Dr. Amanda L. Glaze is Assistant Professor for Science Education at Georgia Southern University. Her position allows her to do both, applied science research and education research. She is looking for ways that academics can support and prepare the next generation of science teachers and thinkers. Teachers are the ones who have the single greatest opportunity to have an impact on public perceptions in science.

Amanda focuses on evolution education from kindergarten to 12th grade (K-12). Evolution education is noted as the greatest failing of science education in the 21st century in the USA. This is mostly because many people still find the theory of evolution to be fundamentally anti-religious, and thus “controversial”. These deeply seeded misconceptions about science are used as grounds for anti-science legislation, climate change denial, and other contentious points.

Amanda engages frequently in talks about science and religion, to share her own story of navigating conflict between her highly religious background and being a scientist in a field the public sees as very anti-religious and controversial.

During her week on @sfprocur, Amanda wants to highlight the importance of having a scientific worldview. Science is for everyone and understanding the nature of science is key to informed decision making and building a better world.

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Hey! This is the first director’s cut episode with co-host Bart Geurten! Because it is being shared and discussed quite a bit, we discuss episode 9, where Björn Brembs explained to us the impact of JIF on academia.

It is somewhat long even for a director’s cut. Let me know what you think!

Postdocs are, besides graduate students, the main workforce in academic research. Following the PhD, the postdoc position is the only way to follow a research career within academia. Many PhDs around the world are advised to go to the USA for a postdoc – or two – because it is known for its large research output and high quality research institutes. Around two thirds of postdocs in the USA are foreign born.

Monika Sziron M.A. is a PhD candidate
in technology and humanities at Illinois Institute of Technology. She is interested in the intersection of technology and society, and she likes looking at the blending of technology and humanity.

Monika Sziron’s work has focused on AI, robots, animals, cyborgs, people, and ethics.

During her week on @sfprocur, Monika Sziron plans to talk about AI, Robots, and Cyborgs!

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In March, Bart visited the bi-annual meeting of the German Neuroscience Society (NWG) in Göttingen. And he took his brand new digital audio recorder with him! So this is the first time we can present impressions from the field!

Bart interviewed professor Karin Nordström, graduate student Robert Kossen, and a former researcher and now entrepreneur John Stowers about what brings them to the conference, and when and why students should begin attending.

If a week goes by without me Tweeting about infectious diseases, something is seriously wrong.

Sherilyn Burris is a Certified Emergency Manager, and holds master degrees in Occupational Safety and Health & Environmental Management, as well as Public Administration and Emergency.

She works at Cascia Consulting LLC as an adviser for government public safety, corporate, and nonprofit disaster and business continuity programs. In this way, she can help a variety of stakeholders with challenging issues such as climate change and emerging technologies.

Sherilyn is particularly passionate about Human behavior in disasters. She brings attention to the unique ways people access, understand, and use risk data to make personal and community decisions, for example during fires, floods, hurricanes, or earthquakes. She gives workshops, writes publications, and communicates widely on social media.

During her curation on @sfprocur, Sherilyn wants to convey that “Science shows up in the most unexpected places. Government: science. Disasters: science. Data: science. Disease outbreaks: science.” And she will do so with JRR Tolkien references!

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The European Union ruled to treat CRISPR, a highly precise gene editing technique, as unwanted technique for the modification of crops.

Is this justified by safety issues? 

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Twitter is great for communication. You can get your knowledge, opinions, and personality in front of people, easily. And you can curate your timeline to show tweets from people you align with. People, whose humor you enjoy. Or people who you think can teach you something, be it through mutual exchange or simply reading what they have to say.

But you need to know how!

I have been on twitter for quite some time – more than any one person who knows me would expect, because I played around under pseudonyms – a lot. By doing so, I think I have gained a little bit of experience with the dynamics on twitter. I also have notoriously little patience with bad communication – including my own mistakes, which you can still witness regularly.

As you may know, we have a Patreon account where supporters of Science for Progress sign up to make a monthly pledge! As a thank you I make the full conversations with my podcast guests available to our patrons.

After 7 months I release the episode, so everybody can listen to it!

This time I released this very popular episode on the Journal Impact Factor with Björn Brembs!

Filipa M. Ferreira, MSc, is a PhD candidate in neuroimmunology in Zurich, Switzerland. She studies the onset and development of multiple sclerosis (MS). Filipa is also involved with the
Young Scientist Network (LSZYSN) of Life Science Zurich, a student organization that brings together life science companies and early career scientists.

Filipa informs early career scientists about the jobs they can find outside academia, about the skills they need to develop, and about opportunities for entrepreneurship during and after the PhD.

In her week at @SfPRocur, Filipa wants to make clear that there’s no such thing as an ‘alternative’ career in science. “A conscious decision to stay in academia is as brave as the decision to leave it.”

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