Let's Talk SciComm

This week we were thrilled to chat with Dr Véronique Paris who is a medical entomologist studying Australian vector mosquitoes in the Pest & Environmental Adaptation Research Group at Melbourne Uni. Originally from Berlin, Véronique completed her BSc and MSc in Biology, specialising in ecological immunology and exploring how insect immune systems respond to infections. Before pursuing a scientific career, she completed an apprenticeship at the Berlin Zoo, a time when she was unsure if going to university was the right path for her. Ultimately she discovered a passion for research and went on to pursue higher education. Véronique is also passionate about science communication, contributing to Pursuit, writing blog posts, and sharing her research widely on social media. Recently, the Let’s Talk SciComm team was over the moon to share the University of Melbourne School of BioSciences Excellence in Community Engagement with Véronique! 

You can follow Véronique and learn more about her work here: 

If you’ve just been hit with negative feedback, you’re probably feeling a bit winded, and that’s completely normal. Whether it came from a colleague, a supervisor, an examiner, or even a friend, criticism can sting.

Take five minutes to hear Jen and Michael share practical, compassionate advice on how to regain your confidence and transform tough feedback into something constructive and empowering.

You can find more great advice here:

Welcome to Season 16 of Let’s Talk SciComm. We are thrilled to be launching our next season and have a great selection of episodes in store for you to enjoy during the rest of 2025.

We can’t think of any better way to launch the season than a conversation with Dr Phil Dooley. Phil is an extremely talented science communicator who wears many hats: he’s a science writer, presenter, comedian, performer, musician, video-maker and trainer. He's worked on YouTube videos that got hundreds of thousands of hits, tweets that saw millions of impressions, press releases that went international, school workshops for thousands of students and science pub nights that had crowds cheering for more.

Phil has a PhD in laser physics and is National President of Australian Science Communicators. Phil Up On Science partners and clients have included Australian Institute of Physics, Academy of Science, Australian Society for Medical Research, Inspiring Australia, National Science Week, Cosmos Magazine, Nature Publishing Group, Geosciences Australia, ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science, ANU Fenner School of Environment and Society, University of Adelaide, Flinders University, UniSA, Sustainable Stand Up and more.

You’re going to love hearing about Phil’s creative and dynamic approach to sharing science with a whole heap of different audiences. 

You can follow Phil and learn more about his work here: 

Have you decided a PhD is the right thing for you? Congratulations! Now it’s time to make decisions about what you’re going to spend the next three of four years learning, thinking, reading and writing about.

Take a break for 5 minutes and listen to Jen and Michael’s thoughts about what you need to take into account when deciding what you’re going to do your PhD on. 

You can find more great advice here:

This week we have the great pleasure of speaking with Dr Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston, a neuroscientist based in Melbourne, Australia, and the author of The Future Loves You: How and Why We Should Abolish Death. 

Ariel is currently a Research Fellow at Monash University - working with the Monash Neuroscience of Consciousness laboratory - where he investigates novel methods for characterising the nature of conscious experiences to aid in the ongoing quest to understand the neural basis of consciousness. Before that, Ariel obtained his PhD from The University of Melbourne in 2019, where he researched the mechanisms by which genetic and environmental factors affect cognition in healthy and diseased brains. He has published widely across the field of cognitive neuroscience, from the decline, preservation and rescue of cognitive function at different stages of the lifespan, through to characterising people's conscious experience of colour.

As an author, Ariel describes how recent neuroscientific advances may enable the suspension of death through brain preservation, potentially offering the dying the chance of future revival (while also exploring the medical, neuroscientific, and philosophical background required to understand this seemingly absurd claim).

You can find out more about Ariel and his work here: