In the San Roman lab, we value the ability for everyone to be able to understand the impact our scientific research has on their everyday lives.

We believe that making our research accessible to everyone should be a priority for scientists. To do that, we must be able to explain our own research in a digestible and accessible manner. We have founded the X-plainers initiative to promote the research our lab does in a way that can be read by a diverse non-scientific audience.

Science communication skills are rarely included in undergraduate studies and are not a major skill scientists practice during their graduate education, even though they are valuable and critical skills for all scientists to develop. The X-plainers initiative introduces and fosters science communication skills during early career development in undergraduate students. This promotes collaboration and mentorship between undergraduate students and graduate students, which supports the development of science communication skills. Additionally, the output projects from this initiative will be used to increase public knowledge and trust in the scientific research happening in their community.

During our pilot semester, we are starting with two undergraduate students and one graduate student mentor in our lab. We are hoping to scale up in the future to pair up more labs with more undergraduate students to increase our mission.