Letter from the Editor

Brindar Sandhu

Originally published September 22, 2015

Hi there! Welcome to Inscripto, the popular science website that hosts content created, written, and produced by Emory graduate students! My name is Brindar and I am a fifth year graduate student in the Genetics & Molecular Biology program. Inscripto is a part of Emory Sci Comm, a graduate science communications group that aims to relay complex scientific topics to the general public.

Our website has been live for 5 months now, and we are constantly evolving. Starting this academic year, we hope to bring you other forms of media in addition to articles. We will venture into podcast-land by producing interviews with top Emory scientists and graduate students, so be on the lookout for those!

As scientists working in a lab all day, it’s easy for us to disconnect ourselves from the world and forget that what we do is important for the public to know. At Inscripto, we hope to bridge the general scientific knowledge gap between scientists and the public. We don’t want our politicians thinking vaccines are bad for us, do we? We want those politicians to vote in favor of funding our research, not thinking we’re wasting federal money because there’s no cure for cancer (spoiler alert: there is no cure-all).

In order to inform the misinformed or even the uninformed, we have to effectively communicate what we do. We welcome students to pitch an idea for any type of media we can put on a website, on topics ranging from current issues in their field, topics of public interest, and even their own research. So pitch an idea already!

Welcome to Inscripto: Letter from the Editor

Anzar Abbas

Originally published April 1, 2015

photo by: kristen thomas and jadiel wasson

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Spring 2015 Issue of Inscripto. My name’s Anzar Abbas and I’m a PhD student in the Neuroscience Program at Emory. I was approached last fall by Yun Wei, a fellow graduate student, about restarting an old student organization called the Science Writers Association of Emory. It was an effort made by past graduate students to write about science in a way that would be interesting to the public.

Unfortunately, as those students graduated, SWAE dissolved as well. Yun was able to drum up interest for the group from just enough people, and we embarked upon a mission to recover and relaunch SWAE and its publication, Inscripto. It’s been a challenge, but I’m glad to say we’re finally getting on our feet.The Spring Issue of Inscripto has twice as many contributors than the fall, and we’re proud to launch all of those insightful articles on our brand new website so they’re even easier to read and share amongst your friends.

SWAE’s aim is to provide an opportunity for students at Emory – particularly those working in the STEM fields – to participate in the popular communication of science. They are welcome to write about current issues in their field, topics of public interest, and even their own research. It’s an exercise that hopes to foster a generation of scientists that are better connected to the public, and play a more central role in the delivery of scientific knowledge to the masses.

We hope to do this partly through Inscripto, which aims to provide a comfortable introduction for a scientist to the world of popular science communication. I thank everyone that chose to contribute to the Spring 2015 Issue of Inscripto, especially those who were embarking upon popular science writing for the first time. Most of all, I invite all others to ponder the possibility of contributing as well. Sure, it’s a bit of effort and time. But it easily redeems itself in lessons and an appreciation of the difficulty of explaining complex ideas simply. There is beauty in communicating science in layman’s terms.

Lastly, this publication could not have been possible without every bit of effort from our entire team. I wanted to thank Brindar Sandhu, our Managing Editor, for her leadership and work in producing this Issue, along with our wonderful Associate Editors, Bethany Wilson and Marika Wieliczko. Responsible for the impeccable design behind the text on every page are our talented Design Editors, Kristen Thomas and Jadiel Wasson. If you aren’t reading this in print, you must be reading it online, and for that I would like to thank Sara List for countless hours towards the development of SWAE and Inscripto’s website.

Hope you enjoy the issue!
Until next time
Anzar Abbas
Editor-in-Chief