Wisconsin Initiative for Science Literacy (WISL) Award for Communicating Postdoctoral Research to the Public

$250 Award for Each Approved Article

“Scientists should help enlighten and enable people to make informed choices, to be skeptical, to reject shams, quackery, unproven conjecture, and to avoid being bamboozled into making foolish decisions where matters of science and technology are concerned.”

The Wisconsin Initiative for Science Literacy (WISL) and the UW-Madison Office of Postdoctoral Studies invite postdocs in all science and engineering areas to write a short article (3-5 pages) that describes their research to non-science audiences.

This is one way to enable sharing of research with family, friends, neighbors, community groups, funding agencies, state legislators, members of the U.S. Congress, and others.

Approved articles will be posted on the WISL website, included as part of a university press release, and shared with funding agencies and elected officials.

To create these articles, WISL offers postdocs the same support they have been providing PhD students for over a decade:

• A set of guidelines to assist in communicating your research to non-science audiences.
• The assistance of an editor to help hone your article for non-science readership.
• An award of $250 for each approved article.

It is crucial to connect UW-Madison's research with non-scientific audiences. This is an important professional responsibility that is both rewarding and consequential.

Interested? Contact scifun@chem.wisc.edu. Please include your department and the subject of your research.