If you want to learn more about our adventure, you’re in the right place. Read to learn about our founder, our vision, and how we like to move through the world.
I started Science by Design, LLC a year after defending my doctoral work bridging mycology, bioinformatics, microbial ecology, and environmental engineering. As a first generation college student, I wanted to tell my family stories about my work that got them as excited as I was.
In parallel with my pursuit of science, I embarked upon what has now turned into over a decade of experience crafting creative, science-based messages that fascinate.
I trained with Dr. Claudia Gunsch in Duke’s department of civil and environmental engineering. My work in the Gunsch lab was funded by the EPA through the Superfund Research Program. I established fungal protocols for identifying which fungi inhabit polluted soils, and tested targeted biostimulation strategies. I learned essentially everything I know about fungi from Dr. Rytas Vilgalys, in collaboration with his lab over in the biology department. I draw on the work of Holmes, Lindberg and Wilke regarding NGS data visualization and Dagley regarding inclusive educational practices.
I found that my skills as a researcher translated well to the task of engaging key audiences
As I grew from my “understanding material” role into roles where I’d teach material, I drew more heavily on pedagogy from my colleagues’ work in education and business. I experimented with innovative engagement strategies. What started as organizing activities that encouraged underrepresented groups in STEM soon turned into incorporating interactive exercises that explored concepts from my published works! Later, I adapted these same concepts into an activity accessible to 4th-6th grade students as part of the FEMMES capstone! What started as coffee with a policy friend, turned into a collaborative blog series on science in society. What started as building websites for student groups later turned into strategically displaying educational content.
After my PhD, I knew I wanted to maintain some level of strategic communication in my work, but needed to find out how much. So, I moved to Boulder to take an analysis-heavy bioinformatics position at a small start up. In that role, I built and documented an entire cloud ecosystem on Amazon Web Services. I established best practices for our data analyses and even brought in an industry client. Eventually, I found that I liked the one-on-one client interactions more than my analysis-heavy responsibilities. It was then that I knew I needed strategic communication at the heart of my next venture.
I started Science by Design with a vision of using strategic communication and my technical background to help technologists transform how society accesses science, making it more accessible by engaging key audiences.
You were really curious about our key values, weren’t you? Well, here they are. We don’t want to sound preachy, but we’re sharing them because they really matter to us. After all, these are at the heart of what we do.
It's not that we don't see the challenges, we just know that there's more than one way up a mountain. That's the source of our positive take.
We are your companion and friend on this science journey. We'll give you what you need, and options if you don't know what exactly that is.
We know that together we can go farther than we could alone. If you've been hemming and hawing about where to start, we've got ideas for you.
