Speaker
Description
Scientific outreach provides many benefits for researchers, as it helps to acquire and establish (or strengthen) essential skills for an academic career. Yet many barriers prevent interested researchers from participating in outreach programs, such as the lack of time or the lack in experience and information on designing an outreach activity. During my graduate research, I participated in an outreach program targeted at school students. I developed an interactive outreach activity on antibiotic resistance evolution and mathematical models for treatment optimization. Lacking experience, I followed a recommended framework for outreach design. During this process, I encountered multiple challenges, which I addressed through a time-intense trial and error approach in multiple iterations of the program. The key improvement was to incorporates the students feedback before the actual visit. With this case report I want to share my experience and provide helpful insights into designing an outreach activity, which I hope contributes to lowering the barrier to participate in valuable (and fun!) outreach activities.
