UCSF Science Cafe "Cooks" in San Diego
Jeff Miller, left, Oriana Aragon and Kishore Hare conclude the first part of their Science Cafe presentation in San Diego.
San Francisco is a hotbed for the growing Science Café movement, so it’s no wonder that the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) looked to the Bay Area for inspiration when it came time to plan their meeting set for late March 2008.
First contact came last summer – before I knew that Science Café had won an award of excellence from the AAMC – and after hashing out the details, what emerged was a professional development session entitled “How to Build a Science Café,” co-hosted by me and my colleague Kishore Hari, founder of San Francisco’s Down to a Science.
Our goal was to show, as much as tell, in the 90 minutes set aside for our “discipline track session” (which ended up in the Public Relations category, not Public Affairs, but what do I know?). To that end, I drafted a student scientist from UC San Diego’s Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Oriana Aragon, to be my live interviewee. That required, of course, that I carry to San Diego my podcast recording gear – two microphones, two mic stands, a digital recorder and assorted cables.
We met Oriana in the lobby of the San Diego Marriott and walked the short distance to the meeting room. Oriana and I had talked on the phone and I had reviewed her lab’s work with mirror neurons and how that relates to autism, so I knew we had a great topic. But Oriana also came with a standout personal story. She had once been a jazz singer in France. This kind of detail is an interviewer’s dream. And true to expectations, when the room filled and I turned on the microphones, we struck up a great rapport and danced through some of the details of her work effortlessly and engagingly.
Jeff Miller discusses autism and mirror neurons with Oriana Aragon, a neuroscience researcher at UCSD.
After about eight minutes, I turned the room over to Kishore, who worked the audience like a seasoned pro. Our intention was to simulate the kind of question-and-answer format that his physical café settings evoke. It all went well – in fact, so well that we had to cut the questions short so that we could proceed with our more formal presentations.
What does this tell me? The Science Café movement has tapped into a hunger for context about scientific discovery and the desire to meet, challenge, question, hear and otherwise interact with scientists themselves. While UCSF Science Café is a virtual gathering place – not replicated at other universities, as far as I know – its strength is that it gives science a real human voice. And because it’s weekly, those voices multiply into a roar. I like the sound of that.
— Jeff Miller
Photos/Sarah Paris
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