Real Time Coverage @BIOConvention #BIO2019: Falling in Love with Science: Championing Science for Everyone, Everywhere
June 4, 2019 by sjwilliamspa
Science and technology bring tremendous value to society in years of life and quality of life, yet the public often perceives science as difficult, irrelevant or even threatening. Moreover, the inspirational and moving stories of scientists and innovators working around the world are often hidden or misrepresented in popular culture. Whose responsibility is it to communicate science and engage the public in supporting the scientific enterprise? Can everyone be a Champion of Science and what are the solutions to enlist and engage more champions of science across generations and geographies? How do we work together to enhance transparency, accessibility and relevance of science for everyone, everywhere? Can science become more inclusive and engage hearts and not only minds?
Join this exciting session as Johnson & Johnson announces the winners of the Champions of Science – BioGENEius Storytelling Challenge, and brings together other key stakeholders in a discussion about the importance of engaging the public to fall in love in science all over again.
Sponsored by: Johnson & Johnson Innovation
Seema: We need to solve the problem of the lack of trust in scientists. Some of JNJ winners of their acheivement program went on to become Nobel Laureates. Arthur Horwich and Hans Ullrich won the Jannsen Award for discovering compounds that could refold proteins, including protein chaperones. Many diseases occur because of protein misfolding like neuro-degenerative diseases.
Seema: Great science going on in Africa. JNJ wanted to showcase the great science in Africa. they awarded four individuals with storytelling award (Emily).
Dr. Horwich: got interested in science early on. Worked on N terminal mitochondrial signal peptides. also then got interested in how proteins fold and unfold and refold since the 1950s. He had changed the thinking of how proteins are processed within cells and over many years he had worked on this.
Emily Wang: Parents and schoolteachers prodded her curiosity in biology. The impact of day to day work of scientists is arduous but the little things can lead to advances that may help people. If passionate and have a great mentor then can get a foot in the door. Worked at Stanford in the lab.
Dr. Mukherjee: He likes to cure diseases, physican first, scientist second, writer third but he doesn’t separate this. In older times scientists wrote to think and true today. How we visualize the word, or use our hands, is similar. He takes the word translational research very seriously. Can you say in one sentence how this will help patients in three years?
There are multitude ways of love for science.
Dr. Pinela: loved asking big question and loved storytelling but asking bigger questions. Moved from Columbia and moved to US; loved the freedom and government funding situation at that time. Need the training and mentorship so mentors are a very big aspect in innovation as it led her to entrepreneurship. We need to use technology to disrupt and innovate.
Nsikin: A lot of mentors nurture curiosity. People like to see them in that story of curiosity. That is how is bases the PBS science videos: did a study on engagement and people wants a morality, and a science identity (an inner nerd in all of us i.e. spark the interest). The feedback if they focus on this has been positive.
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