Radical Science

In this episode we chat to science fiction author, Anne Charnock. For Anne's latest novel "Dreams Before the Start of Time" received the Arthur C Clarke award in 2018, and explores the future of fertility, and pre-natal genetic screening. Anne was also a Phillip K Dick Award nominee for here 2013 novel "A Calculated Life".

It's becoming more and more clear that sci-fi and futurism can have great influence in our culture. In our chat with Anne we dive into the role of sci-fi as a launchpad for scientific exploration, the ethical obligations of the writer, the power of daydreaming, and how writers balance literary freedom with the maintenance of good grounded science. 

Relevant links:

• Anne's website & twitter 
• Anne's chat with Elsa Sotiriadis at Hello Tomorrow (video) 

In this episode we chat to Charles Fracchia, CEO and Co-Founder of BioBright a bioscience data company driven to make labs faster and smarter. Showing that building out a smart lab isn't the preserve of the roboticists, Biobright hoovers up every drop of experimental data with a view to make science more reproducible. Their product 'DarwinSync' can hook up to you electronic lab notebooks, be searched through voice, and can even help with the analysis and visualisation of lab data.

Charles' CV reads like a who's who of science innovation, from his IBM PhD Fellowship in the MIT Media Lab, to working in George Church's lab at the Wyss Institute. He was also an early intern at Ginkgo Bioworks. He's even been named one of 35 Innovators Under 35 by the MIT Technology Review.

Relevant articles:

• All about BioBright
• Charles' Site
• A feature in Scientific American on reproducibility
• Labiotech piece on lab automation

In this episode we chat to science writer, podcaster, speaker, author, and now communications consultant Dr Kat Arney on all things science communication!

We dive into the current state of the science communication industry, from the tools of the trade, things that 'scicommers' can improve, and the work Kat does training researchers in the art of storytelling.

Relevant links:

• Kat's Twitter
• Kat's podcast Genetics Unzipped
• Kat's book - Herding Hemingway's Cats
• Gemma's Article on 'Why Science Needs Advertising'

In today's episode we are joined by Richard Clarke, a PhD researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine! Richard is a member of the the Vaccine Confidence Project, an initiative that monitors public confidence in immunisation for the purpose of detecting public concerns around vaccines. These concerns can have massive implications for the effectiveness of vaccine programmes and as such researchers must address them as early as possible.

In this episode we explore what researchers can do to effectively communicate science on-and-off-line (it turns out caps lock, insults, and twitter mobs aren't very convincing...), and the results of his research that suggests that on the whole people are less vulnerable to online pseudoscience than we might think. We also chat about his involvement in the Skeptic community, and the role that public trust in authority plays in vaccine hesitancy.

Richard's PhD focusses on the information seeking behaviours of mothers as they make a vaccine decision during pregnancy. In his studies Richard applies research from the psychology of decision making, trust and the field of information science to quantitatively investigate how mothers engage in information gathering to aid decision making with respect to the pertussis vaccine currently offered during pregnancy. 

• Richard's Twitter
• The Vaccine Confidence Project
• The Vaccine Knowledge Project
• Skeptics in the Pub

In today's episode Gemma speaks to Hila Cohen the International Business Development Lead of the World Food Programme's Innovation Accelerator. We dive into the invaluable work done by the WFP, the benefits of considerate locally focussed innovations in food tech, and whether there should be concerns given the aging farming community.

The WFP Innovation Accelerator identifies and nurtures solutions to hunger globally. They also provide financial support to WFP innovators and external start-ups, and access to a network of experts. The WFP believes that the way forward in the fight against hunger is not necessarily in building grand plans, but identifying and testing solutions in an agile way.

• Hila's Twitter
• The WFP Innovation Accelerator
• Article: "821 million reasons bootcamp teams will disrupt hunger" 

If you enjoyed this episode, why not give it a rating or review :) 

Today's guest is Antipem Ofori Charles, a Ghanaian inventor and entrepreneur who is intent on transforming science education within Ghana and beyond. Antipem is the founder of the DEXT Technology, an accessible science set designed to engage students in underserved communities with the wonder of science. 

One of Antipem's inspirations for developing DEXT was through his own pathway into science. His father, a local high school teacher, framed what it meant to be a scientist for him by designing rain collection experiments with the simplest of equipment...a bottle and a funnel. This spirit of democratisation of science through ease of access has been woven into development of the Science Set. Affordable, but with a diverse array of resources, it sets up students with the tools they need to develop their drive to tinker and experiment.

• DEXT Technology
• Twitter
• BBC article on The Science Set

In this episode we are joined by our pal, the inimitable Harry Destecroix. Harry is CEO of Unit DX and Carbometrics, and is former CEO of Ziylo. We chat about why (and how) he managed to have such a mental job title, how Bristol is fast becoming a spinout factory, and how entrepreneurship can be fostered in the sciences with just a little bit more education, and a bit more ecosystem support.

If you want to find out more about the story of Ziylo and Carbometrics, Gemma covered the astounding news of their sale to Novo Nordisk in Forbes earlier this year.

In this episode we chat to Mary Ward, the co-founder of Counter Culture Labs, an Oakland based community space that draws a diverse crowd to scientific exploration.

In this episode we chat to UC San Diego Physicist Brian Keating on his new book 'Losing the Nobel Prize'. Brian Keating was in the running for a Nobel with the gravitational waves discovery, but his Nobel hopes evaporated when what they had really detected was the cosmologists nemesis ... interstellar dust. 

Brian talks us through the history of the Nobel, scientific incentives, and the perception of the Nobel through time. We also delve into some key things that the Nobel should change - such as, nominating organisations or lab groups rather than an arbitrarily selected three, having research categories that reflect science as it is today, and of course address the tremendous gender disparity in the nominations.

In this episode we spoke to Dr Jenny Molloy, a Cambridge Synthetic Biologist who, among many things, is the Director of the Cambridge Biomakespace, and is on the organising committee for the Gathering for Open Science Hardware. 

We spoke about her work in developing the GOSH manifesto, and the recently released Open Science Hardware Roadmap which advocates for open science hardware as a ubiquitous component of everyday lab life. We also dove into the space that hardware fits into, in the ever active Open Science community. How do the open hardware advocates differ from those keen to shake up academic publishing.

We were also keen to find out more on how open science hardware projects are disseminated, not just to the fellow academics but to the wider public at large. And how this area of 'science disruption' could have a massive impact on the reproducibility of research.