A key part of the scientific method is communicating the insights to an audience, for any field of research or problem context. This is where the ultimate value comes from: by sharing the cutting-edge results that can improve our understanding of the world and help deliver new innovations in people's lives. Effective science communication sits at the intersection of data, research, and the art of storytelling.

In this episode of the DataCafé we have the pleasure of welcoming Laurie Winkless, a physicist, author and science communications expert. Laurie has extensive experience in science journalism, having written numerous fascinating articles for Forbes Magazine, Wired, Esquire, and The Economist. She has also authored two science books which we will talk about today:

• Sticky: The Secret Science of Surfaces
• Science and the City: The Mechanics behind the Metropolis

Laurie tells us about the amazing insights in her books from her research, interviews and discussions with leading scientists around the world. She gives us an idea of how the scientific method sits at the core of this work. Her efforts involve moving across many complicated data landscapes to uncover and articulate the key insights of the scientists working in these fields. And she does this through the art of storytelling, in a manner that can capture people's imagination whilst educating and surprising them at the same time.

Interview guest: Laurie Winkless, physicist, author, science communicator. Contactable via her website, and on twitter, mastodon, and linkedin.

Further information:

• www.lauriewinkless.com
• "Why do things stick to each other?" Talk by Laurie Winkless at The Royal Institution.
• https://twitter.com/laurie_winkless
• https://scicomm.xyz/@LaurieWinkless
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurie-winkless/
• Sticky: The Secret Science of Surfaces
• Science and the City: The Mechanics behind the Metropolis

Thanks for joining us in the DataCafé. You can follow us on twitter @DataCafePodcast and feel free to contact us about anything you've heard here or think would be an interesting topic in the future.

Culture is a key enabler of innovation in an organisation. Culture underpins the values that are important to people and the motivations for their behaviours. When these values and behaviours align with the goals of innovation, it can lead to high performance across teams that are tasked with the challenge of leading, inspiring and delivering innovation. Many scientists and researchers are faced with these challenges in various scenarios, yet may be unaware of the level of influence that comes from the culture they are part of.

In this episode we talk about what it means to design and embed a culture of innovation. We outline some of our findings in literature about the levels of culture that may be invisible or difficult to measure. Assessing culture helps understand the ways it can empower people to experiment and take risks, and the importance this has for innovation. And where a culture is deemed to be limiting innovation, action can be taken to motivate the right culture and steer the organisation towards a better chance of success.

Futher Reading

• Paper: Hogan & Coote (2014) Organizational Culture, Innovation and Performance (via www.researchgate.net)
• Book: Johnson & Scholes (1999) Exploring Corporate Strategy: Text and Cases
• Article: Understanding Organisational Culture - Checklist by CMI (via www.managers.org.uk)
• Article: The Cultural Web (via www.mindtools.com)
• Paper: Mossop et al. (2013) Analysing the hidden curriculum: use of a cultural web (via www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
• Book: Bruch & Vogel (2011) Fully Charged: How Great Leaders Boost Their Organization’s Energy and Ignite High Performance (via reading.ac.uk)
• Webinar: Bruch (2012) Fully Charged: How Great Leaders Boost Their Organization’s Energy and Ignite High Performance (via hbr.org)
• Article: Pisano (2019) The Hard Truth About Innovative Cultures (via hbr.org)

Some links above may require payment or login. We are not endorsing them or receiving any payment for mentioning them. They are provided as is. Often free versions of papers are available and we would encourage you to investigate.

Recording date: 12 Aug 2022

Thanks for joining us in the DataCafé. You can follow us on twitter @DataCafePodcast and feel free to contact us about anything you've heard here or think would be an interesting topic in the future.

Do you have multiple devices connected to your internet fighting for your bandwidth? Are you asking your children (or even neighbours!) to get off the network so you can finish an important call? Recent lockdowns caused huge network contention as everyone moved to online meetings and virtual classrooms. This is an optimisation challenge that requires advanced modelling and simulation to tackle. How can a network provider know how much bandwidth to provision to a town or a city to cope with peak demands? That's where agent-based simulations come in - to allow network designers to anticipate and then plan for high-demand events, applications and trends.

In this episode of the DataCafé we hear from Dr. Lucy Gullon, AI and Optimisation Research Specialist at Applied Research, BT. She tells us about the efforts underway to assess the need for bandwidth across different households and locations, and the work they lead to model, simulate, and optimise the provision of that bandwidth across the network of the UK. We hear how planning for peak use, where, say, the nation is streaming a football match is an important consideration. At the same time, reacting to times of low throughput can help to switch off unused circuits and equipment and save a lot of energy.

Interview Guest: Dr. Lucy Gullon, AI and Optimisation Research Specialist from Applied Research, BT.

Further reading:

• BT Research and Development (https://www.bt.com/about/bt/research-and-development)
• Anylogic agent-based simulator (https://www.anylogic.com/use-of-simulation/agent-based-modeling/)
• Article: Agent-based modelling (via Wikipedia)
• Article:Prisoner's Dilemma (via Wikipedia)
• Article: Crowd Simulation (via Wikipedia)
• Book: Science and the City (via Bloomsbury)
• Research group: Traffic Modelling (via mit.edu)

Some links above may require payment or login. We are not endorsing them or receiving any payment for mentioning them. They are provided as is. Often free versions of papers are available and we would encourage you to investigate.

Recording date: 5 May 2022
Interview date: 27 Apr 2022

Thanks for joining us in the DataCafé. You can follow us on twitter @DataCafePodcast and feel free to contact us about anything you've heard here or think would be an interesting topic in the future.