Presentations

My first experience with short popular science presentations was as a Master student participating in Famelab with my weakly electric fish. Famelab is a science communication competition where each participant has 3 minutes to explain a science topic in the most engaging way possible - without the help of a certain visual presentation software. Apparently Famelab is addictive, because I couldn't stop myself, and participated again in 2014, first in Hamburg (round 1, round 2), and then in the German finals. Famelab did take me far and wide, to the Cheltenham science festival, the Prague science festival and to the Natural History Museum in London.   

Apparently Famelab is addictive, because I couldn't stop myself, and participated again in 2014, first in Hamburg (round 1, round 2), and then in the German finals. Famelab did take me far and wide, to the Cheltenham science festival, the Prague science festival and to the Natural History Museum in London.   

I have also participated in a number of other science slams, including 3 Minute Thesis, a presentation format for PhD students developed by the University of Queensland, which I also co-organised at Lund University, as welled as coached a workshop for its participants. Recently I have given my first presentation in Germany in my mother tongue at the Frankfurter Science Slam, which was much harder than I thought after speaking about science almost exclusively in English!

iBiology Seminar

In 2017 I was lucky enough to be selected to make a video seminar with iBiology in their Young Scientist Seminar Series. As part of this, I spent a week in San Francisco with the iBiology team to adapt my presentation for their format, learn more about science communication, and meet other communication enthusiasts in the process.

Science Communication

In recent years, I have poured my leftover energy and passion for science into telling everyone who likes to listen about it. I really enjoy the creativity that comes with science communication: finding new ways to translate complex scientific topics into understandable language - while keeping the fascination and also the underlying logical structure. I love that one can explore a variety of mediums (visual, music, dance, writing, language) - as the audience is much more forgiving of odd notes and funky dance moves when they are presented in the name of science than under normal circumstances ;-) 

Radio

In the last year, I have been invited to an amazing radio show: the Lachlabor (‘laughing-lab’) in the kids’ programe of the Bayerischer Rundfunk (‘Bavarian Broadcasting’). Kids can ask any questions they ever wondered about (where are the stars during the day? can one turn ear wax into candles?) - and experts help the kids and moderators of the show to answer these. I love this programme, because I learn at least as much as the kids, and have a lot of fun while doing so. So do animals have bogeys? Can animals cook? Can animals be allergic to humans? And soon to come: can animals whistle?

Videos

Even more than being on stage and giving a presentation, I enjoy remaining behind the scenes. What better way to do that than in a video? My first science communication video was "Vision Impossible?", which I produced for the Neurovision film contest of the Bernstein Conference for Computational Neuroscience in 2012 - it was great fun to write the script, instruct my actors (aka colleagues) and cut the material into a 5 minutes movie!

I also had the chance to produce two videos with TED-Ed ('Why the insect brain is so incredible' and 'How do animals see in the dark?'), which allowed me to experience a fully professional video production, and to work with amazing illustrators.

Writing

In addition to my live- and video presentations, I tested my hand at some science writing by entering the KlarText competition (a German competition encouraging PhD students to write about their research, organised by the Klaus Tschira Foundation). The piece had to be written in German, and can be found here. To advertise our articles, short films were made about us and our work by the amazing Ingo Knopf and cameraman Frank Reimann. A very interesting experience to just play a part in a video rather than making it (and being in control…) and seeing professionals at work.