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I'll start this post off with a story. When I was half way through my PhD and I had found my passion for science communication, I approached my supervisor for the first time to ask “Can I have this day off to go do this science outreach event?” And this was the first time I had the reply “But don’t you think you should be in the lab rather than doing that?”Now I know I am not the only one in this situation - wanting to do some public engagement but being told by their supervisors that i …

Finding a post-doc for your lab can be extremely competitive! If you are new PI without a huge list of publications, looking for your first Post-Doc can be tough. As more and more PhDs decide to move into industry post-PhD, the pool or potential candidates to fill your position diminishes, especially since more Post-Docs push for top tier Universities to increase their chances of becoming a PI. Therefore increasing your marketing efforts may be required to increase the amount of appli …

Science communication for me started as something I never wanted to do. I was forced to enter the 3 Minute Thesis competition during my PhD & I was dreading it all the way until I actually started planning. Long story short, I absolutely loved it. I fell in love with being able to get creative with how we could share scientific research, especially research asking very niche questions. But my passion for scicomm spiralled from there. It made me reignite my blog Soph talks science, I …

With over 1 billion active daily users, Instagram is the place to be right now. With so many people of all backgrounds carrying a smartphone with them everywhere, there is even more opportunity than for science communicators to reach out to more diverse audiences than ever before. An opportunity to educate more people than you could ever manage at any local events, and all because we carry a little device in our pockets everywhere.I have only been a part of the Instagram scicomm commun …

By Shane Houston, PhD Candidate Queen’s University BelfastCancer is an age old adversary of the human race. This out-of-control growth of abnormal cells has been a shadow over human health throughout history. Some of the earliest evidence of cancer stretches back to Egypt and the time of the pharaohs [1]. As time has marched on, so has our understanding of the disease, a field which came to be known as Oncology [1]. Early attempts at treating the disease most often involved surgical …