Science Communication: Take Charge of It!

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Department Seminar Series

10/24 (Friday)   Noon – 1:00 pm     JAB 473

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Science Communication: Take Charge of It!
Matteo Rini, Ph.D. 
Deputy Editor of Physics
American Physical Society (APS)

Scientists have a responsibility to share the meaning and implications of their work, but receive little training in communication, and often feel unprepared to communicate with the public, the media, public officers and others outside their own field. In this talk, I will discuss how our journal Physics (htttp://physics.aps.org) strives to communicate research to a broad audience and share some thoughts on science communication from my experience as a writer, editor, press officer and scientific consultant to policy makers.
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Biosketch

Matteo Rini holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering (University of Pavia, Italy, 2002) and a Ph.D. in Physics (Humboldt University of Berlin, 2003). He has worked as a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2004-2009) and other industrial and academic institutions. His research focused on studying, by means of ultrafast laser and x-ray techniques, ultrafast processes in liquids [see e.g. Matteo Rini et al., Science 301, 349 (2003)] and solids [Matteo Rini et al., Nature 449, 72-74 (2007)]. He has co-authored over 50 peer-reviewed articles and has an h-index of 21.

He later turned to broader issues of science policy, diplomacy and communication. From 2009 to 2012, he served as a Policy Officer with the European Commission, working on energy, nuclear and climate change policies, in particular with the Directorate for Climate Action [http://ec.europa.eu/clima/]. In 2012 Matteo joined the American Physical Society (APS) as Deputy Editor of Physics [physics.aps.org], the online journal of the APS, providing daily online-only news and commentaries about a selection of papers from the Physical Review journal collection.