Events and Outreach
Life as a graduate student is always busy but personally, I find immense pleasure in outreach activities, that enliven the public imagination about scientific ideas and pique their curiosity and interest. I have been a part of numerous outreach programs starting from my undergraduate years, where we went on doing science activities at local schools and explaining people about common features in daily life that are affected by science and technology.
Here are a few of my favorite snippets from the last few years of outreach and event organization as a PhD student:
1. Net-COVID Workshop Series
Understanding and Exploring Network Epidemiology in the Time of Coronavirus (#Net_COVID) is a special online workshop series presented by the University of Maryland’s COMBINE program in network biology in partnership with Vermont Complex Systems Center. I was one of the six organizers of this widely popular workshop series, along with Michelle Girvan, Daniel Serrano, Juniper Lovato and Nick Mennona.
The series had two tracks: a full program (where people attended seminars and also worked on active interdisciplinary and cross institutional research groups) and just seminar attendance. The full program track had 200+ participants from over 25 countries.
Over the course of April 2020, participants engaged in tutorials, seminars, and discussion groups to contextualize and understand the current global pandemic using network science. Activities include introduction to network epidemiology, review of recent research on coronavirus, and exploration of various modeling and data analysis approaches.
2. Data Science Career and Internship Fair
Usually graduate students from traditional disciplines are not encouraged to look beyond academic careers and goals. This myopic view of many institutions, administrations and staff affect the career as well as psyche of the students in long run. This situation made a few graduate students, including me, decide to organize a career and internship fair.
The goal of the event was to connect graduate students, who are interested in jobs beyond academia, and make connections with industry insiders who may be able to help students identify career and internship opportunities in data science, industry research, machine learning, and more! There were lightning talks from guest speakers, followed by round table discussions and networking between students and invited guests. The event was attended by more than 170 students from about 10 departments.
For more information please visit the event summary.
3. Maryland Day activities at the University of Maryland
Maryland Day is an annual event that is held every April in the University of Maryland premises and opens up the campus to general public. On this day, different departments and labs showcase their research to the common populace. I have been involved in general planning at a departmental/organization level for the past three years for Maryland day. I can be usually see lurking around in either the Ecology and Evolution stall or the Network Science (COMBINE) stall at the event. Come and say hi, if you visit!
4. Skype a Scientist sessions
Skype a scientist is an initiative that matches a school classroom to a scientist with whom they interact. This happens on a voluntary basis. I love the initiative and have really enjoyed my interactions with inquisitive kids - well, sometimes the hardest questions actually come from the youngest of the lot!
This exercise makes one question one's research from a different viewpoint and allows for an opportunity to express it in a simplified and coherent form that can be understood by anyone. Definitely recommended!
The USA Science and Engineering fair is an annual fair that focuses on "stimulating and sustaining the interest of the nation’s youth in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) by producing and presenting the most compelling, exciting, and educational Festival in the world".
I was honored to be a part of the Society for Mathematical Biology (SMB) volunteer team at the event. We presented the public with disease outbreak models through interactive games and activities.
6. UMD GRAD-MAP
Graduate Resources Advancing Diversity with Maryland Astronomy and Physics (GRAD-MAP) is an initiative that connects the minority serving institution (MSI) students to UMD staff and researchers.
GRAD-MAP holds an annual winter workshop and I was fortunate enough to be a part of it by giving a tutorial on how to convey information effectively using presentations (in 2019) and it is used as a continued resource for other editions.