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FameLab: Three minutes can change more than just your life

Three minutes doesn’t seem like a lot of time. In three minutes you could answer an email or two, write a tweet or make a cup of coffee. Three minutes in a PhD isn’t much either; I can capture a couple lines of data, transfer a few cultures to fresh agar plates and share a short conversation with one of the undergrad mentorship students in our lab. In three minutes it doesn’t seem like you could accomplish a lot… except when you’re competing in FameLab.

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FameLab is an international science communication competition hosted in over 25 different countries. It gives young scientists a platform to entertain and engage audiences about STEM by deconstructing complex topics into just three minutes. This year I had the privilege of taking part in the South African FameLab finals and it was awe-inspiring!

Before one can compete in the finals, you need to make it through one of the several heats, hosted at various institutions across the country. I took part in one of 2018’s first heats at Science Forum South Africa, which was hosted at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). There, I was runner up after the very talented, Khavharendwe Rambau—a renewable energy scientist at the CSIR. In her talk, she used the metaphor of killing two chickens with one stone to demonstrate how her research is looking at converting waste material into energy. It was an entertaining talk; a real eye-opener and a testament to what young South African scientists are trying to accomplish to help tackle our energy and waste problems.

The FameLab semi-finals and finals were then held in Port Elizabeth, between the 7th and 9th of May, and brought together thirteen of the fourteen heat finalists—all incredible scientists with a passion to communicate their work. Before the semi-finals, we took part in a Master Class, a two day hands-on workshop with Karl Byrne—an award winning professional science communicator trainer. We were all nervous. Nearly all of us were from different institutions, working on very different things but Karl (very cleverly) had us start off by telling stories, not about our science but ourselves. This helped break the ice, calm the nerves and turned the stranger across from you into a new friend.

While FameLab is a competition, and we were there to compete, the Master Class and the build-up to the finals really became about getting to know one another, learning from one another and sharing our stories. From a physicist that loves playing rugby to a young biologist with her own company, we had a vibrant collection of people doing great things in science and outside. I have always considered myself an informed member of the scientific community but there are so many great scientists producing fantastic science, even just in the South African space, that I wasn’t even aware of. We need to change that.

I found FameLab to be a celebration of science, a bringing together of young people with a desire to share just how their good science is going to make a difference in the world. During the training and my engagement with the other semi-finalists, I felt the science barriers fade; we weren’t biologists looking to stop plant pathogens or physicists trying to develop a more efficient energy source, we were regular people with a dream of a better tomorrow. Our areas of expertise were the tools we chose to help us realize those dreams.

One of the tools we rarely use or use incorrectly (because we weren’t trained enough) is communication. Our strength as a society has been through the transfer of information. It is how we grow, evolve and adapt—our strength lies in community and the science community is no different. To grow and strengthen our community, we need to practice using our communication tools, more and more. At your own institutions, make your own FameLab stage; in the hallway before a departmental meeting, at someone else’s table during your lunch break, in a different colleagues lab, etc. and take three minutes to share your dreams (with a stranger), start a conversation, share knowledge and even build a collaboration (a friendship). When put into practice, over and over, those three minutes, put together, will change many people’s lives.

Congratulations to Emmie Chiyindiko, my friend and chemist from the University of the Free State, on winning the FameLab SA finals at the Future Earth Conference! The FameLab finals were recorded; you can watch the whole function here! Emmie gave an excellent talk that taught me more about catalysts. Good luck in the finals, I hope you blow them away! See you on YouTube soon!

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Can a PhD save the world?

I, like so many of us, always wanted to be a superhero. As a child, I dreamed of being Ironman. I was going to be a genius billionaire playboy   philanthropist who would bring about world peace, save the world from alien invasions and use my technology to develop cleaner sources of energy. I was also going to fly and shoot beams out of my hands!

My dream changed as I got older. In high school, I went from wanting to be like Ironman with the suit to wanting to be a virologist in a hazmat suit curing Ebola in West Africa. At the start of my postgraduate career, I went from wanting to be a virologist in West Africa to being a mycologist studying the fungi that kill trees. I pursued a PhD to help the world!

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Now that I’m here, I feel like my research won’t have as much impact as someone else researching safer energy or a vaccine for HIV. In truth, many PhDs probably don’t think their work matters or that they are making a REAL difference.

Number of PhDs awarded in the USIf you look at the number of PhDs in the United States between 1957 and 2016, you’ll see an almost tenfold increase in the number of doctorates awarded—a trend that exists in many other countries too. While there are more people walking around with PhDs today than there were in the 1950s, it hasn’t helped solve any of the major problems facing the world in 1957 or today. War, inequality, climate change, biodiversity loss and clean energy were all problems in 1957 and are still today (in some cases, even worse). If we adopt an extremely simplistic view, it would seem that all the PhDs in the world are not having much of an impact. That makes me feel worse. Fortunately, it’s a very simplistic view.

We understand a lot more about the world today than we did in 1957. The purpose of a PhD, among other things, is to generate knowledge. Knowledge drives humanity forward; it doesn’t matter if it comes from studying the migratory patterns of birds, assessing the importance of cultural heritage in the 21st century, or developing a new vaccine for HIV. All this research generates knowledge which allows us to understand ourselves, our world and the universe better. And this knowledge is the starting point to effect change and growth. Because, in the right hands, knowledge can be used to change policy, improve education, create technology that makes the world a better place.

Jane Goodall summed it up perfectly: “Only if we understand, will we care. Only if we care, will we help. Only if we help shall all be saved.”

So, this knowledge – however big, however small – has to reach beyond the thesis. If you think of the size of our global problems – migration, war, disease, climate change — science communication and engagement with society has never been more important. But it’s a difficult road, trying to communicate science to non-scientists…

Bill-Nye-Saves-the-WorldEven someone like Bill Nye the Science Guy battles. His show, “Bill Nye Saves the World,” which debuted in 2017, seeks to tackle the anti-science sentiment in the US by educating through entertainment. It has been met with a lot of criticism (obviously) and hasn’t received the wonderful ratings it was looking for.  Niel deGrasse Tyson’s show, “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey,” was Emmy nominated and praised for its success (mainly amongst space enthusiasts). Tyson won the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences for the show and its promotion of science. Unfortunately, it only reached 1.3% of all U.S. households. Scientists seem to be famous among scientists and science enthusiasts, which is not a large enough part of the population or a part we need to be communicating more with.

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We can’t expect a handful of scientists to do all the communicating. To draw in a larger audience, we need to speak to a more diverse audience, of different races, religions, countries, political views, etc. To do that, we need very diverse scientists to present science issues that unite global audiences around shared values and what we can do to address them. Here lies an opportunity to become the next science hero, like Lee Berger, Jill Farant or Nox Makunga… only better, a science superhero. Become the Ironman or Wonder Woman of the science universe and use your PhD powers for good. Talk and help save the world.