Thank you to Amaya Sinha for the above photo, taken during a recent Astronomy on Tap talk in Salt Lake City, Utah.
I believe that communicating science to the public is the duty of
every scientist.
Science is not meant to be restricted to experts and veiled behind jargon. Furthermore, in the current era where science funding is facing threats, it is important for the voting public to see the importance of funding science. I love giving public science talks and always accept invitations to give them. For example, see a recording of my recent public talk at Columbia University here!
I also enjoy written science communication. Between 2020 and 2023, I was a full author at Astrobites. Astrobites is a graduate student-run website that posts bite-sized summaries of new astronomy research. I enjoy making high-level science accessible for those outside/newer to the field. Here is a selection of some of my posts:
Chemical evidence for planetary ingestion in a quarter of Sun-like stars: https://astrobites.org/2021/09/28/yum-planets/
Peering Inside the Galactic Archaeology Toolbox: https://astrobites.org/2021/06/29/galactic-archaeology-toolbox/
Humanity and Identity are Inextricable from Astrophysics: a Review of The Disordered Cosmos by Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein: https://astrobites.org/2021/06/22/disordered-cosmos/
Disentangling Milky Way Evolution with Disentangled Representation Learning, a New Tool for Chemical Tagging: https://astrobites.org/2021/03/30/disentangled-chemical-tagging/
Searching for Milky Way Intermediate-Mass Black Holes with Hypervelocity Stars: https://astrobites.org/2021/02/16/imbhs-with-hypervelocity-stars/
Blue Lurkers and Blue Stragglers: Rapidly-Rotating Stars and their Fountain of Youth: https://astrobites.org/2020/05/20/blue-lurkers-and-blue-stragglers-rapidly-rotating-stars-and-their-fountain-of-youth/