Tonight saw my
maiden voyage into the world of giving public engagement talks about
science. It came as a particular surprise because I thought I was
just the delivery boy.
The event was The
Inner Army, an hour of immunological discussion at the CheltenhamScience Festival, with Professors Susan
Lea and Clare
Bryant presenting.
I'd been approached
by the British Society of
Immunology (BSI) about perhaps 3D printing some immune molecules
for the talk, after seeing some of my previous
models. I'm a big public engagement proponent, and a big fan of
the festival, having blogged
about it for my university in the first year of my PhD, so I
leapt at the chance to help out*. Plus it gave me a nice chance to
show off the demonstrative use of my models (and help justify the
time I've spent making them!).
Little did I know
that on arrival the chair for the event, the illustrious Vivienne
Parry (who was originally an immunologist herself) decided to get
hold of an extra chair and mic and throw me up on stage as well!
It was – I think –
a fun and informative event. However, I can take no credit for any of
it (except for most of the models): I choked! Give me small numbers
of people and I'll happily ramble on about adaptive immunity to the
cows come home. Sit me down next to two prominent professors in front
of ninety people and ask me to talk about structural innate immunity
and it turns out I get a bit tongue-tied. Live and learn!
I was very happy to
see how involved the audience seemed to be with the models
(particularly the first row, which seemed to be largely composed of
BSI and British
Crystallographic Association (BCA) members), which was very
gratifying. It was also lovely to see the general public engaging
with immunology in person, which isn't something I get to see on a
daily basis.
For the moment I'd
be lying if I said I wasn't more comfortable on the other side of the
spotlights blogging about the event (which I suppose is what I'm
doing now). This isn't something that comes naturally to me, or (I
suspect) a lot of science post-graduates; it just isn't a skill we
get to practise much in our day-to-day workings.
However, engaging
with the public remains an important task for scientists, both to
justify the tax-payer money we spend and to share the love of
uncovering the secrets of the universe with fellow curious minds, so
I shall definitely try again. Next time though, I plan to stick to
TCRs.
* NB I plan to share photos of the models I made for the speakers in a
future post, but as the models dispersed to the relevant speakers after the talk I have to dig them
