Heading to Baltimore, MD where I’ll be speaking at the annual meeting of the Council of Science Editors, tomorrow morning. The Council is “a dynamic community of editorial professionals dedicated to the responsible and effective communication of science.”
Looking forward to this! If you’re planning to attend, let me know so we can try to meet up.
Here’s a description of my upcoming talk, taken from the CSE website where you can find lots of good information about the Council and this particular conference, titled “Make Science Matter.”
Plenary Address: Darlene Cavalier, The Science Cheerleader
While scientists, educators, and policymakers wring their hands over the perceived lack of public interest in and understanding of science, millions of “average” citizens are actively involved in formal research efforts, and, in the process, these so-called citizen scientists are: contributing to real science; enabling professional researchers to significantly increase data collection and sorting; creating a shared space for scientists and citizens to collaborate and build trust; and forcing the science community to rethink what it means to communicate with this new generation of DIYers. What is citizen science? How is it shaping science and what does the future hold? How are scientists and policymakers adapting? Cavalier will explore all of this and more, including a brief (entertaining) overview of some unorthodox methods she uses to attract more “average” citizens to science.
Darlene Cavalier is the founder of Science Cheerleader.com, a blog that promotes the involvement of citizens in science and science-related policy. She is also the cofounder of ScienceForCitizens.net, a major multi-functional Web site, named one of Philadelphia’s Top Ten Tech Start Ups with a Social Good*, that encourages and enables lay people to learn about, participate in, and contribute to science through recreational activities as well as formal research. Cavalier held executive positions at Walt Disney Publishing and worked at Discover Magazine for more than a decade. She was the principal investigator of a $1.5 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant applied to promote basic research through partnerships with Disney and ABC TV and more recently collaborated with the NSF, NBC Sports and the NFL to produce the Science of NFL Football series. Cavalier is a former Philadelphia 76ers cheerleader and holds a Masters degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied the role of the citizen in science. She is a writer and senior advisor to Discover Magazine, serves on the Steering Committee for Science Debate and organized an effort to launch the first-of-its-kind network to support citizen engagement in technology assessments. In addition to Science Cheerleader, founding partners of that effort include the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, Boston Museum of Science, and Arizona State University. Her dedication, impact, and innovative approaches have been featured in Science, The Scientist, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Newsweek.com, Discover Magazine, Fox National Headline News, CNN, NPR and even ESPN, and many other national media outlets in the U.S. and internationally. She and her husband live in Philadelphia with their four young children.
Date: 5/2/2011
Time: 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM

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