“We want to convey that science is so important to our nation and work we do across the national labs impacts the people in our country,” Antonya Sanders said.
| Guest: | Antonya Sanders |
| Title: | Postdoctoral & Student Programs Director, Los Alamos National Laboratory |
| Summary: | This week, early‑career scientists will step up to a microphone and have three minutes to explain their research to policymakers, without jargon and with only one slide. The National Lab Research SLAM is designed to move ideas out of the lab and into federal decision‑making faster — informing policy along the way. |
Interview transcript:
Terry Gerton The National Lab Research SLAM gets underway tomorrow, and I suspect many people have heard about poetry slams, but not about national research slams. So help us understand what this forum is all about and what it’s really designed to do.
Antonya Sanders We are now in the third year of bringing the DOE National Lab Research SLAM to Capitol Hill. It is a dynamic way to showcase the work happening across the national labs. So what it is, some of you might have heard of a “thesis in three,” so we ask early career researchers, there’s one from each of the 17 national labs, and they have to come and share their science to a non-technical audience in three minutes. So it’s a fast-paced science communication competition. And again, it’s primarily early career researchers. Most of them are post-docs or within five to six years of receiving their PhD.
Terry Gerton How do you select just one from each lab to have this opportunity?
Antonya Sanders Most of the national labs, now because we’ve been doing this for a few years, most of the labs have a local competition. Some of us even have regional competition, so I know there’s at least one regional competition in California and there’s one, the Rio Grand SLAM, which is between Colorado and New Mexico labs, and so we select our finalists through local competitions. And then often, the lab directors, if there’s sort of a tie or a couple options, the lab directors will select their final candidate.
Terry Gerton Three minutes of non-technical science explanation can be pretty challenging. What do these candidates learn most as they go through this process?
Antonya Sanders It is a challenge. They work really hard to be precise and detailed. They have to distill their work — years of their work throughout their graduate school and PhD work — into three minutes. It’s really valuable because it forces them to focus on what really matters and why their work is important to the general public and to the policymakers who we are sharing our science with.
Terry Gerton You’re doing this on Capitol Hill, so presumably there will be members and staff available to participate as audience members here. What is it that you really want to convey to those key decision makers through this process?
Antonya Sanders We want to convey that science is really important to our nation and the work that we do across the national labs impacts the people in our country. These finalists are sharing their science with policymakers, the people shaping policy and the funding decisions. And so it helps the policymakers to hear directly from the scientists about the impact that their work has on our nation.
Terry Gerton As we’re describing this format, it’s obviously very different from a traditional research conference where people would present papers for hours and take questions from a scientific audience. What does the SLAM format allow the researchers to do differently and communicate differently than a more conventional science conference?
Antonya Sanders Oh, this is a significantly shorter and very precise communication style. So their communication is not to their colleagues. Their communication is to the general public and policymakers who likely don’t understand all the jargon and the specifics of their field. So they have to — there’s a lot of analogies, there is a lot of generalizations about some of the work. They talk about their work and then they talk about why this is important to the country and why this important to fund.
Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Antonya Sanders. She’s the postdoctoral and students programs director at Los Alamos National Lab. Antonya, the national labs support a wide range of agency missions, everything from energy and climate to security and science. So as this event begins, how are you thinking about connecting these early stage researchers to those longer-term priorities at the labs?
Antonya Sanders So the finalists for this event really have a powerful career development opportunity throughout this event. They’re building skills that they’ll carry with them throughout their careers, they learn how to communicate across different disciplines, they’re learning how to engage various stakeholders and they’re really learning how to be ambassadors for their work. Which applies to all of the DOE national labs and the science missions that we’re trying to accomplish. We need to be able to inform the public. Why our work is important and teaching these early career staff how to do this in such an engaging and thoughtful way prepares them for the rest of their career and advances DOE missions and goals to share our science with the world.
Terry Gerton You mentioned that this is the third instance of the SLAM. What have you seen as the results of the two previous ones? Are research opportunities expanding? Is there more collaboration across the labs? Maybe just more awareness of the work?
Antonya Sanders We’ve really seen this event mature over the last few years. So in the first year we were just sort of introducing the idea. In the second year we had strong participation and visibility. So now that we’re in year three, we’re really working on building lasting impact. We want the participants to take these skills back to their labs. We want to grow more interest across the system. And we want continued support from Congress. So this is becoming how we communicate DOE science more broadly. We’ve certainly seen participants in the past years that have converted to staff within the national lab system, so we enjoy keeping our talent within our organizations. But a lot of our post-docs and early career staff end up moving on to other industries or academia that continue to collaborate with the national lab system and continue to support our growth in science.
Terry Gerton And how have you seen the reception from Congress and congressional staff change as you’ve matured the SLAM process?
Antonya Sanders We’ve seen exceptional engagement from congressional staff. They appreciate the format because it’s quick and it’s a clear way to understand some of the complex topics that we’re talking about. And the members also really enjoy seeing the people behind the science. So today, the finalists are meeting with different congressional staff and sort of, you know, the 17 finalists with one or two different congressional staff members. And they have simple conversations about science policy, about the importance of the science the national lab system is doing. So this really increases engagement with congressional staff and our early career national lab scientists.
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