The UO Media Center for Science & Technology

The University of Oregon has a new center in the School of Journalism and Communication. It’s called the Media Center for Science and Technology. The goal of the center is to train journalists, communicators, and educators to better communicate science.  For example, Maxwell Foxman makes and uses games that use real data including live-streaming data to help seed the scenarios of board games to connect to his audience. Others, like Mark Blaine are interested in storytelling and how a writer connects an audience to a scientific story.  I had the chance to participate in its inaugural Science Communication Winter Research Forum under the direction of Ellen Peters   and support by Ian Winbrock. My research, presented in a poster format, came closer to the work of Blaine as evident by its title: A tale of four islands: Communicating science and conservation about places we will never likely see.  It covered the analysis of remotely sensed satellite data on the Revillagigedo Islands off the coast of Mexico.  In the end, I guess I did something right as I and another presenter took the awards for the best presented research posters.  Here is mine: