An incubator for science communication innovation
SCI Lab is uniquely positioned to:
- Provide intellectual leadership on evidence-based strategies and tools for effective science communication;
- Become a center of gravity for collaborations and exchanges among researchers, practitioners, and community partners from all over the world, and;
- Allow Morgridge and UW–Madison to lead by example when it comes to sparking imagination and engaging in meaningful discussions with communities across Wisconsin, the U.S., and beyond.
Freedom to Innovate and Learn from Failures
SCI Lab is a vehicle for bold innovation that is often not possible in the context of research university realities and incentive systems. Given the urgency of some of the challenges facing the scientific enterprise, we need bold and ambitious on-the-ground science communication initiatives that also run a risk of failure. Similar to cancer research, setbacks and dead ends are inevitable. But failures will be able to inform better pathways forward if they are designed around the science of science communication. We provide the space for exploratory work that might fail, but that will inform more effective, scalable approaches moving forward.
About Life Sciences Communication (LSC)
SCI Lab is led by LSC professors Dominique Brossard and Dietram Scheufele, who bring unique leadership experience in researching and building institutional infrastructures for more effective science communication. They are among the most prolific and highly-cited researchers examining effective on-the-ground mechanisms for public engagement, science learning, and science communication. Both have long been leaders in on-the ground infrastructure building efforts in this space for organizations like the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM).
