Importance of Bridging Science and Society

One of the obvious learnings of the Corona crisis is the need for trustworthy scientific communication and engagement with society.

Our confinement has led us to think about our ethics of care. This crisis has made it clear that we must deepen our care for others, becoming more attentive to the emotions and life experiences of our students, PhD candidates, co-authors, and colleagues. Everyone is feeling great uncertainty, and they may be sick or have a relative infected by Covid-19 or loved ones who have passed away. Now more than ever, we need to be understanding with our colleagues and flexible with our professional commitments.

From an intellectual standpoint, when and if mental and physical space allows, we can contribute to public debates about Covid-19 from our own disciplinary perspective. Such contributions may not necessarily take the form of academic articles but be made through our teaching or public outreach (e.g. blogs, TV and radio appearances, student-led debates, etc.).

It is precisely what we are doing with Virgilio Program and the videos produced by students on scientific communication.

As seen through this videos of our students, spreading scientific literacy amongst the society is foremost to scientific communication. The endeavor of all the videos was to fosters co-learning and engagement in society, and support understanding, discussion and enthusiasm for science in society.

In today’s times of COVID-19, the need for general scientific understanding by the society has never been more important and the need to engage people for the disease control and prevention. As we are living through and witnessing these times, we can appreciate how response to the pandemic of Coronavirus does not solely depend on research accomplishments, but also on the receptivity of the people in society. The receptivity in turn depends on people’s attitude, information and knowledge, resulting in behavior change.

Thus, we see information exchange and dialogue between science and society is fundamental to disease control and societal well-being.

Blogpost Author

Dott.ssa Richa Lal,

Virgilio Program Manager
richa.lal@unimib.it