Six years ago my friend Eilís and I (above) went on an adventure from Boston to Washington D.C., Chinatown to Chinatown. An overnight journey to visit the capital city for a jam-packed 12 hours. Science (working in a lab) gave me an unforgettable J1 journey to the United States. Last night, I found myself booking flights to revisit Washington D.C. and again it is thanks to science. I’ve been invited to join this year’s cohort of To Think, To Write, To Publish Fellows!

To Think, To Write, To Publish is a yearlong programme sponsored by the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes (CSPO) at Arizona State University and supported by the National Science Foundation. This programme sponsors 12 early career scholars and 12 emerging next generation communicators to participate in a series of conferences and workshops. These take place in Washington D.C. in October and Arizona in May. I applied as a communicator back in June and was absolutely delighted to be offered a place.

Communicating science and innovation policy is at the core of this programme. The entire day dedicated to science policy at ESOF showed me how important this aspect of science communication is. One of the speakers during this policy day was Co-Director of CSPO at Arizona State University, Prof. Dave Guston. He was part of a diverse panel that spoke about responsible research and innovation.

The programme also focuses on creative nonfiction using narrative, scene and storytelling to engage and inform readers. I’m really looking forward to learning new techniques and improving my ability to communicate complicated topics.

#IHuggedBora at ESOF 2012

For me, the most exciting aspect of all of this will be meeting and working with lots of interesting like-minded people!

I’d like to thank the wonderful Bora Zivkovic (@BoraZ) for spreading the word about this programme on Twitter. Only for him tweeting about it, I would never have stumbled upon this great opportunity and thrown my hat in. An even better reason for hugging him at ESOF (as if I needed one).

This summer just keeps getting better!