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Institute of Continuing Education (ICE)

 

Last week we sat down with Katie Haylor, a producer for The Naked Scientists science radio show and podcast. Science enthusiast and self-confessed cat-lover, she spoke to us about her role in the team, the current ‘hot topics’ in STEM and upcoming events.​

Tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into science

I’m originally from Sheffield and have an Undergraduate Pharmacology Degree from Newcastle University. I’m also a massive cat-lover and can’t wait for the day when I can get my own cat! I have recently started playing roller-derby with the Cambridge Roller-billies. I started a career in science communication a few years ago, and realised quite quickly that I’d like a formal qualification in that so I got one of those at Imperial College London. I moved to Cambridge three years ago to work at The Naked Scientists - I love living in Cambridge. 

Can you tell us more about who The Naked Scientists are? 

The Naked Scientists are a small science media production company who work out of the Institute of Continuing Education (ICE) at The University of Cambridge. We’re 20 years old this year! The team currently comprises of three full time producers, and our editor. And we have some internship programmes too. We primarily make science radio shows and podcasts. Our main radio show, ‘The Naked Scientists’ airs on Sundays on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, and on BBC Radio 5Live, on Fridays on Radio National (ABC Australia), and our international podcast is released every Tuesday. But we also make subject-specific, monthly podcasts. For example, I look after ‘Naked Neuroscience’, there's also 'Naked Genetics', and a few more. We’re a small and friendly bunch, and we all have slightly different science interests; from virologist and microbiologist to pharmacology, physicist and zoologist. The lovely thing about working in a small production company is that you get to do a bit of everything - be it presenting, producing, all sorts!

What do you enjoy about your job? 

As someone who is curious and nosey about the world, I love being able to find out about different bits of science every week. One week it might be AI, the next it’s cancer genetics, then it’s planetary geoscience. The list goes on and on. It’s really varied because we try to reflect what’s current in the news. 

What interesting things have you covered on the show recently? 

A big thing we’ve been focusing on is coronavirus. We’ve spoken to somebody in quarantine, asking them what that was like. We’ve spoken to an epidemiology expert about how the virus has spread and is likely to spread, and an academic who has put in a proposal to develop a vaccine. AI is another big topic and we’ve been talking recently about the first drug designed by AI that’s been approved for use in clinical trials, as well as the first drug that’s been discovered by AI. There are so many interesting topics that I could just go on and on…

What have you got in the pipeline? 

We’ve just done a show all about perception of time – why we think time goes faster as you get older, why an outward journey always seems longer than a return one, is our perception of years really shrinking as we age? We’ve also just done a show about electric cars. We borrowed an electric car and took it for a few test drives to see how easy or convenient it is to have an electric car – where do you charge it if you live in a flat? How far can it go? We have shows coming up on sustainable cities, radioactivity… you name it, we will probably be doing a show about it. 

Why do you think it’s important to engage the general public with science and how are you trying to do this? We’re not science-minded but you seem to do things in a fun and engaging way…

I like to think so. The main way we do this is through our radio show and podcasts. Podcasts are really popular at the moment so it’s a good way to reach people - I think The Naked Scientists were one of the first podcasts actually, being 20 years old. I think it's important to try and make everything as accessible as possible, but without shying away from the difficult topics. So whether that’s quantum computing or complex genetics, we try to tackle the big concepts as well as the small ones and make them as accessible as we can.

You can meet The Naked Scientists at the Cambridge Science Festival on Wednesday 11 March, 8-9pm. ‘Boom! – The Naked Scientists’ promises to be an explosive hour of demos, question and answer sessions and more. Tickets going fast! Book your free tickets

ICE will also be hosting a series of free events on Friday 20 March. Book your tickets here.

 

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