Science Symposium

Running between practice and an exam, I only had a few minutes to stop by the symposium, but in that short time I was able to learn a lot about the goal of the symposium and the mission of Cornell in research but also entrepreneurship. Interestingly enough, I learned little of this through the posters or exhibits, but by talking to two people.

The first was a gentlemen affiliated with Cornell University Core Labs Center. I must have walked in looking a little bewildered and overwhelmed because he immediately approached me and asked if I had any questions. I thought this was very interesting because every other interaction occurring was between contemporaries, and not involving any college students. In this respect, it was a tough atmosphere for a college student to walk into. By confronting me and asking if I had any questions, he made me more interested in the mission of the symposium as a whole, but also the goals and projects at the Core Labs Center.

Housing 9 labs, the Core Labs Centers, works with a range of businesses and people and on a variety of projects. This center is multidimensional, facilitating research from DNA and genomic sequencing or simpler, do-it-yourself microscopic projects. Maybe his eagerness to talk with me and teach me can explained by the extensiveness of this center at Cornell, but either way it was extremely effective. He communicated with me by relating my academic interests and understanding of science to what the Core Labs Center does on a daily basis and the type of people they attract.

After this I was feeling a bit more confident, so I continued weaving throughout the posters and somewhat disengaged (at least when they saw me—the “unimpressionable college student”) participants. I encountered one other helpful woman at the Business and Technology Park station who similarly explained the purpose of the park by relating to my academic course.

So what does this all tell me about science communication? I think I left feeling even more like science is an interpersonal field and the objectivity and validity of research goes only as far as one is eager to discuss it, and discuss it with a wide community of audiences. I was clearly not an important figure to many of these people, yet I am easily impressionable and interested. While I have little connection to the business aspect or even the research side of Cornell, I do think Cornell as both a business and research institution. It is this reason that I am leaving this class and semester feeling like even the hard, physical sciences are intertwined and dependent on communication that is universal and well circulated.