New Guest Blog Post: Incentivizing #scicomm for Early Career Scientists

Me, presenting the solar system at an outreach event at the Detroit Zoo.

I recently wrote a blog post for the Union of Concerned Scientists as part of their annual Early Career Scientists (ECS) Month. As an ECS myself, and as a passionate science communicator, I knew exactly what I wanted to write about – providing more incentives for ECS to participate in science communication and outreach.

Nowadays, it’s incredibly hard to “make it” in the academic world – you need to spend upwards of 60 of 70 hours working every week and publish lots of papers. All of that means there’s less time for other enjoyable activities, like outreach. Currently, many positions in the academic track don’t credit outreach work. In fact, that time spent on outreach might ultimately penalize you because you ended up publishing fewer papers in the end! I strongly believe that outreach work should be rewarded and encouraged, at the very least to give back to the people whose tax dollars we’re using to do our work.

Guest Blog Post! Summarizing How the Planet Nine Debate Has Evolved

I recently had the exciting opportunity to write a blog post for Emily Lakdawalla of The Planetary Society!

The post summarizes a session at the recent meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division of Planetary Science in Provo, Utah. Specifically, the session was all about the mysterious (and still hypothetical) new planet proposed in the outer solar system. To learn more, go check out the post!

(Also, if you like learning about space and planetary stuff, you should definitely go check Emily out!)