Science Communication & Education

How can we make sure that the important messages of science reach more than just scientists?

I think it’s important to engage young people, the general public, and stakeholders in coastal science and contemporary coastal issues e.g., climate change impacts to coastal regions. I dabble in scicomm via a few different routes:

  • Blogging
    • Occasionally I write about my research and cool things that my colleagues are doing here.
  • Poetry
    • I sometimes write lousy poetry, solely for my own amusement.
  • Twitter
    • “Get on Twitter!” they said, so I got on Twitter.
  • Outreach
    • Mijn Nederlands is niet zo goed, so I haven’t been able to do much outreach with young students here in Delft.  However, with Skype-a-Scientist I have had a lot of fun connecting online with elementary and high school classrooms in the US.
  • Journalism
    • Back in 2008, I served as Editor-in-Chief of The Iron Warrior, the engineering student newspaper at the University of Waterloo.  It wasn’t great journalism, and sometimes the back pages were a little crude by my current standards, but it was a fun little project that fueled my thirst to write.

Relevant Publications/Media Coverage

  1. Pearson, S.G.. (2021). Weird waves cause big trouble on small lands in the middle of the big blue wet thing [Oral Presentation]. American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2021. [Link, Video].
    • Awarded AGU Outstanding Student Presentation Award (OSPA). 
  2. Pearson, S.G., Gijon Mancheño, A., Ylla Arbos, C. (2020). Keeping our feet dry and safe from the big water by using lots of very tiny rocks [Oral Presentation]. American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2020, Online Conference.[Link]
    • Awarded AGU Outstanding Student Presentation Award (OSPA). 
  3. Pearson, S.G., Tissier, M.F.S. (2018). The Curious Undular Bore [Poster]. American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2018, Washington, D.C.[Link]
  4. Building coastal protection with nature by NWO (Dutch Research Council), June 15, 2022. [Link, Video]
  5. “Adaptation: Building Barriers & Building with Nature” by Marco Merola. Web documentary/interview, June 6, 2019. [Link 1, Link 2]

Related Blog Posts

Keeping our feet dry and safe from the big water with lots of tiny rocks!

Some ideas are really hard to understand, but it helps if we can talk about them using simple words. One of my favourite books of all time is the Thing Explainer by Randall Munroe, the cartoonist behind XKCD. In it, Munroe tries to describe scientific concepts using only the 1000 most common words in the…

by sgpearson