Episode 80 – Interview with consultant, scientist and editor Dr Rachel Nowak

This week we were privileged to have a wonderful conversation with Dr Rachel Nowak who is a consultant, an advisor, a scientist and a journalist. She has been working in science, technology and innovation on three continents.

Her specialities include science journalism, knowledge mobilisation, research and technology assessment, and stakeholder engagement.

She has been Washington Bureau Chief and Australasian Editor of New Scientist magazine. She was Director of Research Marketing and Communications at the University of Melbourne. She founded the social-good brain tech start-up The Brain Dialogue and is currently a Consultant Editor with Custom Media at the Nature Springer group.

Rachel did her PhD in agricultural science at the University of Leeds. She studied writing, alongside poets and novelists, at The Johns Hopkins University.

Her award-winning science journalism has changed R&D and medical practice, and research law and policy around the world.

Rachel immigrated to Australia on a Distinguished Talent visa for her international record of outstanding achievements in science communication.

You can follow Rachel and learn more about her work here:

• https://www.nowakassociates.net/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-rachel-nowak-gaicd/
• https://twitter.com/DrRachelNowak

Transcript

Jen (00:00:21)
Hello everyone. What a wonderful day it is today. Because today we are recording another episode of Let’s Talk SciComm.
I am Jen Martin. And as ever, I’m joined by my good friend, Michael Wheeler. Hello there, Michael.

Michael (00:00:36)
Hey Jen. I’m feeling very excited for today’s episode.

Jen (00:00:40)
Yeah well, you should be, Michael. ‘Cause we are meeting someone absolutely awesome today.
Our guest today is Dr. Rachel Nowak. And I have my own little story of how I first got to meet Rachel, which I’m going to tell you a bit later.
But what everyone needs to know is that Rachel wears many, many hats. So she’s a scientist, she’s a journalist, she’s a consultant. She’s got this huge breadth of experiences across different fields and different roles within STEMM.
She’s got a heap of different skills. But I guess the ones that I focus on when I think about Rachel are, she is an absolute genius when it comes to research translation, to working in and with the media, to stakeholder coordination. She knows a lot about emerging technologies, about marketing and communications and also governance.
So Rachel’s done a lot of different things. We’re not going to get time to talk about all of them.
But at the moment she’s working with Springer Nature Custom Media. She’s also running her own consultancy, Rachel Nowak & Associates.
But she’s also worked back at the University of Melbourne and a whole lot of other places. I think she’s worked on three continents last time I checked.
And we’re very lucky that Australia is now home for Rachel. So she immigrated to Australia under the Distinguished Talent Visa Program, which is pretty special. And only really cool people who have an international record of outstanding achievement in their field get to come under that visa.
So I think we should all just kind of bow down to Rachel.

Rachel (00:02:09)
Oh my goodness.

Jen (00:02:11)
Rachel, we could congratulate you on a million things. I think it’s really cool. I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone who before, who’s arrived in Australia with the official title of Distinguished Talent.
So welcome, and thank you for making time to chat with us today.

Rachel (00:02:24)
Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here.

Michael (00:02:27)
It’s great to have you, Rachel. I’ve never heard of the Distinguished Talent visa. Was it a a big application?

Rachel (00:02:32)
It’s always a huge exercise to get a new nationality or a new visa. You know, a visa to work.

Jen (00:02:40)
Well, thank goodness Australia said yes, Rachel. Because over the years, I’ve had the great pleasure of interacting with you, not often, but in important ways.
And I really consider you a trusted mentor and an advisor for me. There’s been times that I’ve just had this wonderful opportunity to ask your advice and you’ve always provided stellar advice. So it’s really great to bring you onto the podcast.
But as you probably know, on this podcast, we really like to kind of go back a bit when we first meet our guests and just get a bit of a sense: What drew you to science? Did you love science as a kid? Was there a particular teacher or experience? Did you foresee a career in STEMM? I mean, tell us a bit about little Rachel and what she was into.

Rachel (00:03:22)
Actually, there was a key teacher who just sort of really… You know, she zoomed in on me. She saw that there was a spark there and really encouraged it. And that set me on the path. I had a real love of animals as well. So that really got me interested in the natural world.
I went to the University of Leeds and by chance, the degree I did was very research intensive. From year, from the second year, we were running research, doing proper research. In our third year, it was all research, nothing else really. And I absolutely fell in love with it.
I also, I had probably an over-romantic idea of it. I used to walk across campus at night in those very long dark nights in the North of England.
And I’d see these lights on in the labs and I’d think, Oh my God, there’s researchers discovering things.

Michael (00:04:12)
Hell yeah.

Rachel (00:04:15)
Totally enamored. But then, when I signed up to do my PhD, I actually found out it was the cleaning staff that were there at night.
You know, bless their hearts for working after hours. So yeah, so that’s how I got into research. It’s just sort of a you know, a love of the natural world and just a way to explore the natural world, I guess.

Michael (00:04:35)
Yeah. And what did you do for your PhD, Rachel? What was your topic?

Rachel (00:04:40)
Well, timing mechanisms. So how do… And it’s very relevant, Michael, to your situation at the moment.
So initially for my PhD, I looked at the timing mechanism. So how does an animal that breeds at a certain time of year know what time of year it is? And how do they know so accurately?
And that, of course, we now know is due to the duration of the light-dark periods. But it’s not as simple as pulling a switch. There’s actually, you sort of become refractive to one light period and the other one becomes stimulatory. So it’s quite a complex system to get it so finely tuned.
So that was my PhD. After that, I did a postdoc in Australia at Monash. And I worked with Caroline McMillen. Who was, until recently, was Chief Scientist in Adelaide.
And the work we did together was looking at how babies learn to tell the difference between day and night. So how do they learn to (laughs)…
Now the bad news is that babies don’t sleep through the night for many other reasons. And they don’t know that it’s night. But that was a very, very enjoyable piece of work.
And you know, what it showed, or what we found out was that the light-dark zeitgebers, or triggers are really important for newborn infants to know.

Michael (00:05:53)
Hmm, maybe I need to keep the room a bit darker so my baby sleeps.

Rachel (00:06:01)
It’s actually quite critical, I would…
I know that from raising babies and from research. Yeah.

Jen (00:06:07)
Just to clarify for all our listeners, we were talking just before we started recording about the fact that Michael’s beautiful baby boy is currently not sleeping very much.
Anyone listening who’s ever had a lifetime of trying to manage not getting enough sleep, we all know how that feels.

Rachel (00:06:24)
Yeah, and can I tell you, this research has really stayed with me. So to this day, I have a very dim torch that I use if I ever get up at night. And that’s leftover from getting up to kids at night. I’m not wanting to, to give them any cues that it’s daytime.
So, and I actually lost my dim torch somewhere recently, and I need it back. So I wouldn’t use a mobile phone. The torch, the light is too bright. So the dimmest light you can do to move around the house when you’ve got babies.

Michael (00:06:45)
Yeah. Interesting. I’m writing that down on the shopping list, dim torch.

Jen (00:06:56)
Everyone’s like, right.
I’m never going to turn the torch light on my phone on again in the night time.

Michael (00:07:01)
It’s incredibly fascinating when your research kind of gives you practical recommendations that you can actually apply in your own life.
And it sounds like you were getting really good research experience early on, and then following on into your postdoc.
What do you think was the value of that career that you’ve had in research to drive what you did later on?

Rachel (00:07:25)
I mean, it was hugely pleasurable to do discovery. You know, there’s nothing that beats that creativity of research, I think.
But it really motivated me. Because what I realized [is] that you do the research, you publish it, and it sort of… You know, this is in the ’80s. And it just fell off the table. There was never much done with it afterwards.
You know, so I became really interested in this whole idea that science is happening in a silo. And people don’t get access to it.
For just the pure pleasure of it. You know, it’s one of the great cultural achievements, in my opinion of you know, the last century. So people don’t get to indulge in it and enjoy in it.
But also often, it’s very inefficient. You know, we do so much science. We invest so much money in it. And then we do a research paper, which is great. But, should be said, a 400-year-old innovation.
And then we don’t… I mean really. But you know, it’s incredible. But we don’t do that sort of last mile of communication.
You know, in logistics, they talk about the last mile. So you can get the medicines or the food or whatever to a hub. But then actually delivering it to the people who need it. It’s really really tricky.
And the same with communications. We just don’t do the last mile. We do the research paper, and then it sort of falls off the table.
So that was hugely motivating for me. Those two things. Wanting to share this, coming from a non-scientific background, thinking Hey, this stuff’s great. More people should be able to know about it. But also, how can we make it matter? How can we make the science truly useful?

Jen (00:09:00)
So Rachel, a big part of your career then, after you stopped doing the research yourself, was about that last mile. Because you’re an incredibly skilled writer. For listeners who don’t know Rachel, she studied writing at John Hopkins University.
And you’ve had an award-winning career as a journalist. You were a science writer for, a senior science writer at Science Magazine. You spent 13 years with New Scientist.
I know you were first the Washington brief. Sorry, the Washington Bureau Chief. And then you were the Australasian editor. And in fact, that’s how I first met you.
I’ve told you this story before. I was taking part in a competition called Fresh Science, which is really where I discovered what science communication was. I’d never heard of it before. This is 18 years ago now.
And part of that was to do, you know, to write a press release and do mock press interviews. And to go into schools, and to go [to] all these places.
So I was talking about my PhD research. And I remember being on the street. I think it was in Bendigo. Somewhere we were talking to kids.
And having a conversation with you over the phone. And you were basically doing a quick interview with me about my PhD research.
And it was, you know, as a New Scientist reader, I was pretty chuffed to see my own PhD research in this little piece in New Scientist that you had written. So I’ve been your big fan ever since.
But writing… Tell us about this last mile of saying you know, the research has been done. It should be more accessible. How can we make that so?
Because you know, this incredibly old practice of writing scientific papers you know, is clearly not accessible. Where did you develop this love for writing about science? And what was it like to work as a science journalist?

Rachel (00:10:36)
Well, I should probably tell people that I was not a writer. So if any, you know, at school, I was not a writer. It was something I struggled with. You know, I don’t… It wasn’t, you know, a thing that I had going for me, but I did have this sort of strange confidence I could learn things. So going to Hopkins, and I thought, Well, I just learned how to be a science writer.
And it was great, ’cause it was a you know, it’s a master’s that took 10 months. And all you did was write and workshop your writing. And you also did it with novelists and poets.
Okay, so pretty you know, it’s pretty hard work, ’cause they’re not very impressed with your average science writing.
But, you know, it was a real, I don’t know what the word for it is, but it really sort of got me going. You know, it’s really really hard to begin with. And the more you do it, the easier it becomes.
And you know, you have to… I’m sure there’s the Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours comes into play.
But in my experience, I’m sure I’ve done more than 10,000 hours now. Just the more you do, the easier it becomes.
So that’s the first thing to know for anybody who wants to improve their communication. Yeah, you can do it.
Working as a science journalist, it’s sort of incredible because what you’re doing, really, is you’re doing science communication, but you’re also doing critical analysis.
You’re, you know, part of your job at science or new scientists, sometimes you’re just writing up discoveries so people know about them.
But often you’re really digging into topics to see whether society needs to know about this. Is, are things being done correctly? Or is it best, in the best way they can be done? So you have this watchdog role.
So it might be you’re looking at, you know, the things I’ve looked at are the statistics behind clinical trials, whether cross-species organ transplants are risky, various different types of genetic manipulations.
And you’re all the time sort of shining light on this so that other scientists can have their say, but also the broader community can have their say.
And that’s incredibly exciting. It’s very scary if you write something where you think you’re going to get, ruffle people’s feathers.
Which is, as a journalist, is something you should be doing. You should be speaking truth to power.
It can be very scary. I’ve had several times had people phone my editor and say “she should be fired”.

Michael (00:12:56)
Oh, really? Wow, that’s pretty serious. What? So is there like a stand out example of like, where loads of feathers were ruffled?…

Rachel (00:12:56)
But the great thing that… Ohh yes, yes. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes.

Michael (00:13:05)
And you got a phone call like that. Any examples stick out in your mind?

Rachel (00:13:08)
I’d rather not mention because you know the name.
But I can tell you one person I’m thinking of who later we became buddies on LinkedIn.
So these are often, it’s just a you know, it’s just a way to sort of, to scare you off.
So it’s, I don’t think there’s anything particularly nasty behind it.

Michael (00:13:23)
OK.

Rachel (00:13:27)
But it is, you know, it is quite scary. Especially, you know, in the nineties, I would have been a young woman standing you know, facing off against very established older white men, you know. And it’s sort of, it’s scary sometimes.
But, you know, I feel very strongly. And I’m sure everybody does, a free press is a cornerstone of democracy. It only makes science better. So, yeah.

Michael (00:13:52)
Yeah, no, that’s that’s fascinating. And I’m curious and talking about that experience that you had with the New Scientist versus what your current role with Nature is, which is focused on global science communication. What is it that you’re doing at the moment?

Rachel (00:14:08)
So it’s with Springer Nature who publish Nature. So it’s not with Nature. So it’s working Springer Nature in the Nature Research Custom Media Team. And I work with APAC as an editor and mainly with China.
And what my role there is to work with Chinese scientists to help them get their research out in English to a global audience.
And obviously this is critically important for the individual scientist to be you know, part of the global community of science. Which I’m so glad works in English. That makes it easy for me.
It’s important for the rest of the world because China is investing so heavily in research and going gangbusters.
So two years ago, China surpassed America in the number of life science research papers in good journals. So they are doing more research. That’s, you know, that’s notable.

Jen (00:15:03)
Rachel, one of the things that always strikes me when I speak with you is that I think you’ve got this really strong background in what I’m going to call strategic communication.
And my understanding is that that’s what people you know, that’s one of the things that people really turn to you for in terms of your consultancy.
And I’d really like to understand more about how you became someone who thinks strategically because one of the things that we come across often with our students is this kind of feeling of inadequacy that Oh look, you know, I’m not a very strategic person. I’ve just followed what I found interesting along the way.
And now I find myself in this place where people are telling me I need to be more strategic with how I invest my time and my energy.
You know, is strategic thinking something that we can learn? Is it something that you set out to learn? Talk to me about strategic thinking.

Rachel (00:15:52)
For me, I think it comes from… I think, you know, being a bit of an outsider, so you sort of see things differently.
So you see… You know, you think, Oh, why is science done like that?
‘Cause nobody’s ever told you that that’s how science is done.
Or why don’t we do it like this?
And then you, because I’ve moved in different industries and different roles, you’re often bringing insights from one industry to another.
So you can think, Well, wait a minute, that’s not the best way of doing that. People over there, like co-design is a real obvious one where co-design has been happening in government policy for quite a long time. And now it’s really sort of catching on in research circles.
So I guess often I’m already equipped with potential solutions to strategic problems, which makes it easier.
You need space. You need space to be creative. You need time. You need not to be always producing the next paper.
So I don’t know if there’s something there that is possible to be strategic if you give yourself the space to do it. Probably there is a bit of courage required as well.
Possibly it’s easier if you’re an outsider ’cause you’ve got nothing to lose, you know? You might as well.

Jen (00:17:05)
I think you’re right though. I think it might be partly about time. I think for so many people trying to establish a track record in science, it’s just chasing the next citation, the next grant, the next paper, the next you know, everything.
And this constant feeling of anxiety that you’re not doing enough which can you know, that message can often come through very strongly within the culture I think, of research.
And there is no time to just sit back and actually reflect and think and ponder and imagine and listen. I do worry that we lose our ability to think creatively the busier we get.

Rachel, just before you talked about diversity. You know, diversity in the workforce. And just before we run out of time, I can’t resist asking you just a little bit about your thoughts on women in STEMM because you and I have had conversations.
You wrote a really brilliant opinion piece about the challenges of being a woman in STEMM anytime, but particularly as you get older.
And I also had the really lovely pleasure of meeting one of your daughters not too long ago. And she’s an incredibly passionate, bright, thoughtful young scientist.
And I guess I’d just love to hear from you. You know, you’ve had this incredibly successful career. We haven’t asked you about the barriers that you might’ve faced as a woman.
But are there things that you hope will be different for your daughters than they were for you? Are there things that you hope that they, or she, I’m not sure if your other daughter’s also into science or not.
But you know, the things that you hope that Lizzie might experience differently to you as a woman in STEMM in a different generation?

Rachel (00:18:39)
Yeah, there’s a lot there. I think, I mean, there’s been such a radical change in how we talk about the problem of diversity. So it’s completely out in the open now. And we talk about it, and that’s absolutely great. I think we’re going to see this golden era of women in research.
So all those women who have struggled up through and are now in leadership positions, and we’re seeing more and more of them, I think they’re really going to change how science is done.
I think you know, it’s gonna be like Cathy Foley or Caroline McMillen. You know, there’s this series of top women coming through.
But it won’t last because they’ve become, and not those individuals, but women will become part of the establishment.
But as they are now getting into positions of influence, they’re really changing things for the better. So I think that’s really wholly positive and very exciting.
And of course we, you know, there’s other types of diversity which we’re all aware of. It’s you know, gender is a huge one, but there’s many other sorts of diversity that we need to get into the research establishment.
In terms of the barriers I’ve experienced, it’s been a pretty rough ride, I’ve gotta say, you know. So when I started out, sexual harassment was rife. It was just, it was crushing. It was crushing very often too.
And you know, the advice I’d give to people is don’t play. You know, it’s very easy to internalize it. So then what am I doing wrong? You know, make sure you know when it’s you and when it’s the system.
So yeah, so it has been tough. And as a mature age STEMM worker, the quite overt discrimination is really quite rife.
And when I wrote that piece that you mentioned, I got more interested in that piece than I have on anything I’ve ever posted on LinkedIn. So I’ve got well over 10,000 people just like there.

Jen (00:20:25)
Really.

Michael (00:20:26)
Wow.

Rachel (00:20:26)
And people… It’s a very general, you know, an experience that sort of any woman over 50 sort of shares. This idea that you have to disguise your age. You better not talk about grandchildren.
You, you know, people are going to see you, you can’t use a computer sort of like, it’s on and on and on, you know.
So yeah, so that’s tough. Now for women coming through, I am still very fearful ’cause I still see it happening, that organizations feel they’ve done their bit for diversity by running a program for young female scientists.
And I just, it really worries me that this is a trap. So the young female scientists come in and then they hit all these barriers.
You know, when they have caring responsibilities. You know, all the way through. And so I’m very anxious about that for my young scientists.
Is she going to go in to be encouraged to come in and to be a young scientist and then find that all the doors are barred to her.
Now having said that, we’ve got these senior women in leadership positions. So hopefully they’re going to do their bit and make sure it doesn’t happen.

Jen (00:21:28)
Yeah, yeah. Ah, I love your optimism. And I also share your concerns.
But I do think things are changing and I very much hope that our overall trajectory is you know, taking us somewhere better than where we’ve been.

Rachel (00:21:44)
Yeah, yeah. And you know when it looks so positive is if you look at movies like “The Three-Body Problem”. I don’t know if you’ve been following that.
And you look at the diversity of the researchers they’ve got there. They’re all rather beautiful, it has to be said, which is perhaps not reality.
But you know, you’ve got your different ethnicities and your different genders. So it’s sort of… And also that whole idea of you know, collaborative research so it’s quite, quite fun.

Michael (00:22:10)
I really don’t like that about some movies where you know, they’ve just picked the most good looking people.

Rachel (00:22:18)
Yeah.

Michael (00:22:18)
But no, that’s really really fascinating stuff, Rachel. And I feel like we could continue talking for a long time,
But we have gotten to the time in the podcast where we’re going to switch gears now a little bit. We’re going to move to our quick questions. Quick questions, short answers.

Michael (00:22:45)
The first question that I would like to ask Rachel is — If you could pick an alternative job to what you’re doing today, what would it be?

Rachel (00:22:57)
It would be farmer or veterinary researcher, I think.
And I do think farmers are the original scientists ’cause they always do that thing where they do one crop over here and another crop over here and we’re gonna put you know, one fertilizer on here and something else over here. Yeah.

Michael (00:23:16)
I think so.

Jen (00:23:17)
I love it.
Rachel, if you could choose to have one superpower, what superpower would you choose?
Not to suggest you don’t already have a whole lot of superpowers.

Rachel (00:23:26)
I was going to say. I mean, come on! Super… superpower.
Look, I think communication is a superpower. And I do think that my… And it can always improve. And I would, I would want to be more, my spoken communication to be even better. That’s what I would want.

Jen (00:23:43)
Oh I love it. I love that answer. That’s the way more exciting than ‘I want to be invisible. I wish I could fly.’

Rachel (00:23:50)
I want to be invisible as well. You know, now I know what I’d like. I’d like to be able to be somebody else, you know? So spend days in other people’s bodies to really experience what it’s like.

Rachel (00:24:03)
I think that would be like what is it like being a researcher who doesn’t speak English and has to navigate through you know, a science system that is wholly English?

Michael (00:24:14)
Hmm, imagine the insights you get from that. And you, you kind of do like a sabbatical in a you know, another person’s body.

Rachel (00:24:21)
Yeah, yeah.

Michael (00:24:21)
That’s a great idea. OK, since we’re kind of in the realm of fanciful ideas. If you could go back in time, if time travel’s a thing.
I don’t know, maybe it will be in the future. And you could give yourself a message at the age of 21. What would you say?

Rachel (00:24:37)
It would be this idea about when you face a barrier or a challenge, be really clear about when it’s you and it’s your limitations and when it’s the system. Be really really clear.
And at the same time, be really clear when you’ve got a privileged position and when you don’t.
So see things clearly, don’t see them… In terms of building a career, you know, don’t see it in an emotional way.
Try and think, Well, why am I being blocked here? Why are they not taking me seriously? Why can’t I be heard in a meeting? Is it I’m not speaking clearly enough?
So yeah. So just, and just not taking it personally. Just like, This is the system. This is the system that needs to change. This is the system that benefits me. You know, I speak English as a first language. What a benefit, what an advantage, you know?

Jen (00:25:22)
Gosh, I feel like that’s advice that we all need every day.
I know, there’s someone who was telling me the other day they have a sticker in their room that just says, “It’s not about you.” Which seems to [be] kind of good advice.
Often it’s a systemic problem and we turn it into thinking that it’s our own failure or inadequacy.
So that’s wonderful advice, Rachel. Thank you.
Next question. What do you think makes a good leader?

Rachel (00:25:44)
Honesty and transparency and telling it how it is.

Jen (00:25:48)
They sound like pretty damn important things to me.

Michael (00:25:52)
And final question, Rachel.
You talked about communication being a superpower, or I guess it has the potential to become a superpower if you are communicating effectively.
What is your top tip for our listeners about how do you communicate effectively about science to make sure that your communication is a superpower for you?

Rachel (00:26:13)
Know your purpose.
And engagement is not a purpose, it’s a tactic.

Michael (00:26:18)
Yeah.

Rachel (00:26:19)
Which helps you get to your purpose. And also commas before, content before commas. People fuss too much about grammar.
But it’s actually it’s about the ideas. So if you’ve got a comma in the wrong place, it doesn’t matter. But if you’ve got nothing to say it really does.

Michael (00:26:32)
Yeah. Yes, yes. Hear, hear.

Jen (00:26:35)
Oh I haven’t heard that before, content before commas.
I think for me that you know, it’s indicative of how tired I am. When I’m tired, I’m very good at copy editing. But actually concentrating on content, that takes brainpower.

Rachel (00:26:47)
Yeah, yeah. And then also, you know, if you think about grammar, ’cause it used to be that you could really sneer at somebody if their grammar was wrong, you know.
But now if you think about it, that’s completely, you know, it should not happen because it’s normally an indication of what sort of schooling you had, what your first language is.
So yeah, I do think, yeah, good punctuation is much overrated. Even though it does help, you know, with a clear communication, for sure.
But the content is everything. The ideas are everything.

Jen (00:27:15)
Yeah, there’s a lot of obnoxious memes out there which I do chuckle at. But I deliberately don’t share. We’re picking on other people’s use of punctuation.
Is it their fault that they didn’t get the opportunity to learn where the apostrophe goes? Is it before the ‘s’ or after the ‘s’? It doesn’t change the ideas they have or the person they are so…

Rachel (00:27:33)
Yeah. I know and how much time can you take checking… When you do hundreds of emails a day? How much time can you take checking when you’ve got all your punctuation correct, you know. It’s just, it’s not a good use of time very often.

Jen (00:27:46)
Absolutely. Well Rachel, I do feel like this has been an exceptionally good use of our time. And I hope you feel the same way. We really could speak with you for hours.
You’ve had such an extraordinary career, which is still going in so many interesting ways. And I really do value both the conversations one-on-one, that you and I have had over the years, and I hope we have many more, but also that you’ve made time to speak with us.
Because I think there’s a lot of scientists and science students listening, who can see the career that you’ve had and what drives you and the purpose you have and feel very very inspired by you.
So thank you so much.

Rachel (00:28:19)
Well, thank you, Jen.
And you know, I always value our conversations too.
So it’s a two-way street, like all the best communication. It’s a dialogue.

Jen (00:28:27)
Indeed.

Michael (00:28:28)
Thank you, Rachel.
Thanks for all your great work and the great conversation today.
It was fantastic.

Rachel (00:28:33)
Thanks Michael.

Jen (00:28:54)
Thank you so much for listening to another episode of Let’s Talk SciComm from the University of Melbourne Science Communication Teaching Team. I’m Associate Professor Jen Martin and my brilliant cohost is Dr Michael Wheeler.

Michael (00:29:08)
And if you’ve enjoyed listening to this episode, we’d love you to share it with your friends and family. We’d love you to share your favourite episode online. And you can find us at LetsTalkSciComm on X, formerly known as Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Jen (00:29:23)
And this season, we are asking for your help to spread the word so that more people find out about our podcast.
So if you enjoy listening, we would love you to tell a friend, but we’d also love you to think about taking a couple of minutes to write us a review.
Whatever platform you listen on, there will be a place for you to leave a review. And we’re going to keep track and award our favourite reviewees some prizes.
We’re thinking about some merch. And we’d also love to reward our favourite review with a free science communication workshop that we will run for you in person or online, depending on whereabouts you are.

Michael (00:29:59)
Ooh, prizes. And if… They sound great. And if you’d like to get in touch to suggest a guest or a future topic, we’d love to hear from you. Please email us at lets.talk.scicomm@gmail.com. And as always, a huge thank you to our production team Stephanie Wong and Steven Tang.