In theory only
This week, IRIS is hosting the Norwegian Environmental Toxicology Symposium, and I've had the chance to participate. I've never actually worked in environmental toxicology before, my work being more focused on straight-up ecology, so I wasn't quite sure how it would go.
The conference began with a student symposium on Wednesday. Masters and Ph.D. students from various parts of Norway gathered for a workshop on scientific communication. I've got to admit, the symposium was very well put-together, and I learned quite a bit from the exercises.
After introducing themselves and their work, each of the keynote speakers for the NETS conference were asked to present the students with a challenge of their choosing. The challenges were as ambitious as they were diverse. One of the groups, for example, had to set up a risk management plan for a fish-feed company to use, pending the discovery that an ingredient in their product is harmful to humans or the environment. Another group was given the broad mandate to brainstorm local solutions to the global challenge of climate change. My group had the almost impossible task of determining the dollar value of deep water corals that had been damaged in the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, and then designing a method to restore coral habitats.
Communication is a fundamental and necessary part of the scientific process, so it was quite thoughtful on the part of the symposium organizers to put communication skills at the fore-front for the students. We worked in groups to find solutions to our given challenges (in theory only, of course) and then reviewed other groups' work before presenting our ideas to all the conference participants in the evening. Working on the challenges was a really good way to get the students working together, thinking, and getting to know each other right from the start.
One thing that struck me was the variety of keynote speakers selected for the conference. Only two were standard academics whose work I could easily relate to. One was from the Norwegian Environmental Agency; one was from an international industrial company. I get the impression that in Norway, there is a much greater integration between science, government, and industry. Research is often funded by oil companies and/or communicated to government quite directly. I'm sure anyone working in Norway for a long period would insist the system is not perfect, but I still think it's better than a lot of other parts of the world. Communication actually happens here, for one thing!
It was great for me to participate in the student symposium. More on NETS in the next post.
The conference began with a student symposium on Wednesday. Masters and Ph.D. students from various parts of Norway gathered for a workshop on scientific communication. I've got to admit, the symposium was very well put-together, and I learned quite a bit from the exercises.
After introducing themselves and their work, each of the keynote speakers for the NETS conference were asked to present the students with a challenge of their choosing. The challenges were as ambitious as they were diverse. One of the groups, for example, had to set up a risk management plan for a fish-feed company to use, pending the discovery that an ingredient in their product is harmful to humans or the environment. Another group was given the broad mandate to brainstorm local solutions to the global challenge of climate change. My group had the almost impossible task of determining the dollar value of deep water corals that had been damaged in the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, and then designing a method to restore coral habitats.
Communication is a fundamental and necessary part of the scientific process, so it was quite thoughtful on the part of the symposium organizers to put communication skills at the fore-front for the students. We worked in groups to find solutions to our given challenges (in theory only, of course) and then reviewed other groups' work before presenting our ideas to all the conference participants in the evening. Working on the challenges was a really good way to get the students working together, thinking, and getting to know each other right from the start.
One thing that struck me was the variety of keynote speakers selected for the conference. Only two were standard academics whose work I could easily relate to. One was from the Norwegian Environmental Agency; one was from an international industrial company. I get the impression that in Norway, there is a much greater integration between science, government, and industry. Research is often funded by oil companies and/or communicated to government quite directly. I'm sure anyone working in Norway for a long period would insist the system is not perfect, but I still think it's better than a lot of other parts of the world. Communication actually happens here, for one thing!
It was great for me to participate in the student symposium. More on NETS in the next post.
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