The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) at UC Santa Barbara is hosting a new virtual series called The Art of Doing Science.
KITP is a world-renowned physics institute that welcomes scientists from around the world every year to collaborate and do physics.
Lars Bildsten is the director of KITP and a professor in the UCSB Physics Department. He said there is no other institute in the world where scientists come together at this scale.
He said The Art of Doing Science is a virtual series put on by the institute as a way to connect with the greater community and be transparent about the process of practicing science.
“The intent of this is to hear much more about how people had the ideas, their ‘Aha!’ moments, or the dead ends — more of the personal side,” Bildsten said. “If you ask, ‘How do I spend my days doing science with my graduate students?’ A lot of it is, you work hard for a week and realize this is not the way to approach the problem.”
Megan Turley is the development coordinator at KITP. She said it’s important for the institute to communicate to the public how science gets done to help shed generalized assumptions.
“We do have this narrative now of the Genius Scientist who comes up with an idea and it just works. Sometimes that’s true,” Turley said. “But a lot of times, it’s three or four or eight people bouncing ideas off of each other who come up with these big breakthroughs.”
Bildsten said this program will highlight early-career scientists who are excited to share their experiences. He said he hopes the public will get a better understanding of the people behind the work.
“Science is approachable. Scientists are approachable. Scientists have stories to tell that are interesting, that are intriguing,” Bildsten said. “Hopefully this event starts to allow people to get a little bit more of the human side of what it is to be doing science.”
Bildsten said this program is especially important now as distrust in science has grown amidst the pandemic for things like mask wearing, social distancing and vaccinations.
“There’s no doubt that anything we can do to get people more aware of the scientific process, more aware of what it is to be a scientist, has to help with just building confidence in what science is doing,” Bildsten said.
The Art of Doing Science is free, online and anyone is invited to attend. Turley said no background in science is necessary to join and all questions are welcome.
The first event is September 1 at 5 p.m. The speakers will talk about merging neutron stars. You can learn more here.
