I am an astrobiologist, sci-fi geek, and professor of everything groovy. I write about science, culture, math, history, space, and science fiction. Perhaps like you, I'm seeking a greater understanding of the nature of life and asking myself why all of this really matters. Come with me, and we'll ask some questions together.
Heading out to California in just a few days for MAX 2019: A Space Festival from Media Art Exploration. The festival will take place at the California Academy of the Sciences, The Exploratorium, and the Z Space theater in San Francisco from the 16th through 18th. There will be live performances, displays of artwork, panels of scientists and artists, booths from various groups sharing their art and their science, and more! We'll be running a booth for SAGANet.org at the California Academy of Sciences on Friday, the 17th. Come find our booth and we can chat about astrobiology, space exploration, and more. We'll also have stickers and comic books to give out, scifi books and our book of astrobiology classic literature for sale, and I'll also have some of my meteorites there to show off (including a little piece of the Moon!). Hoping to see you there!
On May 13th of this year, I had the honor and the pleasure of competing in the Famelab USA science communication competition's national final. Famelab allows early career scientists and communicators of science an opportunity to improve their skills through educational workshops while also competing against one another by giving short (3 minutes or less) speeches using no slides and, at most, one prop. For this year's final event, I gave a speech titled "This Thing is Older Than Your Mom", where I talked about my favorite meteorite from my personal collection and about how old some of the materials in meteorites can be.
Delivering this talk was another step along the way for me to build a career as a communicator of science. I fumbled a bit on the Q&A session of the event, but it was still a lot of fun and a huge learning experience. For the two days leading up to the final event, we were given a masterclass to develop our skills led by the magnificent Malcolm Love. I'm so happy to have had the opportunity to share some of my knowledge with a wider audience through Famelab. If you're interested, you can see the other talks I've given before at Famelab events by checking out the page they created for me.
