Let's Talk SciComm

This week we loved catching up with award-winning science communicator, marine biologist and graphic designer Dr Tullio Rossi. As founder of the science communication agency "Animate Your Science", he helps researchers tell their story to the world. His engaging video animations and eye-catching graphics make science understandable for everyone, reaching millions of people around the world, thereb...

This week we had a lot of fun chatting with, and learning from, Dr Jarrod McKenna. Jarrod is a reproductive biologist turned zookeeper turned science educator and has had quite a mixture of jobs. As a PhD student at Monash University, he investigated early pregnancy and assisted reproduction in the world’s only known menstruating rodent: The Egyptian Spiny Mouse. He then went on to work as a zooke...

This week we were so fortunate to talk with Andrew Kelly, environmentalist, convenor of The Waterway Network, and former Yarra Riverkeeper. Among other things, Andrew has worked as an editor, publisher, spokesperson, advocate and author. He played a key role in formulating the formulation the Yarra River Protection (Willip-gin Birrarung murron) Act which was passed unopposed. He has also written a...

Happy New Year and welcome to another season of Let’s Talk SciComm! We’re excited to be back for another year of podcasting about our very favourite topic – science communication. And we’re launching Season Six with a bang, talking with Associate Professor Suzie Sheehy. Suzie is an accelerator physicist who specialises in novel particle accelerators and beam dynamics, with a current focus on medic...

For our final episode of the season, we were absolutely thrilled to speak with Christine Burns. Christine (BA Psych, PG Dip Sport Bus Mngt, MIPPA) is the CEO and Co-Founder of WALT Institute. As a former elite athlete in hockey for New Zealand, she has over 20 years of coaching, sport psychology and performance expertise which she brings to the global arena of Authentic Leadership. Typically, she...

This week we absolutely loved talking with Isolde Gottwald (AKA Issie), an exchange student from the University of Vienna who spent semester 2 this year studying with us at the University of Melbourne. Listen to the podcast to hear how we got to know Issie! Within her degree, Issie is particularly interested in environmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Out of her deep curiosity for scie...

This week we had the enormous pleasure of speaking with the one-and-only Professor Natalie Hannan. Natalie is an ARC Future Fellow, the Associate Dean, Diversity and Inclusion in the Faculty Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences and leads the Therapeutics Discovery and Vascular Function in Pregnancy Group, in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, at the University of Melbourne. She is pa...

This week we had the great pleasure of chatting with Dr Malini Devadas about all things writing. After completing her PhD at the Australian National University in the 1990s, Malini did a postdoc and then realised that she enjoyed the writing part of the job more than the lab work! In 2004 she started working as a professional editor, becoming accredited in 2009. In 2013 Malini launched MD Writing...

This week we loved talking with Dr Kylie Quinn, who is a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow and leads the Ageing and Immunotherapies Group at RMIT University. Her group is developing ways to improve immune responses in older people during vaccination and new cell-based cancer therapies. Immune cells from older people become more difficult to activate, so her team are identifying factors that limit...

This week we loved chatting with two more researchers from Deakin University’s Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition (IPAN): Associate Professor Megan Teychenne and Dr Niamh Mundell. Megan’s PhD is in Behavioural Epidemiology and she’s currently an NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow at IPAN. For more than 15 years Megan has investigated the role of health-related behaviours (e.g. physical ac...

This week we’re so pleased to have had the opportunity to talk with Deakin University researchers Dr Helen Macpherson and Sara Dingle about a topic we’re fascinated by: the intersection of mental health and nutrition. Helen is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition (IPAN), at Deakin where she co-leads the Exercise and Nutrition for Brain Health group. She has...

Welcome back to season 5 of Let’s Talk SciComm! We’re thrilled to be sharing another season of great episodes with you and we know you’re going to love this first episode with the one-and-only Sue Pillans. Sue is a marine scientist, artist, children’s author/illustrator and graphic recorder who specialises in creative and visual communications. As a graphic recorder Sue draws out ideas with people...

For our final episode in Season Four, we wanted to talk about another major barrier many of us experience to being able to do the work we care about: good mental health. So we asked our colleague Professor Sandra Radovini if she would have a chat with us. Sandra is a Consultant Psychiatrist and Director of Mindful, the Victorian state-wide Child & Adolescent Mental Health teaching and training...

This week it was our huge pleasure to speak with Emily King, currently undertaking her PhD at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne. Her current project investigates whether insulin resistance develops as a result of mitochondrial dysfunction in skeletal muscle, using both mouse models and cell lines. The projected impact of these studies is to determine whether related conditions, s...

What better way to celebrate the 30th episode of Let’s Talk SciComm than continue our conversation with world-renowned climate scientist and climate science communicator, Professor David Karoly. This is part 2 of our conversation with David, so if you haven’t listened to last week’s episode, please go back and do that first! David is an honorary Professor at the University of Melbourne having reti...

This week it was our absolute honour to speak with Professor David Karoly, world-renowned climate scientist and climate science communicator. David is an honorary Professor at the University of Melbourne having retired in February 2022 from CSIRO in Australia, where he was a Chief Research Scientist in the CSIRO Climate Science Centre. He is an internationally recognised expert on climate change a...

Whether virtual or in person, conferences are without question one of the best ways to meet people and hear about new work in your field. Amongst other things, they can also be fantastic places to find jobs, collaborators, and thesis examiners. But to get the most out of attending a conference, it really pays to prepare before you go, to be brave once you get there and then do some follow-ups afte...

This week we’re thrilled to speak with one of the busiest (and most wonderful) scientists we know: Associate Professor Francine Marques. Francine is a Viertel Charitable Foundation and National Heart Foundation Fellow, and head of the Hypertension Research Laboratory at Monash University. She has published >90 peer-reviewed papers in top journals such as Nature Reviews Cardiology, Nature Medici...

Given how low success rates are for many/most granting schemes, it’s incredibly useful for researchers to understand whether crowdfunding might be an appropriate way to raise funds for their work. And if it is, how you should go about running a successful crowdfunding campaign. So we invited Jonathan O’Donnell back to the show – you may remember we chatted with him in episode 22 about how to write...

We’re so excited to welcome you to Season Four of Let’s Talk SciComm, with new episodes now released every Tuesday. First up this season, we chat with Professor Andy Pask. Andy is a Professor in the School of BioSciences at the University of Melbourne and Domain Leader for Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology within the School. His research focuses on evolution and development. His recent...

Got a ridiculously long to-do list? Feeling overwhelmed by all the stuff you need to get done? Time management is something we all struggle with and it can sometimes be difficult to make time to share our work with different audiences. This week Jen and Michael invite our wonderful UniMelbSciComm colleagues, Linden Ashcroft, Catriona Nguyen-Robertson and Graham Phillips for a 5-way chat about the...

This week, Jen and Michael were delighted to speak with Dr Michael Winlo. Michael is Managing Director at Emyria, a data-driven, drug development and clinical services company focused on improving care of patients with unmet needs. Emyria leverages the clinical evidence created with patients to launch and register novel drug development and treatment programs with global regulators. Michael is als...

Applying for grants is an experience common to all researchers and with success rates for many funding schemes extremely low, any advice to improve the chance of success for your application is very welcome! In this episode, Jen and Michael were thrilled to have the chance to chat with Jonathan O’Donnell and to pick his brains about how to write a successful grant application.a Jonathan is the rig...

This week we are so excited to catch up with one of our University of Melbourne Science Communication alumni who is doing amazing things in the world! Kate Cranney is a science communicator, scientist and visual artist. She combines these skills in her role as a Communications Advisor with CSIRO, Australia's national science agency. Kate's background is diverse. She's climbed trees in Borneo, scal...

Writing a thesis is hard! It’s probably the longest document you’ve ever had to write, and the experience is often accompanied by a tendency to procrastinate and feelings of overwhelm and imposterism. This episode will help! Jen and Michael briefly talk about their thesis writing experiences and share their top tips. But most of the episode is filled with advice and tips from eight of our UniMelb...