It seems pretty intuitive… in order to make your research a useful tool, you’d have to be able to communicate it effectively in order for the world to put it into use. And yet when many people hear the word “research” they don’t always think about the conferences, the presentations, or the tedious amount of work it takes to write papers. While I was aware of this aspect of communication before getting into the world of research, it always felt like it was on the backburner of my mind compared to the actual doing and discovering. But over these past few years I’ve learned how much communication – interaction, discussion, debate – drives research just as much as the doing.
Even now, while I’ve gotten a pretty decent amount of exposure to life in the lab, conferences and presentations and talks are still pretty foreign to me, and as such, very intimidating. Personally, I feel like I still have a lot to learn in terms of knowing the most effective ways to get my work across. But as I’ve had to explain what my project is to other people in this fellowship over and over again, I’d like to believe I’d learned a few things about what those from other disciplines, and even those working within other subgenres of neuroscience, understand and respond to.
I think there’s a reason the sciences are generally regarded as very difficult and rigorous fields to pursue. You sometimes have to visualize things, very technical things with very technical names, that aren’t immediately visible. So in order to communicate what exactly you’re analyzing, it’s necessary to have a general overview some of these basic processes. As my project relates to the olfactory system, for example, I find it necessary to explain to those outside this discipline the basic biological pathways relevant to my project – what neurons project to what, where those neurons come from. At the same time, I try not to get too wrapped up in the technicalities as to not make it too confusing. It’s a delicate balance I’ve definitely had to navigate – how much depth do I need to go in for people to understand me, and how much is too overwhelming? I’ve been trying to learn over these past few weeks what information is important to know and what information isn’t necessary.
We’ve also discussed purpose a lot in the last few seminars of this fellowship. Whenever I explain my project, I try to allude to its purpose: why it’s important to be doing what I’m doing, how this work can contribute to future medical treatments if we try to better understand the process of neurogenesis. While the research world can sometimes feel like a bubble of academics and fancy talk, it’s crucial not to lose sight of why we do our work, and how it can benefit society. I also find that talking about purpose – to zoom out a bit from the nitty gritty details – serves as a way for researchers of other disciplines to contribute their own expertise. How would this treatment be distributed to patients? What would be the consequences of longer life expectancies and health disparity differences?
Personally, I intend to continue pursuing research as a career, and although my interests in medical treatment take a different form than how I work with possible medical treatment currently, it is still something I plan to focus on in the future. In order to advocate for new forms of treatment, I expect I would have to communicate with those from pharmaceutical companies to government agencies to public health workers and more. And as I have an idea of who I may need to communicate with in the future – while these people must also be able to communicate their work outside to those their fields, to people like me – I believe I have a bit of responsibility myself to understand a bit more about these fields in order to properly advocate for my own research.