>> SUDIP PARIKH: Good evening, everybody.

>> AUDIENCE: Good evening.

>> SUDIP PARIKH: Hey, it’s really wonderful to see you all here. Welcome to the American Association for the Advancement of Science or AAAS. My name is Sudip Parikh, and I have the incredible privilege of being the chief executive officer of this amazing organization, this 178-year-old organization that is about advancing science and serving society. I want to thank you all for being here.

I know it’s cold outside, but it is warm in here. And it’s warm in here because tonight we are going to talk about the heart of science. And I have to tell you that as a scientist, as a person who has worked in policy, as a person who has worked in business, there is nothing that is comparable to the joy you get from insight, from truth, from being able to learn something for the very first time.

It is an extraordinary feeling. It’s something that is not owned just by the scientist. This is what’s powerful about it. It’s owned for that moment by the scientist. But then comes the moment when you share it with everyone, when you share it with the world, when it becomes a part of our understanding as human beings. And that is what is extraordinary about science.

Now look, 2025 has not been my favorite year. I will tell you that. 2025 has not been my favorite year. 2025 has been a year that is a test, a test of the scientific enterprise. We are the inheritors. Our inheritance comes from, I don’t know, 178 years of this wonderful organization, 500 years of the Enlightenment. It comes from all of that. We are the inheritors of that. And this year has been a test.

It’s been a test of whether or not that search for truth, that search for knowledge, that search for discovery that tells us something not just about ourselves, but about the world around us is going to continue to be led from here, is going to continue to be valued here, is going to continue to be a part of what makes our national community great. And I have to tell you that it’s been a long year, and it’s been a year in which I have seen ups and downs, in which I have seen challenges, in which I have seen real damage done, real damage done.

I have watched as incredible talent has sometimes been walked out of the doors of some of the buildings in this city. I have watched as grants and research has come to halt in some of the wonderful labs around this nation as grants and funding are terminated. But I have watched also the resilience of scientists, the resilience because they want to pursue truth, they want to pursue discovery, they want to pursue answers to questions.

Sometimes fundamental discovery, sometimes the kind of discovery that just makes you go, “Wow, I can’t believe the universe is like that.” And sometimes in pursuit of application, application to enrich our lives, to make our lives better, and applications to lengthen our lives and to make them more healthy.

I have seen that, and I have seen scientists do that, even sometimes when the funding has stopped. I have seen them continue to go to their labs and continue to do the work. That is an extraordinary thing. It’s because of the incredible feeling that you get when you are on that verge of discovery. And so tonight I’m incredibly thrilled to have the experience of sharing that in a room of friends.

Now you may not be friends yet but by the end of this evening, after we have heard the conversation and some words of wisdom, and after we have had a chance to break some bread together, I think it’s important as a science community, not just scientists, but also those who value science, also those who participate in science, also those who benefit from science, for us to share that common good that is truth and knowledge, that common good that is the source of sometimes national strength, sometimes personal strength.

That’s an extraordinary thing and I thank you all for being here. And I’m so proud to turn it over to the leader of our Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion here at AAAS. Now to lead Dialogue, Science, Ethics, and Religion would take a remarkable person, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it take somebody that has a set of experiences that maybe aren’t so easy to find? Maybe somebody who at one point in their youth was a championship roller derby winner.

And also, a scientist, and also a leader in the faith community. We are very fortunate to have that kind of leader for our Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion. Katy Hinman is that kind of leader, and you will see that the warmth, the charitableness, the leadership that is needed and to bring those various points of view together are imbued in that person. So Katy, please come up here. Thank you, everybody. Thanks for being here.

>> KATY HINMAN: Thank you so much, Sudip. I really appreciate that incredibly flattering introduction. It is just such a pleasure to welcome you here this evening. As Sudip mentioned, I’m Dr. Katy Hinman. I’m the director of the Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion here at AAAS. And I’m so glad to welcome you to our 2025 December Dialogues.

Each year, the December Dialogues is an opportunity to engage in conversation around a subject that’s at the intersection of science, religion, and society, and we are so delighted that you are joining us for tonight’s event, The Heart of Science.

We are thrilled to be able to welcome you who are here in person, as well as those who are joining us online. And as we begin, I do want to acknowledge the land on which we are gathered here at AAAS. Land acknowledgements are important to help undo indigenous erasure and to tell a more complete truth about our history.

So here in Washington, D.C., we are on the unceded lands of the Piscataway, Pamunkey, and Nacotchtank peoples, the traditional stewards of this land. And while there are no longer any Nacotchtank in this area, there are still Piscataway and Pamunkey in the area, as well as other native peoples. And we pay our respects to the elders past and present.

As we acknowledge the history of our endeavor, as well as our present, we are called upon to work for justice, equity, and liberation for all. Now, a few logistical notes before we dive into our program. For those of you here in person, there are DoSER staff around the auditorium. If you need assistance with anything, DoSER staff, if you could raise your hands, they are mostly in the back. If you did not pick up a program on your way in, you can raise your hand and we can get one to you.

Those of you joining us online can find the program at bit.ly/2025DDprogram. For those of you here, restrooms are located out in the lobby past the elevators and to your left. As you can see, we are providing ASL interpretation here live, and for those of you on Zoom, there is live captioning. You can activate that by selecting the CC or live transcript option at the bottom of your screen.

And after the opening remarks from our moderator and stories, we will hear the stories from our various storytellers, and we will also have a chance for discussion and some Q&A from the audience. We will have mics here for those of you joining us in person, but also both in person and online.

If you would like to submit a question for the Q&A, you can do so through Menti. You can see the QR code on the screen, and it is also on your program for those of us here online. And just a reminder that this event is being recorded. The recording will be posted soon on our website, ScienceReligionDialogue.org.

Just to give you a little bit of background in case you are not familiar with AAAS or DoSER, the American Association for the Advancement of Science is the world’s largest general scientific society and the publisher of the Science Family of Journals. And the membership of AAAS represents scientists from all disciplines and fields.

Our mission is to advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. And in 1995, 30 years ago, AAAS established DoSER, the Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion, with the goal of fostering dialogue between scientific and religious communities, recognizing that these often overlap on issues in science, technology, and society. And we really emphasize the dialogue portion of our name.

This is not just about science education or getting science information into new communities, but also recognizing that it is vital for the scientific enterprise to hear from faith communities and others who are thinking about and concerned about the moral and ethical ways that we do science, that we apply scientific advances, and that we are working in the world.

The DoSER program does this in a variety of different ways, events and engagements with faith communities, with theological education institutions, with houses of worship. We host workshops for scientists on religiously inclusive science engagement. We provide public events such as this one, and we create a number of resources, including videos, profiles of scientists that highlight the work that people are doing at this intersection.

Hopefully as you came in and as you are enjoying the reception, you will see the posters with stories from scientists who are working at this intersection and learn a little bit more about what’s going on there. I also want to highlight the AAAS annual meeting coming up in February.

DoSER is going to be organizing several events there, including a science engagement with people of faith workshop as a pre-conference workshop, and we are hosting a networking breakfast on Friday morning, and a shorter workshop session during the regular session of the annual meeting.

So I hope that you will join us if you are going to be there in Phoenix, and we also hope you will stay in touch with us after tonight’s event. If you are not already on our mailing list, please join that. You can find us on our websites. As I mentioned, ScienceReligionDialogue.org is where you can find all of our video resources and our profiles, and you can also follow us on socials. And DoSER is funded primarily through grants and philanthropic giving. So if you would like to support DoSER, there is a link on the screen there where you can do that as well.

I am really thrilled to announce tonight’s program, because as Sudip mentioned, this has been a not great year for those of us in the science community. All of the things that he mentioned, grant cancellations, changing regulations, rapidly shifting leadership and priorities, and even direct attacks on science and scientists, and even those who may not have been directly affected are feeling that same anxiety and unease.

And young people who have been considering going into the sciences are now thinking maybe that isn’t the greatest place to be. And so in the midst of all of this, it’s no wonder if we are having a little bit of trouble finding joy and connection in our work. It can often seem like we are facing this uphill climb alone, and yet there is still joy to be found. As Sudip mentioned, there are discoveries to be made. There are people to meet and new questions to ask.

Despite the accusations of some, we are generally not in this for the massive amounts of money that we are making, or the prestige and fame, or the fabulous dating opportunities. Most of us are in the sciences because we love it. We love it. Something has caught our attention and our curiosity. There is something that brings us joy and inspires us in this work. And we love the chance to experience that and we need that right now.

We need to rediscover that joy in our work when all of these other things are going on. We need that permission and opportunity to reconnect with the joy of science, with what inspires us and how it makes our lives better. We need a chance like this to connect with one another and share that and other people need to hear this from us too.

We do a lot of wringing our hands over myths and disinformation, declining trust in science, lack of interest or understanding about why what we do is important. But the truth is that people don’t connect with data and graphs that may bring us joy of significant p-values.

Most people connect with people, with hearing what motivates them, with hearing about the things that are important to them. And we aren’t always great as scientists about showing who we are as people. Although we often talk about trust in science, what really matters is trust in scientists. How do people see us as scientists? Are we people of emotion and moral character? What drives us in the work that we do? What troubles us about the work that we do? But we are not trained to talk about that.

We are actively discouraged about talking about that. We are supposed to talk about what the data show and it doesn’t matter how we feel about it. But in fact, it does matter and people connect with that. And that sometimes means not really talking about science per se, as much as talking about what’s behind it, what’s at the heart of it. Finding those shared values and priorities with people, our friends and our neighbors, our families and policy makers and leaders in our communities.

And it also makes a difference for that next generation of scientists. Those folks who were interested and now they are feeling discouraged and think this isn’t a place for them. They want to hear from us and they want to hear from people who share identity and ideals with them. They want to see themselves in science. And we can help them do that, but we have to step away from this idea of scientists being completely dispassionate and separated from the rest of the world and let people see who we are behind our science. And that’s why we have chosen this topic for this time.

We want to amplify the stories of the folks behind the graphs and data, behind the papers and the policy reports and show the heart of science. And to do this, we have assembled a wonderful set of guests tonight to share with us about the places they find joy and connection in science.

Reyhaneh Maktoufi, Brandon Vaidyanathan, Carlos Martinez, Maryam Zaringhalam and Edwin Lee. And you will hear more from each of them as they share their stories. And then afterwards, we will have a chance for some discussion and conversation. And a reminder again, throughout the evening, you can submit questions on Menti as well as for those of us here, you will be able to ask questions afterwards.

So I would like to start by introducing our moderator for the evening, Dr. Reyhaneh Maktoufi. Rey is an Iranian American National Geographic Explorer, researcher and science communication trainer and strategist focused on storytelling and popularizing the science of SciComm.

She combines evidence-based communication principles with engaging formats, co-producing and illustrating PBS Nova’s Sciencing Out and co-creating the SciComm Hotline Podcast and making explainers and comics on Instagram. So please join me in welcoming Reyhaneh Maktoufi.

>> REYHANEH MAKTOUFI: Thank you. Thanks for the lovely intro, both Katy and thank you for the lovely background that you all gave us. I’m a science communication trainer. I have been teaching storytelling for a very long time. I also studied a lot of science communication as a part of my PhD work, so storytelling trust building. But I honestly feel like something happened this year that made me really feel why storytelling matters.

So this year I did this fellowship, it’s called the US-Japan Leadership Program and you go to Japan. There are a few fellows from the US, a few fellows from Japan, and you get to hang and meet and learn from each other and they are from all across the field. Policymakers, military people, scientists, artists, everyone from everywhere.

And one of the fellows, he was a military guy. He was a fighter pilot and I’m from Iran. And I saw him like he’s your very typical military person. If you want to find someone stereotypically from the military, that’s how he looks, big and he had this short haircut with the blonde hair and everything. I think I had a little bit of a visceral reaction when I met him.

And the program, one of the things that they did was that very early on they had us meet and sit with each other and tell stories and share things about things that we care about. And I was partnered with this guy. His code name is Felon and he told me the story of how he got that code name. And he shared with me some of his personal stories and as he was telling me these things, I was like, this guy is lovely.

He is very sweet and I was learning about how he cares about other people and why he is doing what he’s doing. And throughout the fellowship I learned that he is just like a natural born storyteller and he will continue to tell stories. And I felt more and more like what you were saying that he is kind of becoming my friend because of those stories.

So at the end of the fellowship, we had a field trip to Hiroshima. And we go to the museum. And I enter the museum and this is around the same time the Middle East conflict is happening. And on one hand I’m in Hiroshima, on the other hand on my WhatsApp, I’m seeing friends and family talking about worries about nuclear things happening, if they should be taking iodine, if they should leave the city. So it was pretty horrifying to read that and suddenly be in that space.

So I just enter the museum and there is the rest of the cohort. And as they go in, I kind of linger on and I’m looking at these images and I have a full on anxiety attack. My hands are shaking, I start sweating. I am like, “Oh God, like I cannot move, I can’t do anything.” And I look back and where my cohort is and it’s a full museum, I don’t see anyone. My cohort is completely gone and there’s one person standing there and it’s this guy, it’s Felon.

And I’m like, “Really?” Out of everyone in this fellowship, he’s the one that is still there? Low key, he is like the reason why I’m having a panic attack. So I just go to him and like, “Felon, I’m having an anxiety attack, so can you just like hang around? I’m going to go cry, scream, come back.” And he was like, “Okay.” Very cool, very calm okay. Went out, cried, screamed. Didn’t really scream like inside.

Came back and he was there and I joined him and we walked through the museum and he was just there, hanging around where I was. And there was another moment I had to go back and came and he was still there. He kept an eye on me, just checked in. And at the end of it, we were just standing instead of this giant image of Hiroshima after the bombing. And we just stood there, didn’t say anything.

And I felt so cared for by this guy that a few days ago I had such strong visceral reaction to because I knew his story and now he was my friend and he was caring for me. At the end of the fellowship in the airport, I saw this random guy from behind. He was big, military looking. And for a moment I felt joy. I was like, “Wait, is that a Felon?” And he was not. But it was surprising to me that that was my first reaction, joy, to see my friend.

If anything, that was a moment that I was like, “Oh, that’s what storytelling does.” The people that you can have the most weird, strong, negative visceral reaction to, they become humans and they become your friends. And I don’t know what it did for him, but I know what it did for me. And I hope it had the same impact on him.

So, I’m very excited, I’m very happy that today we are going to meet the scientists and before we meet their science, we get to learn about their stories and their humanity and we will become friends with them, I hope. And I’m going to set three suggestion rules.

I think storytelling is an interactive process. As I was telling my story, I was looking at your faces. I was hoping that I would see reactions. I was hoping that there would be a giggle or a moment of you being with me. It’s like when you are in a Zoom room and all the things are black screens and you are like, I have no idea what’s happening. Please clap or laugh or cry or something.

So if today you heard the story and as you are hearing it, you have a reaction, you want to laugh, you want to get excited, you want to gasp, please do those things. And let the storytellers know that you are having a reaction to their stories. The second thing is, if you have a phone, you might hopefully have silenced it.

Even if you think you have silenced it, just take it out, take a look at it, make sure it is actually silenced and then put it back in. That would be wonderful, thank you. And if you want, you can come closer but if you are comfortable where you are, there is seats on the second and third row and that’s my last note.

Okay, how do we feel? Yes, everyone make some noise. Yes, awesome. I am very excited to introduce our first storyteller today, Maryam Zaringalam. Dr. Maryam Zaringalam is a DC-based biologist who now works in science policy, advocacy and communication. She currently works as the Senior Director of Policy for the Center for Open Science, leading their policy efforts to increase openness, integrity and reproducibility of research.

She is also a Senior Producer for the Story Collider, that is where we met, bringing true personal stories about science to live audiences in the DC area and teaching scientists how to leverage the tools of narrative storytelling to communicate their work. And with that, everyone, please make some noise for Maryam.

>> MARYAM ZARINGALAM: All right, thank you. Hello, it’s wonderful to be here with you all tonight. So, the very first question that my graduate advisor, Nina, asked me was, how crazy are you? Mind you, this was in an interview to be a graduate student in her lab, and so I was really not expecting that as the first question. I had spent the night before prepping to tell her all about my research history, getting ready for her grilling me on the fundamentals of biology, but how crazy am I? I don’t know.

But I think about it and I’m like, “Well, maybe a crazy question deserves a crazy answer and an honest one.” And so I reply, ‘pretty crazy.’ And thankfully, that was the right answer for her. She starts telling me about this high-risk, high-reward project that she is been dying to get somebody to take on.

High-risk because there was a good chance it wouldn’t work, and high-reward because if it did, it could really reshape our thinking around biology. Now, for those of you who are a little rusty on your Biology 101, allow me to quickly tell you a little bit about the science.

So, all of life’s complexity can be boiled down to four letters, A, C, T, and G, DNA’s four bases, which come together in all kinds of different combinations to give our cells a blueprint for life. They work to encode information that tells our cellular machinery how to create these complex molecular structures called proteins that make us who we are. And back in the 1960s, a group of scientists got together and they sort of worked out how these letters come together and are decoded by our cells, the genetic code, this table of 64 different combinations of triplets of letters that encode the information to make you, you. And so for a long time we thought, case closed, done, nice wrapped up in a bow.

But these folks never considered that there might be more to the genetic code than that table. There is all of these different chemical modifications, structural rearrangements that we have known about for decades. But nobody ever considered that this could be read as a fifth, sixth, seventh, on and on and on letter. Until right before I started grad school, a group of scientists found that actually one of these little chemical tweaks could maybe potentially change how our cells read the genetic code. And as Nina is telling me about this, my eyes are just like bugging out.

My mind is blown because it could mean that maybe that genetic code that I had committed to memory as an aspiring young biologist, this genetic code that I took to be like dogma, etched in stone, case closed, like irrevocable truth, could there is some wiggle room and that I, a mere graduate student, could have something to contribute to filling in the blanks.

My head is sort of spinning, and I’m just filled with this sense of curiosity and possibility and potential and maybe delusions of grandeur, I don’t know. But I say, yes, I’m in, I want to do this project. And straight out the gate, I get some really promising results, so a little hint that maybe our crazy hypothesis isn’t so crazy after all.

And so I’m like, “Great, now I have to just replicate this so that I really feel strongly that this is true.” And a month goes by and a year goes by and two years go by and I am just trying the same thing, like losing sleep, thinking about like, oh, maybe if I tweak my protocol this way or if I use this ingredient instead of that ingredient, I will get back to that really promising answer. And every time I am turning up nothing, no dice. And I’m starting to spiral because I am now a third year graduate student.

I have nothing to show for myself other than a lot of lab pages that lead to nothing. And I’m feeling really embarrassed and ashamed and alone because here I am at this prestigious institution, surrounded by the most brilliant minds in science, surrounded by my cohort of fellow graduate students who are doing all kinds of amazing things. And here I am, I spent three years doing the same protocol after protocol after protocol and I have got nothing.

But finally, I’m just like I have to tell somebody this, people are going to notice, I can’t just be here forever. At the end, after seven years, my graduate program just like threw you out. And I don’t want to be thrown out. And so I’m like, “Okay, I need to regroup, I need to think about a next step.” And so I reach out to some of my trusted friends and I’m like, “Here is what’s going on and I’m really embarrassed and I’m worried I’m never going to have another good idea. And if I do have another good idea, what if that fails too?” Oh God.

To my surprise, they start telling me about like, “Oh, you know that finding that I presented at lab meeting a couple of weeks ago? Yes, I had a string of failed experiments that finally led to that like little inkling of success.” They start telling me about their own fears and frustrations and experiences with failure and their doubt. And I start feeling liberated. Maybe I’m not such a bad, terrible, no good imposter scientist after all and I kind of get my groove back. And I think, huh, like if this was such a liberating experience for me, maybe my failure can be that for someone else.

And so I start a blog, a Tumblr called Science Confessionals where people could go and anonymously confess their own feelings of failure and frustration and doubts and share that with the world. And when I first created it and launched it, I see it getting shared on Facebook and on the platform formerly known as Twitter. And by people I have never met before, and I’m thinking like, wow, this is really taking off. There was such a need and appetite for this.

And folks are stopping me at the university happy hour and saying like, “Thank you so much for creating this forum. We can’t wait to use it.” I’m feeling pretty good about myself. Like, yes, look at me. I like created this service, this thing that was needed in my community. Well done. But a week goes on and two weeks and no one is posting except for me and a couple of friends.

And so I’m thinking, gosh, my blog about failure has failed. Yikes. At this point, I would like learned a really important lesson that within every failure is an opportunity to learn and to grow. And so it wasn’t enough for this blog about failure to fail. I had to understand why it flopped. So I start doing this post-mortem analysis.

I go around to my friends who I know have failed because they were my confidants initially, but I know that they haven’t contributed to the blog. And I’m like, “What’s up with this? You liked it. You are so excited.” And they were like, yes, but I thought about it. I just didn’t think that my failures were interesting enough to share, notable enough to share, high impact enough to share. You are seeing a theme.

It told me something sort of like interesting about our minds, about what we are willing to share, that it’s not enough for our failures to be mundane or normal or routine. We have to be failing in a way that is new and noteworthy and impactful. We have to be innovating at the game of failure. And so it showed me something kind of interesting about the psyche of the scientist. Everything has to have a reason, a purpose. It has to be for the greater good.

When you are in the middle of failure, you don’t really see, it’s hard to see the good in that, the purpose in that, what the point of all of it is. But failure in science is frequent and it is inevitable. We are asking big, bold questions about the world. And so we are bound to get it wrong. This is like a really sort of like wild endeavor that we have embarked on. And so the fact that we don’t talk about it seems like such a missed opportunity to me. I know that it’s really hard and scary to do, especially in these times that we are in. But I always think about how many people could feel like they had more access to this thing that we do that is science.

If they knew that it wasn’t all just lone geniuses who knew all of the answers at the start. If we knew all the answers, there would be no point to doing this at all. Instead, science is done by people, by humans, who are just doing their best, who are using the self-correcting method to chip away at the boundaries of our ignorance and so we fail. And to me, what makes science so successful and scientists so deeply special is our resilience.

The fact that we have this deep optimism that someday we might get it right, that we might get closer to truth or a cure or finding something that just sparks joy and wonder in the world. And to me, we have this just resilience and this unabiding faith that on the other side of our failures, we will get a little bit closer to that truth and that to me feels like a story worth telling. But as you all know, I am a little bit crazy.

>> REYHANEH MAKTOUFI: Thank you, Maryam. I love that every failure is an opportunity to grow, but also an opportunity to tell a story about failure. Those make for the best stories. So if you were ever wondering, keep your failures for your storytelling’s. Thank you. And our next storyteller is Dr. Carlos Javier Martinez, who is a senior climate scientist with the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, where he focuses on community-driven research, earth system modeling, data analysis, and science policy integration.

He also leads the American Meteorological Society Committee on Spirituality, Multi-Faith Outreach and Science, acronym COSMOS, which is one of the only acronyms I have recently heard that I’m like, oh, that’s actually like a very good acronym. No shade to the scientists. And works to build relationships and connections between multi-faith and indigenous organizations and the weather, water, and climate enterprise on environmentalism. Please welcome Carlos, woo!

>> CARLOS MARTINEZ: Thank you so much, and good evening, everybody. Like you said, I work for the Union of Concerned Scientists as a climate scientist. I’m very concerned. That’s a joke. But that’s not the story that I want to share today. The story that I want to share today is one of belonging, curiosity, and gratitude.

So I was first born in Puerto Rico, a small island in the Caribbean region, as you may or may not know. But I wasn’t raised there. I actually grew up in the mainland US. My family, my dad got a new job in, guess where? Cincinnati, Ohio. So at the age of four, we moved. And after the first winter, we moved to Dallas, Texas. So it was a little chilly for them. But it’s where in Dallas that I caught what many meteorologists and climate scientists or atmospheric scientists say they caught the weather bug.

And for me, growing up in Dallas, the seasons, although they are not like here, the seasons were between a severe weather and tornado warning to a one inch of snow that would shut down the entire metroplex. Nonetheless, it was a very enriching experience for me. I was fascinated by our atmosphere, by the different clouds, by the different forms of severe weather. When I was growing up during the summers, you would think would be watching Cartoon Network. I was watching the Weather Channel.

And 50 past the hour, for those of you who don’t know, is when the Weather Channel would have Hurricane Central. And I was very keen at the 50 past the hour in the local on the eights, because during those 10 minutes, they would talk about the latest with hurricane season, and they would show all the spaghetti models with the hurricanes. And I remember, especially the ones that were close to Puerto Rico, because I have extended family there, would tell my dad, “Hey you got to call Abuela and Abuelo, because guess what? This storm is going to come through.” And all of that, and this and that, and whatnot. So that curiosity was there to begin with. And it was when I realized I could pursue a degree in it, I was like, well, shoot, this is perfect. And that’s what I did.

I studied meteorology at Texas A&M University, a whoop, and that was a very enriching four years of my life. It was not just the curriculum itself of understanding our atmosphere, but also I did a lot of experiential learning, from weather balloon launches to storm chasing. Yes, I did see cows. They weren’t in the air. I saw funnel clouds. No tornadoes, not yet. But all of those experiences really helped formulate my understanding and love of what became my joy in science. But there was another joy that was creeping up for me, and that was my faith as well. Culturally Catholic, Puerto Rico is. And I really got to grow a fond to my Catholic faith during college.

I had really formulative experiences with very close friends during those four years. And it was during those four years I was really wrestling with the two, honestly, the joy of my faith and the joy of my love of the atmosphere and finding that those two joys I felt were mutually exclusive, or just exclusive from one another. And the scaries I felt of just being open about that with my friends as a prospective professional in this field worrying about my job prospects.

Well, fortunately for me, it was junior year of college, so thinking about my life prospects and all of that where I was fortunate to go to Boulder, Colorado, where I experienced a lot of snow for the first time, and that was a very formative experience for that. But also, the year that I was there doing a research experience for undergraduates at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, that was the same year that Pope Francis wrote the encyclical Laudato Si’. And I remember how ecstatic I was.

If you were excited about Wicked, well, let me tell you, I was very excited about this encyclical. I printed the whole thing out, which I don’t recommend doing for environmental purposes, but I had a Sharpie and I Sharpied it through. And what I loved about the encyclical in particular is that it not only spoke about theology and faith for me, but also it brought a lot of science to the scientific underpinnings to what’s happening to our planet and the cry of the Earth, in essence, and why that’s happening.

And the blend of both was very transformative for me. I got to see, wow, these two things in my life that I find value, I see a way to communicate that and I see a way to galvanize that and be motivated by that. And that’s why, from that experience, I decided to pursue graduate school, where I went to Columbia University. And my focus, my research was on Caribbean hydroclimate, or the rainy season of the Caribbean.

Because for me, I wanted to do something that gave back to the family that I love back in Puerto Rico and the impacts that they are continually experiencing today with our environment. Another experience, though, that was very informative for me was the year after, I did a pilgrimage in Europe. For those of you who don’t know, every few years, the youth body of Catholics around the world convene together in what’s called World Youth Day. And I had the privilege of doing that experience with a few close friends of mine in Kraków, Poland.

But we took several stops in between over a month-long pilgrimage. And one of the stops was Assisi, Italy, this beautiful, rural, quiet town where St. Francis of Assisi lived, the patron saint of environment and animals. And it was there where I felt a sense of quiescence and peace. We were on the hillside overlooking the monastery and the view of Assisi, and we sang hymns, we sang songs, while overlooking what was a really beautiful, picturesque sky with just a few cumulus clouds.

And I remember sitting there singing and also being very emotional, too, because I felt both worlds colliding for me in a very joyous way, a very intimate way. And I felt a very galvanized energy within me about, you know what, I want to do something about this. And so after that summer, I started talking to other people, wondering if they, too, have those shared joys, whether it’s Catholicism or not, any faith-based background.

And over the years, I found that. I found that through folks like Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, Dr. Bill Hook, people who identify not only with their scientific background and the joy that they have with that, but also to their, an additional way of understanding our world that connects to them and that connects to their communities and the people that they belong to and that they are with. And so that galvanized me to do what I’m very thankful for.

I did the curiosity, the belonging, now the gratitude piece, which is COSMOS, which I’m glad the acronym fits well. That is a beautiful community of folks, not just for myself, but for people in the sciences, particularly in weather, water, climate, to talk about their stories, their stories about their connection with our environment and the love that they each share with that, in addition to the work that they do in the science. And we get to have a space, a fellowship of belonging that continually grows today.

It also motivated me to do the work that I do now, very fortunate that I get to not only work, for example, as a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow with DoSER over the years, but two, with the current role that I do today at the Union of Concerned Scientists, where I do feel a sense of belonging and sharing my story, particularly on climate and my own faith upbringing and background as well.

So all of that to say, I find gratitude with where I am, with the story that I get to find a lot of blessings with that I didn’t know that I could. And I share it with people, and I find a lot of hope too in that, despite the subfield that I am in, which can be very concerning and very scary. Hope I find, for example, with communities that I talk to, and they get to share their stories and their connectivity with nature and the environment.

Teaching to theological seminaries about weaving the morality and ethics of this issue like Pope Francis said, it’s not an environmental issue, it’s also these as well. To the joy I have in meeting prospective students and early career professionals who also see with two lenses and want to bring that out to the communities that they love and share and they grow with. And so I share that to say thank you, and again, my story of curiosity, belonging, and gratitude in this space. Thanks.

>> REYHANEH MAKTOUFI: Thank you. That was beautiful. Thank you so much. Can I ask AAAS to please do a screening of Twister and then have Carlos do a commentary on it, please? I will come. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is Dr. Edwin W. Lee II, who is a son, a brother, a friend, a mentor, an educator, whose work focuses on empowering students with learning instruction, problem-solving skills, and career engagement opportunities that enhance their educational experience by improving their self-efficacy and sense of belonging.

After earning a PhD in electrical engineering at Ohio State University, he spent eight years as a higher education administrator and is now completing the second year of AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellowship in the STEM Education Directorate at the National Science Foundation. Everyone, please welcome Edwin! Woo! Woo! Woo!

>> EDWIN LEE: Good evening. I broke a relatively expensive glass mask that I was using to do semiconductor processing early on in my graduate school career as a first-year graduate student. That sinking feeling that you get in your stomach when you do something that you really didn’t expect that you would do, and you surprise yourself at how terrible the moment is.

So I really wanted to own up to it, so I immediately contacted my advisor at the time, and I sent him an email, and he shortly sent me an email right back, and he CC’d every member of my research group, and within the body of that email was the sentence, ‘How could you be so careless?’ And so I can diplomatically say that my first year of graduate school was rocky. My first advisor and I were not a good match, and after leaving his lab, I was in a point where I was questioning myself significantly.

I wasn’t really sure of my direction anymore. When I started graduate school, I knew that I was going to be moving forward into this really lucrative career, and then suddenly that was all disrupted, and I was very unsure, and I lost a lot of confidence. As I was floating between labs, I got a chance to work with a professor in the electrical engineering department named Dr. Betty Lise Anderson, and I didn’t end up joining her lab, but I did get a chance to do outreach with her. She had this suite of electrical engineering projects that she would present at local schools and get students involved, and there was one project that stood out above them all for me, and it was this project Paper Speakers.

So with some cardboard and magnets and hot glue, some copper wire, a drinking straw, and some printer paper and an audio cable, students could fashion this speaker with their own hands, hook it up to their phones, and play their music on it, and it was just this incredible little project that allowed students to get involved. We gave them simple explanations of the science that dictated the operation of the speakers, and you could see the light bulbs turning on for the students, and this was great for me because in that moment it reminded me about my own passion for STEM, my excitement for being involved with it.

I found another lab, and I got to work with my eventual dissertation advisor, Dr. Siddharth Rajan. And he at the time took on the work of really rehabbing me as a student. I had lost a ton of confidence, and so I needed someone with a lot of patience, and he provided that.

There were moments in lab where he would be working directly with me at a probe station or looking over some work that I did on a computer, and I was so afraid to show that I didn’t know an answer, or that I wasn’t sure of myself, that I would freeze and just have nothing, and it was really great that he met me with so much patience in that moment and helped me along the way.

To balance the difficulty I was having in the lab space, I started to work on building community, and so there was an organization at my institution called the Black Graduate and Professional Student Caucus, and so I would meet up with other students who were in all of these different areas of study, and we would commiserate and do life together, have fun, and we would also work and write together, and it was just a great group to feel human again within. I was also very involved at my local church, and so New Salem Missionary Baptist Church at the time.

The church family that I developed there were some of the first people to call me Dr. Lee, and they would do it aspirationally. It was well before I had written a dissertation, well before, honestly, I actually believed I would get to the finish line, and so this tradition of calling things that are not as though they were is very powerful and means a lot to me in my own life. So I had these two worlds that I existed within.

One that was really difficult, where I was in the lab space and having a hard time and spending lots of time in the clean room and poring over books, and one where I tried to fill my joy cup, where I would fellowship with members of the Black Caucus, and I would go to church and teach Sunday school and sing in the choir, and the distance between these two worlds was not sustainable, because naturally I wanted to spend a ton of time in one, and I was avoiding the other.

This came to a head one afternoon, as I was meeting with my advisor one-on-one, and he asked me to explain a relatively simple concept, and I struggled, and he looked at me sternly and knowingly, and he said, Edwin, if you can’t explain it in your own words, you don’t understand it, and there was that sinking feeling again, and it wasn’t that he was being harsh. He was right, and he spoke with truth, but the other powerful thing that he did was he didn’t abandon me in that. He kept working with me.

He didn’t give up on my potential. And so it started me on the path of really rebuilding that confidence, growing as a student, and finding ways to find joy in that lab space. I started mentoring electrical engineering undergrads and doing outreach with them, so taking the paper speakers project on the road, and somehow, I got committed to partnering with a local nonprofit that was bringing us to different schools, and they signed us up for 23 schools over the course of three weeks where we would present to over 180 students, and I said yes for some inane reason, and there was no way I could do this myself.

I bit off way more than I could chew, and again, I had to lean on community. One of the coolest parts of this was members of the Black Caucus saying yes to coming and working on this project, even though they weren’t from STEM backgrounds, and they had their own checkered history with STEM education and feeling like they didn’t belong in those spaces, and I assured them that I would make sure to explain it to them so that they would feel confident and presenting it to middle schoolers because you need confidence when presenting to middle schoolers.

I wanted to really drive it home for them and use plain language and make sure that they were going to be able to give those good presentations because I understand that what you can’t explain in your own words, you don’t actually understand. And so it was a great three weeks. Every student that we worked with actually got a working speaker, which was a triumph. There was one that stands out for me.

This is a young girl at a school that I went to, and initially, she wasn’t that interested in building a speaker, but I saw her as she was falling behind a little bit, starting to tinker with the different parts that we laid out for her, so I asked her again if she wanted to put the speaker together, and she obliged and started working on it, and we were getting towards the end of time, and she had started to test her speaker, and she plugged it in and played, and it made no sound, and I could see the disappointment in her face.

And I said, whoa, whoa, let’s take a look at it, and so I looked, and I could see that the way she had the speaker oriented was stopping the diaphragm of the speaker from being able to vibrate, so I had her kind of look at it and tell me what she thought was happening, and she pointed it out, and so she fixed it, and when she plugged it in and it played her music, I could just see the smile spread across her face and the excitement, and that’s what I do it for. That’s what I get excited about.

And so today I’m a STEM education professional, and my expertise is in student academic success, and so my work really focuses on making sure that students understand how to make knowledge in STEM their own, how to communicate it themselves, and for me, making it accessible means deeply understanding it so I can translate that information to them in a way that they can receive it.

Unfortunately, a lot of our STEM environments don’t really operate this way. We can really focus on making the space accessible for those who are gifted or have a specific talent that leans towards learning STEM, rather than really focusing on those who are curious and questioning, and so it doesn’t have to be this way. There is all of this potential that exists within our students.

There is opportunities for us to inspire them and get them interested in STEM, and being one of those students that almost got thrown away, it makes me that much more excited about creating opportunities for joy for students as they engage with STEM, and I think if we just do a little bit in terms of our effort in making it accessible and bringing our own joy to these STEM spaces, we can shift everything. Thank you.

>> REYHANEH MAKTOUFI: Thank you so much, Edwin. They say when people share stories, there is parts of it that you can really relate to, and a lot of times, it’s the feelings. For me, it was the sinking feeling when you broke something. I broke a very expensive dish at my in-laws the first year and the first time I visited their house, so I’m sorry. Yes, I feel you. And with that, I’m going to introduce our last presenter.

Dr. Brandon Vaidyanathan is a professor of sociology and a director of Institutional Flourishing Lab at the Catholic University of America. His research examines the cultural dimensions, sorry, I haven’t thought about the other page, religious, commercial, and scientific institution, and he is the founder of Beauty at Work, a media platform which includes a podcast and YouTube channel that aims to expand our understanding of beauty, what it is, how it works, and why it matters for the work we do. Everyone, please welcome Dr. Brandon!

>> BRANDON VAIDYANATHAN: Thanks, Rey. Hey, everybody. It’s wonderful to be here. Thank you, Katy, for the invitation. How many of you remember high school science? A memory of what that was like. I remember almost nothing. I think I completely blanked, wiped it out of my memory. But I remember my physics teacher, and he was a pretty quirky personality.

He had shocking white hair, and not just because of the color of the hair, but because he would rub his comb through it so rapidly that it would stand up with static electricity, almost as if he had plugged himself into the universe. And he was obsessed with math and physics.

He had this incredible devotion to physics and would turn everything into a problem set or a physics problem. And so if you go on a roller coaster ride, or if you watch a movie, you could expect a pop quiz or some kind of problem set that would emerge on that particular experience. And it baffled me to encounter somebody who was as passionate about science, about physics, as my classmates and I were about, say, Mariah Carey. And he had just this kind of palpable joy about science.

And for me, being excited about science was not cool because I wanted a girlfriend. And this was not the way you could get a girlfriend by being excited about science. But something about that experience, about this man had stayed with me and I started out in college. I was good at science, but it never really moved me in any way. And I started out in computer science, eventually switched into business because I wanted to understand people.

And I wanted to understand what made people passionate about work, what made work meaningful for some people, and why for many other people, work was just a means to an end. It was just a necessary evil. It was intrinsically meaningless. And many of my peers lived like that. And then there were people like this physics teacher of mine and some other people I knew, and it was a puzzle for me.

Another puzzle also was the tensions that, like the one Carlos mentioned, between faith and work, between faith and science. I had just converted to Catholicism. And so religion and science, religion and work, for me, raised these big questions. And I wanted to figure out a way to address those questions. I didn’t quite think that epistemology was the right route. It seemed to me to try to get at, how are people actually living out these tensions? And so I ended up becoming a sociologist.

I ended up using empirical methods to try to understand what people actually think and feel and believe and do, and how do you measure that, and how do you generalize it to the population and so on. And I ended up doing a postdoc at Rice University with Elaine Howard Ecklund and she studies scientists.

For a number of years, we studied scientists around the world, in several countries, surveyed tens of thousands of scientists, interviewed hundreds of them, trying to understand what they think about the relationship between science and faith and science and religion. And one of the things I did that I found important was to ask scientists, why do you do what you do? What makes you justify the sacrifices? So we studied physicists and biologists, mostly bench scientists, so not people working at Google.

So people working university, national labs, and asked them, why do you spend long hours in your labs? Why do you forsake maybe a more lucrative career in industry, maybe sometimes giving up your health, giving up your family for the sake of this? What is it that makes it worthwhile? And I expected to hear things about perseverance and hard work and curiosity.

But what baffled me was I would regularly hear them say, I do it because it’s beautiful. And the word beauty kept coming up, but it was not for me a word I would have associated with science. It was not my experience. But it was the experience of that physics teacher of mine. There’s something here that I wanted to understand.

So I have spent the last six years trying to understand what beauty means to scientists. And so we have been interviewing and surveying physicists and biologists in different countries. And the thing that I have learned is that there is a deep aesthetic experience at the heart of science, which is this, we call this the beauty of understanding. And it’s not just the sensory beauty of stars and cells.

It’s that recognition of the hidden order of things, the inner logic of things. And when things come together, when things click, you go, ah, that’s how things are. And that is a profound aesthetic experience. And so pursuing this kind of beauty for me has been a doorway into understanding my physics teacher and into the fascination that I have developed now with science, which I didn’t have when I was younger.

But the other thing that studying beauty has taught me is that science is its beauty is not just valuable for sensory delight, but it also is spiritually valuable. And I will tell you a story that really struck me here. So I interviewed a biologist in India. And I remember going into her lab and it was a very tiny little metal box filled with files and paperwork everywhere and she wanted to show me the injection system needle of a Salmonella bacteria.

And so this is the mechanism through which this bacterium infects the host. And if you look at the slides from her microscopy and zoom in, the needle looks identical to the pillar of a Hindu temple. And it’s incredible. It’s got these little trellises and the structure is identical. And it made my hair stand. And I was like, this is crazy. I couldn’t believe it. So I said, hang on, I want to take my phone out and take a video of this and I wanted to share it with everybody I knew.

And so I ended up basically starting a YouTube channel and then a podcast about beauty and science just to share the joy and the beauty that I experienced, but also the sense of awe that it’s incredible what nature has to offer. For this particular scientist, again, it was not just this nice curiosity to find this pillar-like structure. It was a deep experience of awe because it resonated with her own faith.

And she said, not only is this structure so beautiful that if I were a painter, I would have painted it, but it led her to want to work towards a world in which we can live in harmony with bacteria. We are not there yet, but that’s the aspiration. An aspiration for a different kind of relationship to other entities. And what struck me here is that there really is a tension between two stories about science.

In one story, science is about three logics, domination, extraction, and fragmentation. So science is about a drive to master and conquer nature. Descartes talked about this aspiration of being masters and possessors of nature. Science is about extraction, maximizing the extraction of value, turning everything into a resource.

The sense of everything becomes a way to extract as much as possible from nature to maximize human benefit. And then fragmentation, because science is, after all, about analysis. And you analyze things, and you tear things down, you break things down.

But there are a parallel set of logics that are the opposite of this, and that’s what I encountered in scientists like this biologist that I met. And there’s also a deep sense of reverence, a reverence for even things like bacteria, a sense that there is something here, there’s an order here that transcends my imagination. There’s also a receptivity to givenness.

I don’t make this, there’s something out there, and I have to somehow be obedient to that. And then finally, a sense of reconnection, deep sense of unity, of union with all that is. And these kinds of spiritual experiences are at the heart of scientific practice for many scientists, whether or not they are people of faith.

And so that’s been the work that I have been doing for the past few years on a project called Meaning and Mystery in Science. And that’s really opened up a new way of looking at science for me that has been personally spiritually edifying. The science writer, Andrea Wulf, told me that science is like a palace with many doors.

And if you like bugs, or if you like the weather, or if you like math, and you are good at those things, those doors are open for you. But for Andrea, she found she was not very good at chemistry. She was actively discouraged from going into science. And then she discovered the story of Humboldt and fell in love with that story, and then ended up writing one of the best science books about Humboldt. So biography is a door, and for me, beauty has been such a door. And I hope that’s a path that can open up science for many others. Thank you.

>> REYHANEH MAKTOUFI: Thank you. This was such a beautiful story, and I’m just asking for a friend, as you were doing your business research, did you find out how, as a science communicator, someone could become very rich? No. Okay, totally fine. It was for a friend. I don’t care about money. And with that, I’m going to invite the rest of our speakers to come on the stage. We are going to have a Q&A. How are you all feeling? Good, okay. This feels very far. No, this is perfect, this is perfect.

Thank you everyone. How are you all feeling? Good, yes, awesome. So I’m going to start with a personal question that I always like to know, and that is, what is your favorite stories? And as you answer that question, maybe like stories that actually really impacted you. Also, what made you say yes to DoSER and Katy to come here and tell stories?

>> EDWIN LEE: I will give you a little behind the curtain. We were told that this question was coming. And the only story that has come to the front of my mind, and maybe like eight to 10 year old me will be really excited about this, but Transformers the movie, that story. And here’s the reason why. It was the first time that, spoiler alert for something that happened in the 1980s, sorry guys. It was one of the first times that a major character died in a movie. So when Optimus Prime died in that movie, I was devastated, and yet I kept watching. And it’s just like a really cool story. I’m sorry, did I spoil it for you? So sorry.

>> REYHANEH MAKTOUFI: I did not know Optimus Prime died. I watched some of the cartoons.

>> EDWIN LEE: Sorry, I ruined it. Anyway, the reason why I was excited to do this as the kids say, or maybe they might not be saying it anymore, I’m a really a yapper, and I really enjoy talking. I’m a podcaster, but I think it’s important for us to humanize ourselves through the stories that we tell.

I think, as I kind of shared in my own story, it’s that willingness for us to share our failures that make these pathways more accessible. I don’t want folks to think that I’m perfect. I want you to know all the ways, maybe not all the ways, but a lot of the ways that I have messed up. So it gives you the ability to see yourself in my path and all of the myriad paths that are available.

>> BRANDON VAIDYANATHAN: I could bring up a movie as well. And the movie that I watched over and over and over again when I was 11, 12, 13 years old was Groundhog Day. Which is the perfect movie to keep watching over and over. But it just struck me, and for those of you who don’t know, it’s about a guy who relives the same, he is stuck in the same day until he figures out how to get out of it, and the pathway through it is to sort of become a virtuous person and to learn how to live a correct, upright life and he is a very selfish character, and you see this sort of really beautiful, redemptive arc.

And I was a very selfish character when I was 12, 13, 14, and I wish I could have – I think, was somewhere that part of me was aspiring to some way out of a kind of rut that I felt stuck in. But I think what I appreciated about Katy’s invitation was I’m usually the one moderating panels and asking questions and doing the podcast interviews, and so it was a strange opportunity to try to figure out where I find joy in the science I do.

And there’s certainly the joy of discovering some mechanism and some pattern, but I think where I find joy the most is in talking to people, and this great privilege I have, they do both quantitative and qualitative social science, and it’s the interviewing where I get to visit people and talk to them and hear their stories. That’s where I feel the most blessed and edified, and those are really transformative moments, and so to be able to share some of that as a social scientist, I thought it was a great opportunity, so thanks again for the invite.

>> CARLOS MARTINEZ: Twister? I don’t know if there’s a moral to that story other than don’t park your vehicle under an overpass when there’s a tornado, don’t do that. I do have some family stories. The one that I gravitate a lot is my grandparents on my mom’s side whom fled Cuba during the Cuban Revolution with very little money to start a new life. I think about that a lot with the work I do, and a lot of gratitude for why I’m here as well. And then to Katy’s invitation, I love storytelling.

I love the relationality that it brings, the human nature that it gives us, the connectedness that it brings to us. I really see that a lot in climate, in earth sciences. When I talk to various audiences, I do share my story, and I also say that any graph and chart I can give you does not have the weight that your story has with the people that connect with you in the stories that you share. And you don’t need a PhD to have a curiosity and a desire to make change, in particular in that science, but I think that can be universal too.

>> MARYAM ZARINGALAM: There we go, I got it. So, stories. What I love the most about when we work with Story Collider and get to work with storytellers is just the specificity of how a person would tell a story or answer a question. And so, the example that I was thinking about was my dad is a very quirky man. None of you would know him, but he is. He is extremely brilliant, trained as a nuclear astrophysicist, and he is 74 now and is like a cloud computing architect.

So, how you stay relevant in computer science, I don’t know. But I asked him, he was like, we were on vacation and he was sort of trailing behind us. I pulled back and I asked, what are you thinking right now? What are you thinking about right now? And he points to a license plate and says, 4,721. And I was like, what? And he says, well, if you take out all of the letters and add that number, you get a palindrome.

And that’s what I have been thinking about. So, he was walking slowly because he was just looking at the license plate, and he’s like, I used to play this game with myself when I would walk to school when I was a little boy. I would just look at the license plates and I’d make palindromes. And so, I’d try to connect with him and I’d point to one and say a number. And he’s like, well, I mean that, or the more interesting version is this other number. And I was like, okay.

So, I say that to say that I feel like asking questions and just kind of hearing the way that people respond to them. It’s just such a specificity that you get from stories and why I love working with storytellers and hearing their stories. And I think that’s why I said yes to doing this because I think that this has been just such a profoundly devastating year.

And to spend time hearing the human stories that underlie the people doing this science, I think it fills with a sense of stakes, what we stand to lose if we just kind of cast it all aside because there is such richness and beauty in the people who do science and in the science that they do. So, I wanted to celebrate that with you all.

>> REYHANEH MAKTOUFI: Thank you. Love these. I have so many questions but because time is limited, I would love to hear your story. So, if you have any questions, you can either come to the microphones or raise your hand and someone will bring a microphone to you. There’s also the Mentimeter app so you can write your questions there. So, I’m just going to be awkwardly silent for a few seconds. I see someone walking to the, okay. So, maybe you and then after that, if someone could bring a microphone there. Thank you.

>> AUDIENCE: Question for Edmund. Did you ever go back to that first advisor or maybe have a conversation with another senior person and point out how did you set up a system where one careless mistake could do so much harm? There was a learning opportunity there for the senior person. There’s an old Japanese quality management saying, bad managers try to fix the blame. Good managers try to fix the system. Have you chased down that path at all?

>> EDWIN LEE: I appreciate the question. As I was preparing for this, I thought about how valuable it would have been for – the situation was that the sample that I was trying to get the pattern on, you have to bring it not in contact with the sample and I brought it too far in contact because I was looking through the microscope and yes, I cracked the mask. If there was a pressure sensor, it would have alerted me that I was too close and then I could have backed off a little bit. But no, I did not go back to him after the fact. There were thoughts of having completed the degree, visiting his office and being like, “Hey, I’m the one who wasn’t cut out to do this, right?” But no, I did not do that. I doubt he’s watching so he won’t see this either, but it’s fine.

>> REYHANEH MAKTOUFI: Rachel, do you want to ask your questions and then?

>> RACHEL: Sure, this is a question from Menti. Today, there may be fear from scientists that exposing failure could lead to more distrust from the public. How do you think scientists can communicate the benefits of failure to the public?

>> MARYAM ZARINGALAM: I think this is for me. So I guess there is two ways to answer it. One is I’m a big Peloton fan and one of the Peloton instructors says if you sweep things under the rug, all you get is a lumpy rug. So I think that’s one way to answer the question. The other is with science and evidence. So in my day job, I work at the Center for Open Science and we think a lot about sort of what breeds trust in research and how to increase research integrity.

And there is a really nice study from 2016 in PLOS Biology, I think, and Brian Nosek, our executive director, is one of the authors of it. And what they did was they surveyed a bunch of members of the public around, you have researcher A who does a study, publishes it, and then you have researcher B who comes along and tries to reproduce it, tries to replicate it. And there’s different scenarios for, researcher B gets the same answer, great.

Researcher B doesn’t get the same answer. Researcher A responds by saying, you are wrong, I’m not going to explore it. That undermines the public’s trust, the people who were surveyed, their trust in that researcher to be ethical and to be capable. But if that researcher says, hey, you might have a point, let me investigate, that increases the sense of ability, of ethicalness, of that researcher being good.

So that’s a long way of saying that I think by exposing and talking about the process that underlies research and discovery, that creates a system where we are bringing people into how we think as researchers, how we process our understanding of the world in real time as we get evidence, that self-correcting process that is really about community and coming together and debating and discussing ideas.

And so I think that if we just sort of dismiss or think that folks aren’t smart enough or they are untrustworthy enough, that we are going to back away and just say what we know with great confidence, even if we don’t feel that confidence, I think that’s where we start to get into trouble. But that’s a great question, something I wrestle with all the time.

>> REYHANEH MAKTOUFI: Brandon, what are you going to ask?

>> BRANDON VAIDYANATHAN: Yes, there is an interesting challenge. There’s a friend of mine who ran some citizen science experiments and he found they were working with two different groups, one in which it was an experiment that had been run numerous times and you had the scientist sort of as the expert leading members of the public through this experiment. And then another group where they were trying something new that they hadn’t done before.

They actually ended up discovering something. And so it was scientists and members of the public working together and there was a new discovery and they had to sort of correct their hypotheses and so on. And it turned out that the former group, the one in which the scientists were the experts and knew all the answers, yielded higher public trust than the second group.

The second group sort of had lower trust in the scientists after. And so he’s been wondering about like what’s going on here? Is it that just members of the public want high priests? And revealing the kind of uncertainty and the process of the way in which truth has to be sort of really provisional, that creates maybe more doubt.

And there’s also this old question that goes back to the tension between Hobbes and Boyle where Boyle was so sure the experimental method would bring about this consensus like everyone’s watching the experiment. They all agree about what’s happening. And Hobbes would laugh at him and say, that’s crazy because they are going to come to it with their priors. And if your experiment validates their priors, they will accept it.

And if it doesn’t, they are going to reject it. And so there’s just this real puzzle about intellectual humility and how it could be really cultivated and what the role of scientists is. I don’t have an answer to this, but it just seems like it’s a thorny question that I wonder how we can address.

>> REYHANEH MAKTOUFI: Yes, there was a study that just came out. I think it was titled, Should Scientists Lie? And it was talking about this dilemma of transparency. And when the transparency existed, if it’s transparency about us knowing certain treatments that is positive, it’s great. But if it’s transparency about we don’t know how things work, then that could affect trust another way. But I think the point is that everything is very context-dependent.

And in individual level, at least, I think what is super important is to disclose failure. It’s kind of like you decide how vulnerable I’m going to be. I’m not going to probably disclose, like you were saying, all of my failures that I have always done throughout all my life. But what is a failure that if I talk about now, I can actually build trust to say, hey, this is something that we did wrong. We figured it out. Here’s what we are doing.

Here’s how it’s better now. So kind of like how can you also be strategic about the vulnerability that you are having and the failures to be like, hey, you can trust me because I’m telling you that I failed and here’s how we learned and how we became better, which is a lot like the process of science. But yes, it’s very context-dependent and very complicated topic.

>> MARYAM ZARINGALAM: And requires conversation.

>> REYHANEH MAKTOUFI: Exactly.

>> MARYAM ZARINGALAM: And I think that that’s getting back to stories, what is so helpful. It creates those bridges so that it’s not these one-offs where I like throw facts at you and then walk away.

>> AUDIENCE: First of all, I would like to compliment the fashion that I see here. This is like an all-star team of Renaissance people. And to be able to understand how to look as well. You talked about beauty. So science meets art right here. But I wanted to ask if any of you have fantasies about where you want to be in the next couple of years, because to break out, like you are still all young and you are still energetic and that’s not going to be forever.

So where’s that retirement check going to come from? What is it that you are going to break out on? What are we going to remember you as? Unfortunately, when you get to a certain point in life, people start saying, “Oh, you did this.” Even though you have done all these other things. You may have failed in certain things.

You may have come close, but there’s this one thing that people remember you for. So are you thinking about that? Where’s that residual check going to come from and how are you going to change the world? Can you do that in an elevator speech? Do you have that in you to say, I know I’m going to invent the next this, that, or the other’s going to change people’s lives?

>> REYHANEH MAKTOUFI: Thank you. Which fashionable participant wants to start first? It’s kind of a question of legacy, right? Did I understand this correct, kind of?

>> EDWIN LEE: I can try here. I don’t think a whole lot about how I want to be remembered, but I hope that it’s in the stories that my students tell because I know that when I tell my story and when I talk about my successes, there are all of these people along the way who are responsible. It didn’t just happen because I was so brilliant.

Yes, I did the work, but there were these moments where folks stepped in at the right time. They had the right words for me. They were honest with me about things that were important for them to be honest with me about. And so I hope to live on in the stories that they tell and in their willingness to give of themselves in the ways that they received.

So it’s something that as I have mentored students over the years, I have mentioned to them that what you are getting from me is because of my experiences. And if you have experienced this, you too have a responsibility for that person who is coming behind you that has a similar experience, who is struggling in similar ways to see their moment of need and to step in in that moment. Now, as far as what the retirement plan is, I don’t know. Maybe the podcast will take off. Maybe I will write a book, I don’t know. We will see.

>> MARYAM ZARINGALAM: I guess sort of like related to that, just thinking about, I guess, legacy, which feels weird to talk about. I think just creating permission structures for more people to feel like they can engage with science, particularly people who don’t have a scientific background or were told in school that science wasn’t for them.

That’s always where I’m thinking in the policy work that I do, trying to increase access to research and the storytelling work that I do. The parts that are most fulfilling is when people find and recognize that there is expertise everywhere, whether you have three letters appended to your name or not. I don’t know what the retirement plan is either. Maybe my book on failure.

> BRANDON VAIDYANATHAN: Yes, I don’t have a retirement plan either. I think what I’m trying to figure out is a way to keep doing work that I find interesting and to work with people that I enjoy. And so there’s a deep satisfaction on both of those fronts. There’s just a lot of nonsense that gets in the way of doing the work that you know you need to do, like all sorts of bureaucratic stuff or what’s happening right now politically. So there’s that sort of stuff that gets in the way, but being able to focus on work that is intrinsically meaningful and that’s worth doing and that, if done well, will bear fruit, whether or not that’s your own work directly or those who take on the mantle and down the road, but that’s not up to you to control. So I’m hoping I can remain faithful. I don’t know if I will be successful.

>> CARLOS MARTINEZ: Ditto to everything that’s everyone shared. I think for me, with the puzzle piece that I have in this seven plus billion person mosaic, I hope that my piece of that puzzle leaves the world in a better place than it was when I started.

>> REYHANEH MAKTOUFI: I love that, thank you. Katy, do we have time for one more question or, yes? One more but very short answers.

>> AUDIENCE: I will try. I have so many questions, but the one I will ask, just one, is we are all here because 2025 has been such a terrible year. Why did none of you choose to tell a story about 2025?

>> MARYAM ZARINGALAM: This is a cop-out of an answer. At Story Collider, we say we tell stories about scars, not wounds, because wounds are still festering. And we are interested in the arcs and where you are on the other side of it. And so I think there’s a lot of processing. I do think about failure and the story that I shared in the context of today and what our responsibilities are as researchers, as the scientific community. So a cop-out of an answer, but I’m still processing.

>> REYHANEH MAKTOUFI: Brilliant answer. Thank you. And with that, thank you. I always love the scars, not wounds, scars, not wounds. And with that, first of all, thank you so much to the panel and all the lovely answers. And thank you so much to you. Before leaving, so we thought it would be fun if we all get to experience some more storytelling.

You have all told stories in the past. You constantly do that when you are meeting your friends or at dinner. And sometimes it feels a little intimidating to figure out what is the story that I’m going to tell. So what we did is that we have these cards that you can pick up as you leave the room and they are going to be all around the place too. And one side is a very beautiful picture and you can pick whatever that speaks to you.

And the other side, we have prompts. So if you came with other people or if you are standing next to other people, we want you to share a memory or a very short story with them. And to do that, if you can’t think of anything, you could use these prompts. For example, a time when you felt joy or awe or surprise. A time where you felt cared for or you felt appreciated, you felt connected or you really felt seen or you felt defeated, lonely, vulnerable. These are all the kind of stories that you can think about.

Or there’s a moment that comes to your mind where you saw something that really impacted you or something you heard that really stayed with you. Something you felt, something you smelled, something you tasted that really left a memory in your brain. Or if you are more of a visual person like me, you can look at the picture on the other side and look at the colors and the shapes and what it is and what’s not and figure out what memory it will remind you of.

We are going to do two, three examples, just very quick ones. For vulnerable, I remember I was in the third grade and it was the first time for math. I got a single digit score on my math and in Iran it’s out of 20. And I remember feeling like, but I’m the smart kid. And it just really broke me and I was like, oh God, I’m going to be really bad at math. When I graduated, I loved math. It was my favorite thing. I wish I would have followed math but yes, that’s a memory that really stays with me. Anyone else wants to share one of these like a mini memory or story?

>> MARYAM ZARINGALAM: I can say quickly a time that I felt joy. It was a couple weeks ago. My daughter, who’s now 13 and a half months, said her first word, which is up. And we thought maybe she can say her nickname, which is Aza. And so we are like, say Aza, Aza, Aza. And she says, “Aapp.” And that was joyful.

>> REYHANEH MAKTOUFI: Edwin, do you want to share one?

>> EDWIN LEE: Yes, sure. Time that I felt cared for, connected or seen. I used to host people a lot. And so I got out of the habit, maybe pandemic stuff or what have you, but I got back into that earlier this year, actually like maybe a month ago. And so just doing things like that and being connected to folks and sharing good food, that’s the time that I felt really cared for.

>> REYHANEH MAKTOUFI: As you hear these stories, please ask questions. Tell them what you connected with, what you wanted to know more about, and keep the conversation going. And with that, we are going to pass this on to Katy, who is going to tell us more about what is next.

>> KATY HINMAN: Yes, so just a few things about our reception afterwards. These cards are where you picked up your programs when you came in, but they also will be scattered around. So we hope you will pick them up. And one way, if you aren’t here with people you already know and you are trying to figure out how you could maybe start a conversation with someone, well, maybe look for someone who has the same picture that you do. There you go. We also want to give you opportunities to share your stories in other ways.

One of the things that we are really hoping to foster in DoSER and in AAAS is helping scientists to share these parts of their lives. And if you are willing, we would love to record a story from you this evening. And we have a recording studio over in the conference room, the Revell Conference Room.

When you come out of here, it’s on the right. If you are willing to come in and tell a short story and be videotaped, we would love…(videotaped. That’s how old I am.) Recorded on the phone. We would love to do that. If you are online and have stories you want to share, do it. You can just share them yourself. And we would love it if you would tag us or if you want to record yourselves telling a story and send it to us. And we would love to share that with other people.

We do also have food and drinks at this reception. So when you go out, most of them are going to be on the first floor, but there also will be a few on the second floor. There are tables and places to hang out. We really hope that you will use this time to connect with one another as well. And just a reminder, we tell our stories in lots of different ways, not just words, but also images and music. And we have an art gallery on the first floor of this building.

And there’s a great exhibit in there right now, which is of visuals from our Science Magazine visuals team and how they tell stories of science through images. And so I hope that you will also check that out when you are wandering around. And we actually have somebody from the Science visuals team will be around down there until about 8:00. So I hope you will check that out as well.

Thank you again for being here. I got to tell you, my cheeks hurt because I have been smiling so much. This has been such a balm for my heart. I hope it has been for yours as well. I hope you will stick around and share stories with us and with each other. And one more thank you to our wonderful group of storytellers. Thank you so much.