Bridging the Gap: Rebecca Williams

It’s been a while, but we are back with our Bridging the Gap series! Usually, we speak with women in neuroscience about health inequalities and the research aiming to close these gaps. But in this special interview, we’re shifting focus to public engagement - a crucial, yet often overlooked, part of bridging gaps between science and society.

Rebecca Williams, PhD researcher and science communicator

This time, we hear from Rebecca Williams, a passionate science communicator and PhD researcher. With a background in dementia and computational neuroscience, Rebecca is building her scientific career alongside her drive to make complex science accessible and inclusive. She shares her journey from the lab bench to public engagement, the importance of building trust with diverse audiences, and the challenges - and rewards - of creating meaningful dialogue between scientists and the public.

"Someone has to be the next generation of scientists, and it could very easily be you."

Firstly, please could you give us a brief summary of the different public engagement activities you've been involved in? 

Absolutely. Braintastic! was my first ever paid science communication opportunity, working with Ginny Smith. It's a fantastic team of people doing science communication shows across the UK. It was a great opportunity to go into schools and take this massive science kit and run some experiments. Lots of fun to be had! The dementia researcher blogs and podcasts were the first written science communication I'd ever done. I was trying to take on as much as I could - doing different things to keep my brain active and I think it’s helped my writing a lot. 

"...learn to say yes to opportunities."

I also do a lot of in-person events through, oh gosh, a million different charities and organisations! STEM ambassadors is a great starting point for anyone looking to do science communication. They're an online hub that you sign up to, and after a DBS check you can get involved with a number of opportunities with schools! My favourite one at the minute is called I'm a Scientist (Get Me Out of Here!); they run moderated virtual chats that schools can book onto. As a scientist, you enter the virtual chat and talk with students for half an hour - it can have a great impact. There are also options like Skype for Scientist, which is worldwide. I've given talks to Spain and lots of schools in the US. 

I've worked with the University of the Third Age, Alzheimer's Research UK, the Cambridge Festival at their open days, at big biology days, and at careers fairs. 

Rebecca hosting Pint of Science

My advice for anyone looking to get into science communication is to learn to say yes to opportunities. Often, if you invite someone to come and do a talk, most of the time, if they're free, they will say yes. If you send around an open invite asking for speakers, you often won't get any responses. Most of the science communication opportunities that I am involved in were through responding to open invites. I know it's very important to protect your boundaries in academia and we talk a lot about learning to say no to things. However, I think especially with science communication, there's also learning to say yes! I think we assume, “oh, no, I won't have time for something like that”. But you might! And it could be a really fun opportunity. I've made most of my connections that way. 

You’ve been involved in so many things! You mentioned that it's improved your writing skills doing the dementia researcher blogs. Do you think that science communication has benefited your PhD, or your science career, in any other ways?

I think science communication has helped my speaking. That's the most direct link - the more that you do it, the more you get into a rhythm. You find your communication style, which is something that I've really enjoyed finding. I go into my science talks (and my academic talks) with the mentality that I’m running a stand-up comic set, rather than running a scientific talk. That's something that I've only really found by trialling different styles - trying out different things, different jokes, different sets, different scientific content - and seeing what works for people. It's improved my ability - my confidence to throw a bit of comedy into my scientific talks.

"[Academics] still have a sense of humour and usually laugh if you make a joke."

Even when I'm talking to academics, they are still people. They do still have a sense of humour and usually laugh if you make a joke. I think that helps to break down a lot of those boundaries that can make academic speaking so nerve wracking. There is a fear that I'm going to be judged by people that know more than me. For me, humour calms me down and I think helps the audience come with me on this journey. Adding a bit about your life or making it personal can also help. So, it's really helped me from a confidence perspective and from a speaking perspective, finding that style.

As I said before, there are a lot of selfish reasons to do science communication. In academia, although I love doing research, it's very easy to get lost in the woods and not be able to see the bigger picture. For me it’s important to keep a healthy balance of science communication peppered in with my research. Going out and explaining the big picture - of my PhD, or of dementia research, or of computational neuroscience to people that aren't familiar with it, means that I have to go in with these very broad strokes. 

It's always a really great reminder to me of why I do what I do and I leave feeling much more motivated because I can see the bigger picture again when I've just had to explain it to a six year old. So I think it's also really helped with my motivation. When you're surrounded by the extraordinary every day, you can forget what you're doing is ludicrous, complicated stuff.

I especially like explaining the hardcore computer modelling to lay audiences because it really helps me to understand what on Earth's going on. There's some things where I'll think I've got a really good grasp of it and then I'll try and explain it and I'll realise that I’m starting to parrot stuff from papers because I don't actually understand foundationally what it's doing, so I can't put it into my own words. So also for my understanding, especially for some of the more complicated stuff, it's been really helpful to have to adapt it and explain why we're doing this and what is it to lay audiences. That’s been really helpful.

It's been proven that it consolidates things by teaching them to other people. It's really helping your own learning and communicating science to different audiences can be a challenge, especially when you don't know what level of science people have. 

You said that you've done quite a lot of work with schools and travelling around the country. A lot of people find the idea of presenting to kids - who can ask the most challenging questions on the spot - quite intimidating. You're quite an outgoing, bubbly and engaging person. Have you figured out strategies for communicating? What advice would you give to other people that are considering science communication to young people?

In my opinion, communicating with little kids is one of the best experiences because they're natural scientists - they just don't know it yet. One of my favourite games to play is to get them to ask questions about the world. I ask them if they have any questions and they'll hesitantly begin to put their hands up, starting with questions like, “why do we have to go to school?” or, “why does maths work this way?”. But after 30 seconds, I'll have every student with their hand up. And we’ve entered full existential crisis mode with questions like, “Who is God? Where did we come from? What happens when we die?”. They so quickly begin asking these massive questions that you would never think a six-year-old would be pondering. Sometimes I get told that I shouldn't be explaining what dementia is to kids that are so young, and I understand that opinion. It must be done with a lot of sensitivity. But in more broad talks, where I don't bring up dementia and instead talk about what science is and what a scientist looks like, even then we end up with the big questions: “How do you study the brain when it's dead? What happens to your brain when you die?”. They're very curious about all these topics, which they have in common with you as a scientist, and that is part of the joy! To them, you are bright and shiny because you might have some of the answers to these big questions. You won’t have all the answers but getting them to start asking the questions is a great first step. 

Just bear in mind that you can introduce yourself as a neuroscientist. You can explain what a neuroscientist is. They will still ask you questions about physics, astrophysics, anthropology, and just about anything else.

In terms of engaging kids, there's a couple of tricks that I've picked up that I think are universally quite useful when you're working with little ones under the age of 10. I think people are often worried about losing control of a class or a group of children because they don't engage in the same social contract as a group of adults - who will sit and listen to you attentively, even if they're daydreaming about something else. But on the bright side, that means that, if you've got a room full of adults, you don't know if you have their attention. They could be daydreaming about XYZ. It will be very clear with kids whether you have their attention or not. If you have a really rowdy room of kids, two things that I do are “1, 2, 3, eyes on me”, standing at the front - that's how you start cults! They pick it up really quickly, especially the younger ones. They love a call and response. That's a really good one to calm them down. The other one works in rooms full of adults as well, for example if people are talking and you would like them to quieten, start off talking really loud - don't shout, but project your voice as loudly as you can and then start bringing down the volume one word at a time. As you decrease the volume, the room will usually naturally follow because people are straining to hear you. 

"As scientists, we are used to being very cautious and downplaying what we do. In a room full of 6-year-olds, you are the coolest person in the world..."

In terms of how to keep kids’ attention: I am very bouncy; I bounce off the walls. Kids are curious about science and scientists, which helps. As scientists, we are used to being very cautious and downplaying what we do. In a room full of 6-year-olds, you are the coolest person in the world, and you must own that. If you show, or act, like you believe that too then they will believe the same. I get very excited about science. That's my trick to engaging little ones. That's how I like to be a communicator and the same with grown-ups - people ask me how much coffee or energy drinks I've had before I do a scientific talk. I don't drink coffee or energy drinks. I'm just high on life.

But also, I've seen people with very different science communication styles do just as well. And I think that's important to emphasise that there are different communication styles and just because I've found success with my communication style, especially to engage little ones, it doesn't mean there aren't others. The through line seems to be a sense of humour. I think if you start taking it too seriously for anyone, but especially for kids, then they'll disengage. You have to keep it human.

Kids are great workshopping ground for scientific talks because they give all of the reactions that everyone else might have dialled in. If you're starting to lose them, you can see that. Perhaps one tactic isn't quite working and therefore you can apply that to your toolbox for presenting to everyone else, including academic audiences - understanding that even though academics might not be getting up and running out of the classroom like kids might, you may have lost some people. 

I like that. I think that it can be quite difficult to relax during talks, especially because scientists can be used to a rigidity, for example at scientific conferences. 

This is the thing. The first thing I did during my talk at my first ever international conference was to ask the audience to put their hand up if they’d ever filled in a questionnaire. Most of the room put their hands up. I asked them to keep their hand up if they’d ever got bored halfway through and started filling it in with no intention at all and they all kept their hand up. There was a little bit of a laugh, and I had people coming up to me afterwards saying, “I can't believe you did that”. In my mind, I’d asked people for the minimum, which didn't feel like I was breaking the boundaries of anything. But, like you say, there's such a rigid style in how we do academic talks - the minute you walk away from the podium, the minute you slouch a little bit, the minute you crack a joke, it lets everyone know your intentions about your presentation style. I think it creates this little bubble - yeah, we're all academics and we all do very clever stuff, but we can chill out now and talk some science.

I think a lot of us struggle with trying to bring an interactive aspect to our presentations; we might be worried that people won't interact. For example when an academic does a lecture and asks their students to answer a question and it's just met with that deathly, awkward silence…

The kind of interaction I'm always wary of is exactly that. Right off the bat, never use the word “obviously”: “Oh well, it's obvious that-“ or “it naturally follows that-”. For at least one person in that room, it is not obvious, and for everyone else, it might not be either, so it's just not worth the risk. Never assume knowledge on behalf of your audience.

But asking people about universal truths, or pretty much universal truths, can be really handy. For example, “put your hand up if you filled in a questionnaire” - everyone's filled in a questionnaire so that removes the pressure because all of you will have done it. It's kind of a bit of a non-question. 

The other thing I like doing is asking questions that have absolutely nothing to do with science because it takes the pressure off. In a room full of scientists, you're worried that you're going to answer it wrong and make yourself look silly, but answering something non-scientific for a game is completely different. My favourite slide that I start most of my dementia talks with is of celebrities who have or had dementia diagnoses: Rosa Parks, Terry Pratchett, Ronald Reagan, Robin Williams, Margaret Thatcher. I have it on while students come in. And then I say, “right, who are these people?” And they get thrown for a loop because it's nothing to do with science; it's just celebrities. 

I think it’s a good way to break down barriers - asking people questions that aren't really questions, that are just universal truths that we know are true. “Have you ever had one of those days where you don't want to get off the sofa?” Everyone's had one of those days. Boom. You're into an apathy talk. “Have you ever been to a talk that you’ve become lost in the first 5 minutes?” Not only is it meta, but everyone's experienced it. You've got their attention. “Can anyone remember how we got in here?” There is a way to connect people to your research, whatever level of abstraction there may be. We study the brain and everyone has one, even if the question you ask is, “can you put your hand up if you've got a brain?"

If you break down that wall, people are more likely to engage with you for the rest of the presentation. There’s nothing more terrifying than asking a question with no one putting their hand up, so ask a question that you know everyone will say yes to.

You’ve talked about your dementia research a little bit - when you do public engagement, do you talk about your own work or do you do sessions on more general neuroscience, for example what a neurone is?

The first talks that I gave were very much “this is what life is like for a scientist and this is how I got here”. And by the virtue of the fact that I'm a dementia researcher; to do that, I had to explain what dementia was. A lot of what I do, especially for kids, is focussed more on scientists than science. The key message I want them to take away is the understanding that being a scientist is a concrete career that they can actually do. As a kid you might consider crazy careers like being an astronaut, a Hollywood movie star – careers you saw on TV – being a neuroscientist isn’t necessarily something that will be suggested to you. It wasn’t a career that I had ever considered. 

Just introducing neuroscience as a viable option, and providing something concrete, like my path to get here, is useful. Even better is when I go to my old high school and I have pictures of me in the uniform that they're wearing, in the same rooms they're studying in, and to be able to say, “I know this seems so far away, but it's not. And I did it. And you can do it”. It's something I'm incredibly passionate about. 

There were so many moments in my life where I was so close to not even giving it a go because it felt like something out of reach. I live in fear of someone being faced with that same fork in the road and not taking the leap for no other reason than that they don’t think it’s a possibility for them. 

I do a lot of talks about that: how my weekly timetable looks, how I spend my time. I do not live in a dark room; I do a lot of talking to scientists, I do a lot of collaborating, I get to visit places around the world, I scan brains. “Do you like coding? Have you used Redstone on Minecraft? Great. I love coding too”.

I also emphasise that I didn't do science early on. I think this is the stereotype about science - you're either a scientist, or you're not. My A-Levels were French, English Literature, Maths, and Psychology. Often students will assume you studied Biology, Chemistry, and Maths. Emphasising that you can pivot and that you don't have to be a scientist from the beginning is very important. 

We do a lot of talks about computational neuroscience as a field, especially with kids using ChatGPT - nobody knows what ChatGPT is really doing. You explain to them what a large language model is and what it's doing, and it takes away some of that mysticism. It teaches them what to trust and what not to. We also talk about why we do computational neuroscience. I get adults asking why using computers is useful for neuroscience. Explaining what models are and how we use models to try and understand more of the mechanisms that are going on in the brain is useful. The brain is this black box that we can't see into, so we have to make a box that produces the same output to get an inclination of what might be going on. And I really enjoy that because, like I say, computational neuroscience is something people hear, and their brains just go boom. Computational neuroscience may be incredibly complex, but I'm going to explain it to you in 60 seconds and you're going to understand exactly what it is I do.

Demystifying the science a little bit, making it much more approachable, is what most of my talks centre around. The minority of the talks that I do are about my research. My overall goal is to humanise science and scientists, rather than providing a platform for my own research. However, as I get more research under my belt, I'm sure that that will naturally filter in.

I have sometimes found that I’ve switched off during particularly complex talks and I think, “as a scientist, I should really understand this”. But as soon as I start seeing lots of unfamiliar formulae on the screen, I'm lost. 

"Talking to lay audiences uses all the same skills as talking to academic audiences"

How many people do? I don't know why we don't normalise this, right? So few of us are mathematicians and I think we need to stop assuming that people will understand all of our work at the same level as us. Talking to lay audiences uses all the same skills as talking to academic audiences, amplified, and we should take the skills both ways. If you wouldn't use an equation to a lay audience, do not use it to an academic audience because most of them will have a higher level of general neuroscience knowledge, but their knowledge of this particular equation or model that you're using is roughly equivalent to the lay audience. Stop using equations. You can have one per slideshow. There's enough impostor syndrome. None of us know what's going on sometimes, and I think, like I say, admitting that is really key. I start all of my academic talks, especially when I'm going into really hardcore modelling, or MEG (magnetoencephalography) functional imaging data by saying, “look, this is a 'no person left behind' situation. If at any point you get lost, it's my fault for losing you, not yours for getting lost. Please put your hand up, ask clarifying questions” etc. It is my job to take you through this. The onus is never on the audience - if you get lost, let me know because I've done something wrong.

"You don’t need to be an era-defining genius to understand [science]."

I think especially for women in science, but also for everyone, there is this belief that science is a technical field – which is true – but you don’t need to be an era-defining genius to understand it. Despite the fact that now what I do is a lot of statistics and computational modelling, I do not define myself as a ‘technical girly’ and it's only when I look more objectively, or I am reminded by people, that what I do is quite technical, isn't it? I think it's so weird that we dissociate from the stuff that we do like: “I just muddle through that, so that doesn't really count. But what everyone else does, that's the really technical stuff”.

I think it's really important that we demystify science and humanise it a little bit because it’s not just these era-defining technical people. Someone has to be the next generation of scientists, and it could very easily be you. That's the message I try to get across a lot. It’s the reason that I very nearly didn't apply to Oxford. I was like, “oh, it doesn't take people like me”. And someone went, “why?”.

And that's how I feel about science; “Why can't you be a scientist?” And for some people, the answer will be, “oh, I don't really like science”. And I'm like, fine, go at it, have fun. But if the answer to why can't you be a scientist is because, “oh, well, I can't”. That’s the answer we desperately want to avoid people having because if they want to do it, it is absolutely something they could do.

I think there's more of a drive now to have representation of female scientists. This is a silly example, but it's important and it made me smile: I was in a service station, and I saw this ‘Happy Meal’ toy window display for McDonald's. They were featuring scientists, and they had little books about each one - there were some female scientists represented! And I just thought, “oh, that's amazing for a company like McDonald's to be making the decision to present children with that”. And I think it made me realise, that even as a female scientist myself, I am more likely to remember the famous male scientists’ names like Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein. It's frustrating to know that my exposure to female scientists has been far less than to male scientists. They’ve also done studies where they've asked kids to draw a scientist and they're saying more than ever that kids are drawing women as scientists, so there is change happening! 

Which is great. Yeah, it really works. Another slide that I have is of famous scientists. It includes Stephen Hawking, Einstein, but also Nikola Tesla - who started from very poor beginnings, was not destined to be a scientist by any means – Ada Lovelace, Catherine Johnson - who got much bigger because of hidden figures (people are more aware of her for the mathematics that she did for NASA) - Chien Shiung Wu, who was massive working on the Manhattan Project - she was a crazy, crazy, experimental physicist. Usually I’ll ask them to name a scientist and I’ll often get Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking back, but for the first time last week, the first person they named was Ada Lovelace. And I was like, “Oh my God, it's happening!” 

It's definitely changing; in my celebrity panel, one of the first people that gets recognised 80% of the time is Rosa Parks. And I've got presidents, prime ministers here in the UK, actors, activists and Rosa Parks is picked out first 80% of the time. More and more people are knowing Marie Curie too, and knowing Catherine Johnson, even if they can't recognise her in a photo. When I say, “has anyone seen the movie ‘Hidden Figures’?”, everyone goes, “Yeah, she's the NASA lady”. It's definitely getting better. 

I do think it helps having people go and do scientific talks. I think science communication tends to be dominated by women in science - make up your own reasons for that. It’s definitely true that there are some fantastic men in science communication and in fact a lot of the popular science communicators like Brian Cox, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and David Attenborough are men. There isn't really a big female science communicator reaching those levels within the media. 

I have no idea what the percentages would be on the ground, but anecdotally there are many more female science communicators than men. So I'm hoping that that also has an impact on kids in schools - seeing more women, women of colour, and trans women neuroscientists filling these spaces.

But also, if you're a man in science, please come and do science communication because they also need to see you. Everyone is important here!

I think it's the exact same with academia. There are less women as you move up the career stages. 

Yes exactly, as I said there are only three famous female scientists that come to mind right now. And, you know, there were no female Nobel laureates this year. When you look at the overall statistics of how many Nobel prizes have gone out to men compared to women, you’re like, yes, that is an abysmal number. But also for the vast majority of the history of the Nobel prizes, women weren't allowed to be educated, or be scientists, or get degrees. So, it's inflated by the fact that women have only really been allowed within the scientific field for the last X many years. And when I looked this year, hoping to see more, there was none! And I was like, oh, for Pete's sake.

I read your review of the awards event. Thank you for featuring us. You talked about your internalised perception of growing up and viewing femininity and sciences as two binary topics (see our response here). I really liked seeing that posted because I think we probably all felt that but didn’t really express it. Could you talk a bit more about it and how you've managed to change, or are working to change, your internalised perceptions?

The WiNUK Awards was a great night. Binarity was not something that I clocked consciously until my undergraduate study; this was when I started to see more women in science and women who were really embracing their femininity, whilst in no way diminishing how incredible they were as a scientist. When I was in high school, however, I was very aware of the fact that I didn't want to be seen as a woman. I wanted to be seen as clever. It's only looking back that I can see that really horrid mismatch: see me as a nerd, that's how I want to be perceived, as someone who is really intelligent. If I put on makeup or fake nails, or try hard on my hair, people will start to notice me being more feminine. That will, in some way, diminish how they see me as an intelligent person. I know now that this is utter insanity. I don’t know where I got it from because it definitely didn't come from my family. I guess it’s cultural osmosis. 

"There is definitely an unfortunate stereotype of what a typical scientist is"

It’s the same with my accent - I'm from the northwest of England, so this isn't my natural accent. Anytime I do talks, unless I try really hard, a different accent comes out. I don't hear nearly as many academics that sound like me, all the scientists are speaking in received pronunciation (RP) on the TV. There is definitely an unfortunate stereotype of what a typical scientist is - this posh white man. Any deviation from that makes me feel like less of a scientist, which is ridiculous, and something that I'm still trying to combat. 

When I do scientific talks, especially, I’m trying very hard to use my natural accent and to dress up. The time when I really started to own my femininity was when I did my nails in a different colour for every exam I did in my undergraduate degree and that was a very conscious move I made. I wanted to show myself that I can engage in all of these stereotypically feminine things, and it will have no impact on my scientific abilities. 

I thought that the WiNUK Award ceremony was a great example of that – people in fantastic hot pink suits with neurone and astrocyte necklaces and earrings. It was a fantastic example that women do have their place within the scientific space, and they don’t have to exist within a male-dominated space, they are really starting to adapt to this wonderful world of science which is becoming a more welcoming space for all. I’ve seen changes in my unit as well, little things, for example people embroidering brains on pencil cases, signs, synapse sister stickers, etc. These things are small and there are still huge problems in the world that feminism must tackle. But it's these tiny victories that I find really empowering. They are small steps to being able to be more myself, whilst engaging in the science that I really love. 

I'm very lucky that the offices that I work in are a fantastic place to work and a very welcoming space. I think anything that lets people be a little bit more themselves in the space where they work is great. Masking is all well and good in moderation, but I don't want to have to mask my insanity all the time; being able to have a little rubber duck on my desk, called Carlos, makes me feel much better about everything!

Do you think that you have been undermined in science? 

I think, for the large part, I am very lucky. The unit and lab where I work is really good and generally quite conscious of these issues. It's something that we've had quite open conversations about before in the lab. But also you never know what it's like, just blatant misogyny, because I don't know what it's like being a man in science. So, I always struggle to pinpoint whether something is just scientifically critical or personal. People feel comfortable sometimes saying quite mean things in the name of science, so I'm never sure if it's just that, in which case it's an academia problem, or if it's specifically a misogyny issue.

The one that I remember, which happened not too long ago, was when I did a talk. I am a bit of a statistics girlie and enjoy doing Bayesian statistics. I like engaging within that research space and encouraging people to question the types of statistics that we use. I mentioned in one of the talks that I did, and that I wasn't going to speak more about statistics because I didn't have time, but if it's something that anyone wanted to talk about please come up to me afterwards. People did come and talk to me afterwards, and I had some great conversations around different statistical questions. But I had one guy come up to me and say, “can you tell me more about Bayesian statistics?” As I opened my mouth to begin, he interjected with, “just so you know, before you start, I am actually a statistician”. And I had this weird moment in my head thinking, “are you just trying to trip me up?”.

I always struggle because I don't know if that's just someone being a bit rude, and I don’t know what it would be like to be a man in science, because I've never been a man in science. 

My mum has also jokingly threatened people in science, for example sometimes I'll tell her something that is very normal in science (which shouldn’t be), and she’ll say, “no, I will slap them for you. I will slap them with a large fish”. It's always a large fish. I don't know why it's always a large fish, but it is. And then it feels less insulting.

That's so funny. I love the support. It's good that you talk about it, though, and to people that aren't just in science who won’t normalise it, like we often do.

Yeah. And this is also the breaking down of the very formal nature of academic talks I see because we understand  being criticised is kind of part and parcel of science. That's completely fine. I'm fine with you criticising my work. I'm fine with you criticising the way that I've done stuff, there's always going to be open communication about that and that's fine. But there are ways that you can say these things that do not immediately invalidate somebody. Like I say now, I just laugh it off, with the attitude of, “well, you're clearly the problem here because that was rude”. But it sucks - especially when I was younger, or when you see it done to younger students, or students who are at the start of their PhD or masters.

You can ruin people's perception of science in that one comment.

"I think the computational space is stereotypically dominated by men, so when I moved more into the computational side of things, that's where I felt I've been the most questioned." 

It absolutely wrecks people's confidence as well. Yeah, I've also experienced it in the computational field. I've had a couple of people, like in lay audiences, question my competency a little bit or just completely undermine me. I think the computational space is stereotypically dominated by men, so when I moved more into the computational side of things, that's where I felt I've been the most questioned. 

In public talks when I'm discussing artificial intelligence (AI), I'll leave out some of the nuances to explain concepts. What that will sometimes lead to, however, is men who have a very good working understanding correcting me, because I have missed this level of nuance. I greatly appreciate that they feel the need to do it in front of the entire room of people and not come and talk about it. I might not always use the most accurate scientific terms to explain something. There are two reasons that I might do that. One is that I'm a silly girl who doesn't understand what's going on. And the other is that I'm aware of the correct scientific terminology, but I am talking to a lay audience whose academic understanding I don't have a baseline for. For some reason, people sometimes seem to go with the first one. 

Congratulations on your neuroscience communicator of the year win at the WiNUK Awards. How did the nomination and the win make you feel and how do you think it's going to impact your work day-to-day moving forward?

It was so amazing, and I would like to say that it was such a great night. I had such a wonderful time seeing these women in STEM being uplifted and all the research that people are doing – it was just great fun. Shout out to the networking games because the bingo and the anagrams were fab! The bingo was for me and the anagrams were for my boyfriend. As someone who doesn't do neuroscience, but who loves word games, he was sitting there the whole night like, “I can get this. You've talked to me enough about neuroscience”. I have never been prouder of him than when he got basal ganglia!

"Unless you're able to communicate your science, there is a limit to the level of impact you can have."

I think science communication can be an under-recognised skill in academia because it's not one of the hard skills. It's not one of the technical skills, which I feel takes precedence, and there's definitely a balance that we need a lot of technical skills in academia. But unless you're able to communicate your science, there is a limit to the level of impact you can have sometimes. In my opinion, science communication should be part of our job as scientists because we are funded, ultimately, by the public. I think it's our job to get that science back to them - especially when it's things that will influence their lives, which in neuroscience the case almost always is that, yes, it will. In the dementia space, especially, people want to know about it. People are curious about it. Being able to communicate science to the public means, by necessity, that you will be able to communicate more effectively to your academic peers.

It was really lovely to have it recognised in such a concrete way. I walked away and I turned to my dad, and I said, “it's so strange because I don't need the award” - I do a lot of science communication because I enjoy it, but to have something a bit more concrete that says “hey, you're actually quite good at this”. It's so easy to invalidate these slightly ‘softer’ skills.

To support these outreach programmes, takes hours, days, weeks’ worth of work that people don’t tend to be aware of. It was lovely to have that recognised and I'm really thankful to Women in Neuroscience UK for that. It's boosted my confidence even more to keep doing this stuff because, often, you don’t receive any feedback. It's difficult to kind of keep that drive, so it's been really helpful to feel a bit seen. It's really nice.

Connect with Rebecca Williams here:

• X: @beccasue99

• LinkedIn: Rebecca Williams

• BlueSky: ‪@beccasue99.bsky.social‬

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This interview was conducted by Rebecca Pope and edited by Lauren Wallis, with graphics produced by Lilly Green and Rebecca Pope. If you enjoyed this article, be the first to be notified about new posts by signing up to become a WiNUK member (top right of this page)! Interested in writing for WiNUK yourself? Contact us through the blog page and the editors will be in touch.