Contributors

In putting together this guide we interviewed scientists, journalists, and press officers. Below you can read all about those who offered their advice to early-career scientists for the guide and you will find links to the full interview transcripts and top tips.

The Scientists

Professor Jim Al-Khalili

(read interview)

Professor Jim Al-Khalili is a theoretical physicist and senior lecturer at the University of Surrey. In 1998, he was chosen as the Institute of Physics’ Schools and Colleges Lecturer, which meant touring the country talking to 14-18 year olds about cosmology. In 1999 he published his first book, Black Holes, Wormholes and Time machines, based on the lectures. In 2000 he received an IoP award for the Public Awareness of Physics and was elected a Fellow of the Institute. He has since written two more books: Nucleus: A Trip into the Heart of Matter and Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed. He has given hundreds of public lectures around the world, is a regular contributor to television and radio science programmes and presented his first TV documentary this year for Channel 4: The Riddle of Einstein’s Brain. He was one of the judges for FameLab and also a judge on the Aventis science book prize panel. He is a council member for the British Association and the advisory group for Cheltenham Science Festival. He currently holds a joint chair in physics and in the public engagement of science at Surrey.

Dr Lisa Jardine-Wright

(read interview)

Lisa Jardine-Wright is a post-doctoral researcher and science communication officer for the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge and the astronomy researcher for a brand new development at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. She studied at Trinity College, where she did an MA and an MSci in experimental and theoretical physics. After completing her PhD in theoretical astrophysics in 2002, Lisa stayed at the University of Cambridge to continue her research looking at the formation and evolution of spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way. Lisa lectures in mathematics for the University and teaches astronomy for the Department of Continuing Education. She often gives talks on astronomy to the general public, and in 2004 was awarded a BA Media Fellowship to work as a science writer for the Financial Times.

Emma King

(read interview)

Emma completed her MPhys degree in physics with astrophysics at the University of Sussex, after which she made her way to the University of Nottingham where she is now in the final year of a cosmology PhD. During her time at university she has been engaged in a number of science communication projects, from giving talks in schools and at science fiction conventions to proof reading popular science books. These involved several brushes with the media; she has been interviewed for a number of newspaper articles as well as on a radio broadcast and was the subject of a short Open University TV programme. After her PhD she is considering a career in science communication and so may end up on the other side of the fence.

Dr Robin Lovell-Badge

(read interview)

Dr Robin Lovell-Badge is the head of the Division of Developmental Genetics at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research in London. His main areas of interest and research are genetics, sex determination, early embryonic development and the biology and uses of stem cells. His work towards the wider communication of science has included lectures to school children for the Wellcome Trust and NIMR 6th Form Science Programmes, numerous media interviews and he has participated in debates at public meetings and on radio and TV. He has also spoken on stem cell research and therapeutic cloning in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. He is a fellow of the Royal Society and of the Academy of Medical Sciences, an honorary professor at University College, London and visiting professor, Department of Biochemistry, University of Hong Kong. He serves on various committees and advisory councils and was recently elected president of the Institute of Animal Technologists. He is also the author of about a hundred and fifty research papers, book chapters and reviews, plus a handful of newspaper articles.

Dr Milo Shaffer

(read interview)

Dr Milo Shaffer is a lecturer in nanomaterials chemistry with the Electronic Materials Research Section at Imperial College, London. He has extensive experience of manipulation, functionalisation and characterisation of carbon nanomaterials and has studied a wide variety of nanotube composite systems, including both structural matrices and conducting polymers for electrochemical applications. Current interests include both carbon and inorganic nanotube synthesis, modification, characterisation and application. He completed his PhD in 1998 in the Department of Materials Science in Cambridge. Following a period working as a materials technology consultant at Scientific Generics, focusing on technology exploitation and innovation, he enjoyed a research fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge. He took up his current position in January 2003 and is also a visiting lecturer within Cranfield’s MSc in nanotechnology program.

Dr Carly Stevens

(read interview)

Carly Stevens earned a first class BSc (Hons) in environmental life science at the University of Nottingham in 2000, moving to Wolverhampton University for her MSc in environmental science the following year on a scholarship for excellence in science. In 2004 she completed her PhD working jointly between the Departments of Earth Sciences and Biological Sciences at The Open University in Milton Keynes and the NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Cambridgeshire. Her project crossed the fields of biogeochemistry and ecology. Carly’s research interests lie in the fields of ecology, conservation, soil science and botany. Her paper ‘Impact of nitrogen on the species richness of grasslands’ came out in Science in March 2004 amid a blaze of publicity, resulting in media coverage world-wide. The research showed, for the first time, that current levels of nitrogen deposition are having a negative impact on biodiversity in the UK. Since then Carly has completed a postdoctoral research project at Imperial College and is now working on diffuse pollution at Lancaster University.

Dr Debbie Wake

(read interview)

Deborah Bruce (Wake) is a published medical doctor, science researcher and trained media presenter. She is a keen advocate of science and health communication to a wider public audience and regularly partakes in topical media debate in her specialist area. She is an honours graduate of University of Edinburgh Medical School, member of the Royal College of Physicians, and has recently completed a PhD looking at the role of steroid hormones in obesity and diabetes. She specialises as a clinician, working in the field of diabetes, endocrinology and general medicine.

The Journalists

Anna Fazackerley

(read interview)

Anna Fazackerley has a degree in English from Manchester University, and a postgraduate diploma in journalism from Westminster University. Anna started out on science policy magazine, Research Fortnight, and then worked as a freelance journalist writing articles about science and education for The Guardian, the Scientist and the Financial Times before joining the Times Higher Education Supplement as a full-time science reporter in January 2004.

Tom Feilden

(read interview)

Tom Feilden is BBC Radio 4 Today programme’s science and environment correspondent, and is a former presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Costing the Earth. Tom reports on science and the environment for Today, covering advances in genetics, space, technology, the GM debate and global warming. In November 2000 Tom won the Foreign Press Association award for the environment with his series on wildlife in Britain. In 2001, he won a British Environment and Media Award for his reports on climate change.

Mark Henderson

(read interview)

Mark Henderson is science editor of The Times. He graduated in modern history from Oxford University in 1996. After a brief spell working for the Sunday Express he joined The Times as a graduate trainee. He spent time as a general reporter, a leader writer, and covering health education and social affairs, before being appointed science correspondent in August 2000. As well as covering science for the news pages, he writes the Saturday Junk Medicine column, which aims to cast an evidence-based eye over the latest health stories.

Alok Jha

(read interview)

Alok Jha arrived at Imperial College in 1994 determined to become a particle physicist. A year of indescribably complex mathematics later, he shelved his plans to become the next Richard Feynman and began to concentrate instead on the music reviews for the college newspaper. Physics degree complete, he moved wholeheartedly into news reporting for Research Fortnight, a small science policy newsletter. In 2003 he joined The Guardian as a science correspondent, part of the launch team for Life, then the weekly science section. He now mainly writes news, features and comment on everything from botany to space physics for the daily science page in the new and improved Guardian, while contributing regularly to the other sections of the paper.

Fiona MacRae

(read interview)

Fiona MacRae is science reporter at the Daily Mail. She studied medical microbiology at Edinburgh University before training in journalism at Cardiff University. After spending three and a half years covering general news at the News & Star in Carlisle, she moved to London where she joined the Daily Mail. There, she continued to cover general news, while also gaining newsdesk experience. Since starting to cover science last summer, she has spearheaded the Mail’s coverage of bird flu. She also regularly covers health, the environment, food technology and social sciences.

The Press Officers

Dr Claire Bithell

(read top tips)

Dr Claire Bithell has a degree in cell biology and a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Manchester. Her PhD focused on using different types of microscopy to study the movements inside frog eggs. She won the Daily Telegraph’s young science writer award in 2003, and this convinced her to leave bench science and begin a career in science communication. After getting some work experience with Cancer Research UK, Manchester Museum and writing for academic magazines, Claire began work at the Science Media Centre in 2004 as science information officer. She was promoted to senior press officer in December 2005.

Dr Jenny Gimpel

(read top tips)

Three years of wading through lakes collecting water samples while her hands turned blue failed to put Jenny off science. Although she migrated from a shiny white lab to an air-conditioned newsroom and then a university press office now working as the media relations manager at UCL, Jenny remains wedded to science and spends her days happily scanning papers on rubber hand experiments and mind reading devices. On weekends she freelances as a writer/editor and ponders the peculiarities of a country which has not caught on to the convenience of check-out till dividers enjoyed by rest of Europe.

and with top tips from Nicola Buckley & Genevieve Maul, Emma Darling and Ronnie Kerr

and an interview with Aeron Haworth who tells us exactly what a press officer does.

Last updated: October 05 2006