Escape from the Ivory Tower

Back in 2012 at the 6th SETAC World Congress, held in Berlin, Germany, we started our activities on science and risk communication of environmental research with a small session of six platform presentations and a couple of posters. Though largely disregarded by abstract submissions, the session received very well attendance and initially encouraged us to go further with the topic.

We wrote a session brief also for this first effort. As it did not make it into SETAC Globe I post it below in full text - for the sake of completeness of the communication story.


RA08 Escape from the Ivory Tower – Environmental sciences should impact public and policy

Thomas-Benjamin Seiler (RWTH Aachen University), Magnus Engwall (Örebro University), Henner Hollert (RWTH Aachen University)

Communication means to convey meaningful information to create shared understanding. If messages from environmental science are not suitable to produce public endorsement, we remain in the Ivory Tower despite all connections there might be. The session therefore invited colleagues to share their ideas, thoughts and experiences regarding the communication of scientific findings to the public.

It was due to the high temperatures in room ECC 5 high above the poster and exhibition area that everyone could feel an urge to „escape from the ivory tower“. Nevertheless, the session was well attended, with nearly every seat occupied and vivid discussions after each talk. The presentations ranged from individual experience with the pitfalls of press work, over diverse aspects of communication to a successful effort in public relation.

Fabienne Schwab (eawag, Switzerland) shared her experience with a research finding on nanoparticles being largely misunderstood by the media and thus causing major press coverage – but with a completely wrong message. The obstacles she faced were named by Agnieszka Hunka from Roskilde University, Denmark. She presented a study on risk communication based on interviews with stakeholders. A successful example of public communication was presented by Rüdiger Berghahn (Federal Environment Agency, Germany). He brought a movie clip introducing a research facility in Berlin in a manner that can cause common people to just go there and have a look. Talks by Philippe Garrigues (Université de Bordeaux 1, France) and Valentina Castellani (University of Study Milano, Italy) addressed the need for sound communication of decision making in order to raise public acceptance. Either for political decisions made or public awareness of environmental issues, the box of tools for change management introduced by Thomas Hinton from IRSN, France, could help to achieve the goals of public communication.

Communication seems a largely neglected topic in environmental sciences. Annual meetings very rarely provide the possibility to exchange ideas and experiences on the dissemination of scientific findings. This session was intended to start a process to establish science communication as a regular topic at annual meetings. The strong interest and the responses from the audience show that the session met an urgent need.

From this first attempt to explore the mechanisms of public communication in environmental sciences we already learned that emotions play a key role. Whilst scientists are dedicated to sound reasoning and rational thinking, the receiving public care intuitively about their fears and desires. Hence, the translation of scientific language into public understanding is not just a matter of non-technical wording, but requires consideration of the different cultures involved. A strong commitment to a shared vision from either side could overcome such barriers.

Research on communication and communication of research

At SETAC Europe meeting 2014 in Basel, Switzerland, I plan to chair a special session on science and risk communication together with Andrea Rother of University of Cape Town, South Africa, Ragnar Löfstedt of King's College, London, and Henner Hollert of our institute.

The title "Research on communication and communication of research – pinpointing the best practice to improve our outreach" promises both theoretical and practical insights. We also plan to structure the talks according the geographical regions to reveal local differences in communication strategies. Dig deeper into what we have thought about by reading our session proposal.

The session is open for abstracts until 30 November 2013, 23.59 Brussels time. Abstracts can be submitted via the online submission system. All details on abstract submission can be found here.

We are looking forward to a lively session and discussion with good conclusions on how to strengthen public awareness of environmental sciences.

Eisenhower GTD and MTR at hour-of-power

As the tasks got more and more during the last years I started reviewing and testing all kind of time and self management techniques to find the most suitable ones for me. Eventually I came up with a set of several different methods combined to a whole management strategy.

Base of my task management are the key principles of Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen. To my understanding these are:

• what comes to your attention as a task is in your "inbox"
• tasks that require less than 2 minutes should be done immediately
• sort everything else from your inbox to an appropriate task list
• make different lists for different task types
• put together your daily schedule from the different task lists

Next comes in the Eisenhower matrix. This principle divides all tasks into four categories related to how urgent and important they are (see graphic from Wikipedia). These categories now make up my GTD task lists. Every morning I select a limited number of tasks from the two "important" lists and put them in my daily planning. However, though GTD is a rather strict system and requires a certain level of self discipline, David Allen also recommends to use gut feeling to be productive. Hence, sometimes I feel more comfortable with doing an "urgent - not important" tasks, which is commonly regarded as self deception.

The problem with urgent and important tasks is that they often became urgent because of being unattended for so long. When I finally get to work on them I generally have to start from scratch - with limited time. But its very much easier (for me at least) to start things without pressure and continue occasionally. Hence, I always try to initially work approx one hour on tasks when they are still "not urgent". I call this "make things running" (MTR). In my daily planning the MTR schedules are usually located in the morning, when concentration is high and distractions are low. This "hour-of-power" principle is a common mangement technique, especially regarding tasks that have piled up for too long.

To organise this system on my computer I am tagging all incoming tasks according the Eisenhower categories. Emails are tagged using the respective function of my email client, files are tagged in the very useful file management tool "Nemo Documents" "tabbles" (Nemo unfortunately got discontinued, and tabbles evolved from version 2 to be way better than Nemo) and any thoughts, ideas and reminders are stored and tagged in Evernote.

I also tried the Pomodoro technique which slices tasks into several time blocks of twenty to thirty minutes, with five minutes intermissions. It fits easily into the strategy described here. However, I didn't find it useful for me.

Are PAH from coals ecotoxicologically relevant?

We just put out a paper in the journal Environmental Science & Technology about "Limited waterborne acute toxicity of native polycyclic aromatic compounds from coals of different types compared to their total hazard potential".

Wiebke Meyer of the University of Münster, Germany, has done part of her PhD thesis in our labs. She tested different types of coals for their toxic potential due to the contained natural PAH. Effects were recorded for extracts as well as the native coals samples using nematodes and zebrafish as test organisms.
Whereas the extracts - representing the overall hazardous potential - gave strong effectiveness in both test systems, no toxicity of the native samples was found, and thus the bioavailable contaminant fraction. Importantly, the results were independent of coal properties.

Find the publication here.

Micronucleus assay goes robotics

In future our micronucleus assay (MNC) will run semi-automatically using a slideloader and a software-controlled automatic stage attached to a fluorescence microscope with a camera. Together with Nikon GmbH and Prior Scientific Instruments GmbH we successfully tested this combination as a measure for a dramatic increase in sample throughput of the MNC. Furthermore this allows to have well documented MNC results. For several cell types also a software-based evaluation should be feasible.

The equipment is the most recent addition to the high-end technology facilities in our Students Lab Fascinating Environment. Nikon as well as Prior are partners of this fruitful academia-industry initiative. We also produced a movie clip showing the equipment at work. I will link it here soon.

Research interest

The work group researches effect-related ecotoxicology with a strong focus on biotest development and optimisation. Our main research topic are polluted soils and sediments with the aim to contribute to a reliable risk assessment. Since 2010 the group works on passive sampling and passive dosing approaches. Here we aim to integrate both concepts in an experimental strategy that also allows for high sample throughput.

We are active in increasing the perception of environmental sciences by the general public. This means to work on tailor-made concepts for science communication, to push the discussion about deficits and future chances at conferences as well as through journal articles, and to run modern public relations.

Career logo design

During the years I happened to design several logos. All started with the one for the EULIMNOS project and since then I took every opportunity to create more. Here's a gallery of my works. :-)

EULIMNOS project

SETAC Europe Student Advisory Council

Work group logo (yet unofficial)

Students Lab Fascinating Environment

Illustration for "Erfahrungsbasierte Forscherwerdung" in unigestalten
http://www.unigestalten.de/component/unigestalten/item/142.html

Tox-Box joint research project

Joint DFG Project PASSEDOble

Project proposal COMPASS

BioEDando internal workshop

W3-Hydro joint research project

Project proposal Hyprotox

Project proposal biobaSE

Softskill course "Students going scientific"

Students Lab in-house exhibition "Biological Advent"

Proposed logo for project TEPHA

Proposed logo for project DEMO3 AC

SETAC Advisory Group on science and risk communication

Project proposal BioEffecTools

Project proposal IDEFIX

EU H2020 project GRACE

Project proposal PROgRESS

Dioxin-like activity of passive sampler extracts

Recently we did a very nice collaboration work with Dr. Emmanuel Emelogu of Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen in the framework of his PhD thesis. He sampled freely dissolved concentrations of hydrophobic organic contaminants in Scottish estuaries and tested the extracts at our labs using a specifically adapted RTL-W1 EROD assay in 24-well plates. Comparison of the biological activity with the chemical analysis data revealed that the majority of effect could not be attributed to the detected pollutants. Find the full article here.

Paper series on science and risk communication

Earlier this year I started a paper series on science and risk communication as an editor in Environmental Sciences Europe. The series will publish a wealth of articles on a broad range of different cases of communication in environmental sciences. It is meant to facilitate the discussion about science and risk communication we initiated with a session at the SETAC World Congress 2012 in Berlin.

Six to eight contributions are confirmed and three of them were already submitted or published. However, the call for papers is still open. Whoever wants to add a manuscript should contact me by email. The up-to-date content of the series including the editorial with additional information is accessible here.

Science communication brought forward

At the SETAC Europe annual meeting 2013 in Glasgow we organised the session "Bridging the Gap between Risk Perception and Ecotoxicology Research―How Can We Communicate to Improve Our Outreach?" on science and risk communication in environmental sciences. It was a follow-up to our much acclaimed initial session "Escape from the Ivory Tower - Environmental sciences should impact public and policy" at the SETAC World Congress 2012 in Berlin. The Glasgow session featured a final panel discussion and received strong attention by the SETAC community. It can be considered a major success on our mission to establish communication topics at SETAC conferences. Find a post-meeting report in SETAC Globe here.

Next step will be a special session at the SETAC Europe annual meeting 2014 in Basel. It will combine practical experience with theoretical background for science and risk communication and will also include the views from different geographical regions. We just submitted the session proposal to SETAC Europe.

New tools for Effect-directed analysis of emerging pollutants

Since October 2011 we are part of the FP7-funded Marie Curie Initial Training Network "EDA EMERGE - Novel Tools in Effect-Directed Analysis to Support the Identification and Monitoring of Emerging Toxicants on a European Scale". Our Early Stage Researcher (ESR) Carolina Di Paolo works on "Mechanism-specific screening tools in early life stages of Danio rerio". She combines mechanism-specific cell assays with test systems based on the zebrafish. At the department we run a battery of endpoint-related Danio assays.
To know more check out the web contents here and here.

Research for a harmonized test strategy for drinking water

In October 2011 we started working on the joint research project "Tox-Box – Hazard-Based Risk Management of Anthropogenic Trace Substances for the protection of the Drinking Water Supply" funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF) and embedded in the government-funded action “Risk assessment of new pollutants and pathogens in the water cycle (RiSKWa)”.

The project is designed to enhance the existing Health-Related Indicator Value (HRIV) concept (German: GOW-Konzept - Gesundheitlicher Orientierungswert) through development and prioritisation of additional endpoint-related testing strategies.

Our sub project "Analysis of endocrine effects: Changes in steroidogenesis and reproduction toxicity" (SP 12) aims at establishment of endocrine disrupting potential of drinking water contaminants.
Seek more information here and here (latter one is German only).

I also had the pleasure to design the Tox-Box logo.

Research philosophy

I consider my work dedicated to environmental health by means of quality science, while understanding scientific quality as a broad topic.

Firstly, beside the aim to design and conduct reliable experiments within our investigations the group also critically scrutinises established methods against the state-of-the-art within ecotoxicology and optimises such protocols if deemed necessary. We develop as well as validate novel test systems and techniques to ensure latest knowledge as the basis for ecotoxicological research.

Secondly, we put much effort into educating students to become highly-skilled scientists. Our teaching helps students to evolve into autonomous researchers already at an early stage, and several of our courses impart essential soft skills.

Thirdly, we aim to bring our findings to the public in an understandable way, in order to raise awareness for ecotoxicological issues. Here, we also think about new, efficient ways for communication and train our students in public relations.