My name is Melisa Allela, a PhD student at Technical University of Kenya. My research topic is Storytelling through Experimental Animation: Challenging Traditional Frameworks of Representation which focuses on storytelling through experimental animation by exploring the use of animation techniques and emerging technologies as a medium for relaying works of African oral communication (orature). Additionally, my […]

African languages will have a formal role in the scientific research community with the launch of a repository that encourages and accepts research in indigenous languages including Swahili, Akan, Zulu, Igbo and more. AfricArXiv is an online platform that publishes preprints submitted exclusively from African scientists or those whose research is relevant to the continent. It is […]

For some scientists, communicating effectively with the public seems to come naturally. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson currently has more than five million Twitter followers. Astronomer Carl Sagan enraptured audiences for decades as a ubiquitous cosmic sage on American televisions. And Stephen Jay Gould’s public visibility was such that he voiced an animated version of himself on “The Simpsons.” […]

Science carries an anachronistic burden: a dull and under-developed communication culture. This is a general problem as science needs to be communicated widely and effectively to help solving the challenges of the future. Olle Bergman, engineer-come-communicator, suggests an more progressive mindset, based on “the two Ps”: • Inject more Passion • Learn from the Professionals. […]

When I was a newspaper science editor, I approached Nobel Prize season with mixed glee and anxiety. Glee, because I knew that, without even an argument, I would get space in the paper for stories about research too arcane to make it into print the other 51 weeks of the year. Like the Academy Awards, the Nobels […]

Sara ElShafie used to struggle to explain her research to her family in a meaningful way. A UC Berkeley graduate student in integrative biology with an emphasis on how climate change affects animals over time, she says she “would always get lost in the details, and it was not doing justice to what is so […]