’m more of a, a consumer, I guess.
Yeah it, it’ll be Twitter, something I can read?

Jen (00:26:58)
OK, next question. Your favourite science related book and/or movie.

Michael Winlo (00:27:04)
Ooh, great question. I’m reading a really fascinating book now called The Beginning of Infinity, by David Deutsch. He’s a physicist with a really refreshing, optimistic view of knowledge and how science can really, we’re really at the beginning of infinity. So much to learn, unlimited potential in, in progress, which is a really nice take on, on science. That’s a non-fiction book. Favourite film, I don’t know but I really enjoyed all the Star Wars series. I’ll say that. Yeah.

Jen (00:27:30)
Who doesn’t love Star Wars, right?

Michael Winlo (00:27:34)
Yeah, that’s right.

Michael Wheeler (00:27:36)
So does infinity have a beginning?

Michael Winlo (00:27:38)
Oh well, that’s really the point. I guess it’s it’s, no, is that no matter where you think you are. Are you close to the end? Are you close to the edge? There’s still unlimited amount of you know progress that’s still to come, which is a reason to be optimistic about the future I think in, in humanity’s potential.

Michael Wheeler (00:27:53)
Right, sounds fascinating. We’ll have to put that on the to-read list.
Last question Michael. What is your top tip for effective science communication?

Michael Winlo (00:28:02)
Shorter sentences and fewer words, which mean the same thing. But much of our writing has actually superfluous language.
And if you can become a good writer, it’s probably the first step in that process.
And keep your communication short and sharp. You’ll go a long way.

Michael Wheeler (00:28:19)
Excellent.

Jen (00:28:20)
I love it. Can we just put that up on a bumper sticker and give it to all our students ’cause they might believe it more if they hear it from you than from us.

Michael Winlo (00:28:28)
Yeah, yeah.
That’s right.

Michael Wheeler (00:28:29)
Well, Michael, that brings us to the end of the podcast.
So thank you so much for joining us. That was fascinating.

Michael Winlo (00:28:36)
My pleasure, thanks for the questions.

Jen (00:28:39)
Yeah, thanks Michael.
I, I have many more questions for you, but we’ll have to do them another day.
So thank you for your time.

Michael Winlo (00:28:43)
You’re welcome, thanks for the opportunity. Appreciate it guys.

Michael Wheeler (00:29:05)
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