Mrs/icmr Apprentice Science Reporters Program Advances Materials Careers

摘要

"Science exists because scientists are writers and speakers....Research that never sees the dark of print remains either hidden or virtual or nonexistent. Publication and public speaking are how scientific work gains a presence, a shared reality in the world," said Scott L. Montgomery in his book The Chicago Guide to Communicating Science (The University of Chicago Press, 2002). It was in this spirit that the Apprentice Science Reporters program was conceived. The Apprentice Science Reporters program is a unique collaboration between the Materials Research Society and the National Science Foundation (NSF)-sponsored International Center for Materials Research (ICMR) (www.icmr. ucsb.edu) at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The program builds on MRS's on-going coverage of materials-related conferences through the Meeting Scenes (www.mrs.org/meetingscene); these are daily e-mail reports sent by MRS reporters directly from conference venues to around 38,000 materials professionals worldwide. In 2008 we began sending materials science and engineering graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to international MRS meetings as trainee science writers and journalists. These Apprentice Science Reporters attended talks (including many outside of their own research specialty) and worked with the MRS reporters to compile technical summaries for the Meeting Scene daily e-mails. They also contributed to the MRS Meetings blog, http://materials.typepad.com. These activities provided valuable science writing training and exposure to diverse fields of materials research in an international context.