Future of Science

The first Artist In Residence at SETI Institute creates haunting alien shapes

In creating an “open science workforce”:

This link is a signal for a forecast I’m thinking about: a way of bringing people without formal science backgrounds to get excited about science and make contributions in unique/clever ways by creating new jobs within scientific companies/agencies that may not have been thought about before.

Example 1: a physicist may not think there’s anything for a designer to do at an accelerator laboratory, but if you point to the interfaces/visualizations that physicists often create just to communicate their data, they then realize there really are opportunities for motivated, creative people in their workplace. Usually, they’re so used to working without the help of outsiders, that it’s just not even a consideration day-to-day. 

Example 2: Eri Gentry (of BioCurious) and myself (Ariel Waldman of Spacehack.org) both had an opportunity to work at a science-focused company and that’s what shifted our perceptions and inspired us to get involved and make an impact in science. Had we not had those opportunities, we wouldn’t be working in making science more open today.