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Library

Topic: Science communicators
Awards

Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira Contest for Communication and Journalism in Defense of the Environment, Indigenous Peoples and Traditional Communities

Government of Brazil

"The initiative seeks to recognize and contemplate communication and media education works dedicated to the protection of the environment and the defense of the rights of indigenous peoples and traditional communities and freedom of expression. ... The contest includes works published or aired from January 2023, divided into six categories: 1) Text Reporting; 2) Photojournalism and Visual Arts; 3) Audiovisual Reportage; 4) Indigenous Communication; 5) Communication of Traditional Communities; and 6) Media Education. ... The amount of R$300 thousand [approximately USD$58,000] will be distributed as a financial incentive to the top three in each category. Those selected in first place will receive R$30 thousand; the runners-up, R$15 thousand; and the third, R$5 thousand." The contest, open to journalists, popular communicators, artists and researchers over 18 years old, is free to enter. Deadline: May 21, 2026."
Article

Trump’s 2027 Budget Proposes Deep Cuts to Science Programs

C&EN analyzes the proposal for multiple science agencies, which "would face $73 billion in cuts, including reduced funding for scientific research and health and environmental programs." The article includes many handy outbound links for reference.
Video

Communicating Climate Solutions

Yale Center for Environmental Communication

"How can we most effectively communicate about climate solutions? Many people who are Alarmed about climate change aren’t taking climate action. Within the group of Americans Alarmed about climate change, 46% can be categorized as “willing Alarmed” – they are willing to engage in climate action but rarely do. The webinar featured Miriam Remshard, a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge studying the barriers to effective climate action and how psychological interventions can be used to foster more impactful behavior. Samantha Harrington of Yale Climate Connections moderated the conversation and also provided highlights from over ten years of climate solutions coverage. Sam also walked us through YCC’s Climate Solutions Hub, a tool that helps people find the actions that work best for their life."
Workshop

SWCC In-Person Workshop: Moderating for Impact

Science Writers and Communicators of Canada

"Science writers and communicators are often asked to drive discussions by moderating or sitting on panels in a variety of professional and public venues. How they perform these roles has a big impact on how audiences contextualize important issues and these are roles of increasing importance given the current geopolitical climate. Additionally, acting in these roles can be an important source of income and professional experience. Despite this, there is little training for journalists and science communicators on how to maximize the impacts of these experiences for audiences and moderators. Consequently, panel events often fall into predictable patterns: a mic passed up and down a role of panelists, a lack of on-stage chemistry, awkward and sometimes uncomfortable inequity of air time, and a missed opportunity for everyone. But it doesn’t have to be this way! Dynamic, inclusive, entertaining experiences can help tell meaningful, memorable stories. Effective hosting is a performance that requires artful preparation, creativity and engagement, augmenting and managing a well-chosen format and structure. In addition to teaching basic moderation and facilitation skills, this workshop will help science communications and media professionals hone their hosting skills by tackling pre-event preparation, dynamic event formats, stage-presence, on-stage and virtual interviewing, participant management and audience engagement. Participants will by guided through improvisational techniques to create and experiment with a variety of panel and other moderated formats in a safe, innovation-friendly environment. We’ll develop a vocabulary for managing on stage conversations and use role playing scenarios to try out different styles and techniques in a low-stakes collaborative and supportive environment."
  • Where: Montreal, Quebec
  • When: June 14, 2026 @ 8:30 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. ET
  • Cost: TBD
Registration opens soon.
Video

Press Briefing: 2026’s “Super El Niño” and Its Potential Global Impacts

"Covering Climate Now and Climate Central hosted a webinar exploring the science behind the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and how this supercharged climate pattern may push global temperatures to record-levels. In this press briefing, meteorologists and reporters highlighted the many weather impacts predicted to unfold in 2026-2027 given past El Niño events and equipped journalists with a better understanding of how to make the climate connection in their own reporting."
Fellowships & Grants

Stanford Health Media Fellowship

Stanford School of Medicine

This fellowship is a "paid, graduate-level training opportunity to help fill gaps in solutions-driven health reporting across the United States. Starting with an in-person fall bootcamp, fellows are introduced to a wide scope of health topics, while also taking a deep dive into cross-platform media production. Over the course of six months, fellows engage in mentorship opportunities while producing stories that deepen our understanding of health challenges and disparities — while also featuring the innovative searches for solutions that are targeting these issues head-on." Open to applicants with a traditional media background, as well as those in health care or research. Deadline: April 30, 2026.
Resource Database / Guide

Distributed Energy Resources State Policy Explorer

"The Pew Charitable Trusts, in partnership with the North Carolina Clean Energy Technology Center, developed the Distributed Energy Resources State Policy Explorer to compile and share DER-related legislation enacted throughout the country from 2021 through 2025. ... The state policy explorer features an interactive U.S. map. It contains more than 400 entries, allowing users to filter results by state; policy area (e.g., building codes, community solar, and investment support); crosscutting topics (e.g., resilience); technology, including energy storage, photovoltaic solar, electric vehicles and charging infrastructure; and demand response." Also, find a short analysis of the Explorer tool data here, listing trends and takeaways.
Film competition

Banff Mountain Film Competition

Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity

"The Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival is a programming-driven, competitive event bringing the best films and books on mountains and the spirit of adventure from around the world to the mountain town of Banff, Alberta. The Festival provides an opportunity for filmmakers and writers to meet and exchange ideas."
  • Categories include adventure, climbing, environment, mountain culture, short, feature and more
  • $35,000 CAD in cash prizes to be awarded, as well as consideration for inclusion on the World Tour which screens in over 40 countries
Events

SWCC Webinar: Levelling Up Your Journalism Skills — Fellowships, Scholarships and More

"Science communicators and journalists often reach a point where they want to brush up on foundational knowledge, strengthen specific skills, or delve into a particular area of interest. This virtual event explores how to 'level up' at any stage of your career through funded professional development opportunities such as fellowships and scholarships. At this event, SWCC board member Bryce Hoye will share his experience as a fellow in the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT. He'll be joined by Ashley Smart, associate director of the Knight Science Journalism Program, as well as two organizers of the CBC David Suzuki Scholarship for journalism students — Lesley Birchard and Gina Lorentz — who will welcome audience questions about their programs. By bringing together both personal experiences and program-level insights, this event will give participants a clearer understanding of funded opportunities for Canadian science communicators and journalists across the career spectrum, along with resources for further exploration."
  • When: April 15, 2026 @ 5 - 6 p.m. ET
  • No cost for SWCC members / $30 CAD for nonmembers
Are you a non-member of SWCC registering for this event? If you decide to become a member of SWCC within 2 weeks of the event date, your membership fee (in the applicable category) will be discounted by the amount you paid for event registration. To activate your discounted membership within the 2-week period, email office@sciencewriters.ca."
Article

The System That Decides What Science Gets Published Is Breaking Down

"Every published scientific finding rests on a foundation most people never think about: a judgment, made before publication, that the work is sound. Every drug approval, every climate projection, every economic forecast that shapes policy depends on it. Without that judgment, the scientific literature would be indistinguishable from noise. That judgment is now under serious strain. ... If peer review is to survive, the scientific community needs to treat it as what this paper reveals it to be: a fragile commons, not a free resource."
Conference

Science of Sci-Comms E-Summit

The Eco Well

"A full-day free e-conference on the science of science communication. ... This event will give you a cross section of the important topics to consider for good scicomm, according to the growing research behind it. ... While this conference series is aimed at the cosmetics space, if you are someone wanting to learn more about the science of scicomm, you should attend. This event would be especially helpful for scientists wanting to communicate their science, science communicators wanting to do better scicomm, companies wanting to implement better scicomm, and anyone wanting to support good scicomm. ... Registration includes live access to the summit, on-demand replays and a comprehensive e-book summary."
  • When: May 3, 2026, 8 a.m. - 4 p.m. ET
Video

Are You Making These 10 Mistakes in Your Science Communication?

"Watch the recording from Jess Lupini's presentation to the University of Calgary's Faculty of Science. Part of their Science Communication Webinar series, Jess walks us through how to use text, images, video, and data to create higher-impact science presentations."
Resource Database / Guide

Covering Drugs: A Media Resource Guide

This guide includes research, surveys, data, and other helpful information for journalists covering substance use, addiction, overdose, harm reduction, treatment, and recovery."
Article

Opinion: Science Communication Is Central to the Practice of Science

"Explaining and defending knowledge is as essential to the scientific enterprise as publishing research. ... The phrase 'science communication' encompasses a movement of creators, writers, and scientists who aim to turn the products of science — discovery, theory, technical innovations — into more digestible forms. This includes science writing in public-facing venues (trade books, newspapers, magazines, blogs), in multimedia (TV, film), and increasingly on social media platforms. The movement has created a new professional class. Science communicators host television shows, direct short films, do stand-up comedy, make music, and utilize the visual arts. They win major awards and attend conferences. ... While this is all very exciting, I argue that we must not allow science communication to be pushed to the margins. Instead, the authors of rigorous science communication products are conducting an essential activity of formal scientific practice, charged with transfiguring complex ideas and bringing them into the homes and minds of many. And in this sense, the best science communicators are working like many science luminaries from the past, such as Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday, and others. Consequently, their products can be considered as central to scientific practice as the average peer-reviewed manuscript."
Video

How To Enhance Public Trust in Science

Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA)

"What helps people trust science, and why does that trust sometimes break down? In this keynote at ISTA, Michael John Gorman, Director of the MIT Museum and Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at MIT, reflects on the challenges of communicating science in an age of misinformation. Drawing on decades of research into how scientific ideas are received and understood, Gorman argues that facts alone are not enough. Preserving a sense of wonder, he suggests, may be just as important for sustaining public engagement with science."
Organization

Balkan Network of Science Journalists

"This is a group of science journalists, writers and communicators from across South East Europe, interested in improving quality of critical and ethical science coverage in the media. ... A webinar on 13 March [2026] discussed the Balkan Network of Science Journalists' ambitious project to produce specially tailored guides to science journalism for various countries in Southeast Europe. The aim is to combine international best practices in science journalism with local nuances and an understanding of each country's media and research landscape, in order to give aspiring science journalists a practical and useful set of guides to help them build a career reporting in their own language for media in their own country. The webinar discussed the project, including yearly networking and skills seminars, and brainstormed ideas for continuing and expanding the project in the next few years."
  • Find links to the science journalism guides on the BNSJ blog, in Turkish, Croatian, Slovenian, Hungarian, Romanian, Albanian and Bulgarian (as of Dec. 2025).
Fellowships & Grants

Roy W. Dean Grant for Filmmakers

"The Roy W. Dean Grant funds independent films that are unique and make a contribution to society that, without its help, might otherwise never get made." Grants range from $3,000-3,500, along with up to $20,000 in services and discounts for production and post-production. Grant application fee waivers are available for those in financial need. 2026 deadlines:
Article

Marlene Zuk on Tackling Writer’s Block (As a Scientist)

"Structure may help some scientists write, but it doesn’t address the root cause of the problem. I believe our writer’s block stems from the same place as that of other writers: it’s not a writing problem, it’s a thinking problem. Writing is thinking, which means that if you aren’t sure of what you want to say, you can’t write. But scientists don’t always recognize that connection."
Article

An Engineer’s Fatal Flaw: Why Accessibility Is the Ultimate Metric of Mastery

Association of Science Communicators

"If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, do you really understand it? In this guest piece, Maggi Richard challenges the esoteric tone of academic publishing. From sci-fi tropes to gold standard examples, she explores why accessibility – not complexity – is the true mark of mastery. By approaching communication training with the same rigor we apply to calculus, scientists can ensure their breakthroughs reach the general public with clarity. Read the full blog post to discover how breaking down technical barricades can help raise the global standard of innovation."
Workshop

Banff Centre’s Mountain Writers Intensive

Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity

"The Mountain Writers Intensive is a three-week residency for twelve writers in fiction, nonfiction, journalism, or poetry. Ideal for projects on mountain narratives, adventure, environmental journalism, and the human connection to landscape, the program emphasizes literary excellence and narrative development. Writers enjoy dedicated time to create, connect with peers, and receive mentorship in Banff’s inspiring mountain setting. The residency overlaps with the Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival, offering opportunities to engage with visiting authors, editors, and publishers. Lodging and meals are included, allowing participants to fully focus on their craft and creative growth. The program is designed to cater to emerging and established writers in all genres working on mountain narratives, environmental journalism, stories of adventure, or projects with an environmental theme."
  • Application deadline: April 15
  • Scholarships available
Fellowships & Grants

Pulitzer Center Impact Seed Fund

"The Pulitzer Center Impact Seed Fund (ISF) supports educational and engagement initiatives in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia related to issues highlighted in Pulitzer Center-supported journalism, addressing the most critical challenges confronting our planet's ecosystems and communities. The 2026 ISF focuses on ocean, transparency and governance, and climate change, rainforests, and its interconnection with workers and vulnerable communities. Grants range from USD $2,500 to $4,000, varying by region." Deadlines:
  • Africa and Latin America: April 19, 2026
  • Southeast Asia: May 3, 2026
 
Conference

2026 Outrider Science Media Forum

"In collaboration with NASA’s Health and Applied Sciences Team (HAQAST), the Outrider Science Media Forum is a platform for journalists, digital creators, and scientists to learn about and discuss the latest tools and trends in science reporting. This free, one-day conference and training focuses on how media makers can integrate NASA research and resources into their human health and environmental reporting. Applications are open on our conference website through April 15, 2026. Space is limited. Event registration includes all conference sessions and networking events, including the welcome reception and meals, as well as access to post-conference video recordings. We offer travel grants to U.S. reporters to cover the cost of lodging and travel to Madison, Wisconsin."
Article

Using Science To Combat Misinformation and Disinformation

"A common desire of scientists involved in public engagement, including speaking with the media, is to debunk misinformation. Refuting false claims effectively is an uphill battle, but it can be incredibly valuable. While research is mixed on the best practices, here are tips to get you started."
Awards

50X50: Science Across America

"50X50: Science Across America is a new YouTube series by the Independent Media Initiative (IMI) to uncover the most compelling science in America. We’re partnering with 50 creators and 50 scientists across each of the 50 states to publish 50 videos in celebration of American science. From physics to chemistry, agriculture to biomedicine, geology to astronomy, 50X50 Science explores science as it exists everywhere. Each creator will profile a researcher in their native state to create a panorama of American science, and share it on their own YouTube channel for a platform-wide takeover spanning 50 days. ... Videos will roll out region-by-region across the United States starting in September and ending in November, 2026. The 50 creators will be selected by early April 2026. ... 50x50, together with production partner HHMI Tangled Bank Studios, has access to many of the country’s most exceptional scientists. If you're in search of a story, we can help matchmake."
Training program

Effective Science Communication: How To Discuss Your Work With Various Audiences

American Chemical Society (ACS) Institute

“In this course, participants will learn how to translate their work into compelling and readily-understandable, everyday language that will engage the public and help them appreciate science. This course will also help practicing scientists build the skills and techniques necessary to better communicate their scientific interests, research, and current projects to other scientists not familiar with the details of the workshop participant’s field. Designed for scientists at all education and experience levels, this workshop features a group exercise that help drive home its practical applications. After this workshop, expect to encounter far fewer glazed-over eyes and more engaged audiences.”
  • When: March 21, 1:30-3:30 pm ET
  • Where: At ACS Spring 2026 in Atlanta, Georgia
  • Cost: $95-$195