As part of my professional development at Karolinska Institutet, I’ve tried to learn a lot about what makes science successful. It’s very interesting to me how some studies seem to have a “wow” factor and immediately get picked up by many different media outlets. It’s also interesting that some good studies simply don’t get talked about in the media or even in the scientific literature. It is becoming more and more clear to me that we have to be aware how our research is perceived by the outside world if we want to be successful. Funding bodies and employers now care much more about outreach and impact because it is an easy way to make scientists accountable for the money that they spend.
So I began to learn how to interact with the media and how to convert our scientific publications into more digestible formats that can be consumed by a wide audience. As such I have been made Public Information Officer for the Swedish Medical Nanoscience Center. I hope to develop a potent skill set that will help me to communicate the value of my research more effectively in the future, as well as helping the Center to get more exposure in the popular press.