Materials Science, Comedy, and Communication with Boran Ma

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Boran Ma, Postdoctoral Researcher at Duke University about Materials Science, Comedy, and Communications.   Read her full bio below.

Help us continue to create great content! If you’d like to sponsor a future episode hit the support podcast button or visit www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com/sponsor-form

Showtimes: 
3:38  Nic & Laura talk about communication strategies
7:16 Interview with Boran Ma Starts
7:41  Material Science
23:44  Comedy
33:30  Communications

Please be sure to ✔️subscribe, ⭐rate and ✍review.

This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Boran Ma at https://www.linkedin.com/in/boran-ma-nu/

Guest Bio:
Bo is currently a Postdoc Associate at Duke University. Starting January 2023, she is joining the faculty of the School of Polymer Science and Engineering at the University of Southern Mississippi as an Assistant Professor. Bo got her PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from Northwestern University. Prior to that, she got her Bachelor’s degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Harbin Institute of Technology.

Bo does computational research on polymer materials. She uses molecular modeling and simulation to understand the underlying physics and mechanisms and to better design polymeric materials and systems, specifically for energy and sustainability applications.

In her free time, Bo enjoys doing standup comedy, running, hiking, paddle boarding, and playing ultimate frisbee. Due to her passion about both science and comedy, Bo has been working on a science communications workshop where she helps students integrate comedy writing skills into science communications.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Transcripts are auto transcribed

[Intro]

Nic 
Hello and Welcome to Epi with your favorite environmental enthusiast Nick and Laura. On today's episode, Lauren I discuss communication strategies. We talked about mA about materials science, comedy and communication. And finally, there is an underwater lake in Mexico that will instantly kill you if you get in the hot tub of despair. This super salty methane Lake is 3300 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico and kills anything unlucky enough to fall in. What a positive way to start today.

Laura 
Even your likes

Nic 
when people found it, they were like, Wow, isn't it weird that these these crabs are all pickled? Isn't that something? And then they're like, Wait, why are they play gold and then and then they're like, oh, oh, hot tub of despair. Which probably Spanish I don't know.

Laura 
Someone had to figure this out. Like, oh, I'm dropping in.

Nic 
Well, that's it. There's all this all these pickled crabs and they were like, Why are they dying? Like that,

Laura 
you know? So nobody actually went in now knows

Nic  
a person did not go in. They just noticed. Yeah, and you can't really go go in because you got to be like in you know, it's an underwater lake. So it's like we were talking about a few episodes ago. It's like lakes inside of like, kind of thing. So interesting. Yeah. I would love to see it from a safe distance. Yeah. Or like a robot or something. Would you go down and by the way, this is I noticed. So total sidenote, but would you do that? Like, you know, like the super deep sea dive like, you know, like, Dawn?

Laura 
I think I would.

Nic 
I mean, I don't think any of them ever, like really collapse or anything? Yeah, like the first one in the 1960s. Yeah. Would you do that? Because then I wouldn't

Laura  
do in the first one in the night. But I've been to it now, for it's been proven. I love

Nic  
they're like, Oh, I'll see if this works. Why not just put people in math. That's cool.

Laura 
Now that there's material science, scientists who've worked on all this

Nic 
Yeah, exactly. Hit that music.

[Upcoming Events]

Laura 
today's upcoming event comes from Accra, the American cultural resources. Association. Registration is now open for Acuras latest webinar on planning for successful section 106 agreements, which takes place on Thursday, December 8, from two to 330. Eastern Time. In this webinar training specialists Khatri, Harris will practice applying the tools provided in ACH B's guidance on agreement documents and guide participants in performing a reality check for agreement consultation. Check it out at www dot info dot akra dash CRM dot work. Alright Nick ready? Sponsor comedy go.

Nic 
Okay, so you know you as always, we have energy drinks everywhere, right? We love energy drinks. Everyone loves energy drinks. So we have a new one to eat for your day is super exciting. It's called Kayo energy and it's the first energy drink ever. That will immediately knock you out. So all of your problems go away. Are you tired of talking Kayo energy Are you tired? Are you tired of living? Kayo energy is for you.

Laura 
Awesome. Where do I get that?

Nic 
Check it out. And environmental professionals radio.com I think

Laura  
all right listeners. This is where your sponsor real sponsor opportunity could go to talk about your company. Now let's get to our segment.

Nic 
Perfect.

[Nic & Laura Discuss Communication Strategies]

Nic
Why you would want to teach comedy to science people, you know, core concepts stuff. I think the simplest example I can think of is you know, like, instead of using scientific names for wildlife, you just call them what they are and so that's simple. You know, it's like, that's one of the ways to do it. Like in like, more information isn't better information. It's the right information that matters. So you want to be giving people meeting them at their level, whatever that is. You have to be able to have a conversation with them. That doesn't mean talking down to them. It doesn't mean it actually like trying to use big words to sound smart makes you sound much worse machine sound much more arrogant. People turn that off immediately. You know, casual, you have to be much more casual with the way you write and the way you talk and even knowing a bunch of stuff you have to go to convey that information. pretty succinctly pretty simply. You can't just say, Here's everything. I wrote this research paper. Good luck. And that's what does bother people. It's like yeah, you expect me to just read through your boring crap. Talk to me.

Laura 
Well, you can't win people's trust when you're speaking a different language from them. They know that automatically makes them and especially if you're using big words, then they're like, why are you trying to assert dominance or, you know, make yourself more intellectual than I am or make me feel stupid? What are you hiding? So, you know, speaking plain language isn't just a matter of like getting the point across. It's, you know, saying that I'm here at your level. And we can all understand the conversation and I'm inviting you to participate, not just sit here and listen, like you said,

Nic 
right. And it goes back to like community engagement as well. And and it's a it's a challenge for the you know, the social world we live in sometimes social media rather than, like being a part of a community, being involved with people who are in that community. And then giving them information on what you're doing is so much better than coming in to a community and being like, guess what? Rules here's the thing. You know, there's a total disconnect immediately because of that, and we work in Hawaii a bunch and that's actually it's actually the most extreme version of that I think in the country is if you have a project that's going to happen on any of those islands, you better have a relationship with a community that is going to be where you will not be able to get it done. You can't just show up. You know, it's really, really important.

Laura  
Yeah, I think there's parallels to into any situation like that if you're a new leader or a new manager or boss in a company. You don't just come in and start barking, new orders and speaking language you took with you from another company or something you come in and you learn. You build relationships and you learn how people speak in that company. And then learn things about them and relate to them. But if you come in and you're using industry terms that they don't use in their company or whatever, just maybe there's some system or process you had that you thought was better and they don't have you know, you've got to come in and be at their level. Getting.

Nic 
There's an example I can think of right away. That's a well, I my old company, we did this. Yeah. Okay, well, you don't you know, you're not there anymore. I mean, that doesn't mean you can't take good ideas from an old company and put them there. But if that's your starting point, you got to learn first learn first and then implement, you know, you can't just dive you know, demand when you first get it shut off. It's just the same thing. And that's true of like military. It's true of just about anything, you know, any job any, any anything. You've got to respect the people that have been there and know what they're doing and that listen to them. It's just listen first, you know, be curious to start and so yeah, you know, I mean those are all good tips and saying we're gonna talk about about science communication and and a bunch of other things. So why don't we get to her anyway.

[Interview with Boran Ma Starts]

Nic
Hello, and welcome back. To EPR. Today, we have Barron Ma, a postdoctoral associate at Duke University and incoming assistant professor at the University of Southern Mississippi. Welcome, Bow.

Boran Ma 
Thank you, like really excited to be here.

[Material Science]

Nic 
Yeah, really happy to have you here too. You know, I've known you for quite some time. So I'm really excited to dive into this with you but first and foremost, you are a material scientist. What on earth is that?

Boran Ma 
Material science really covers everything because everything we have is the material in a way. I nailed it.

Laura 
Because we were talking about this before we started and Nick was like I had to look up what materials are I'm like, it's everything makes everything and I was just joking, but I was right.

Nic 
We live in the material world. Oh, cool. But yeah, so it's the science of everything. Okay, great. Um, so it was really Yeah. But why did you choose it or does it kind of choose you? Do you fall into it?

Boran Ma 
I sort of just started doing it. Like, really randomly, because like in high school, I remember that I enjoyed learning, physics and chemistry. So when I was trying to like pick a major in college, I was like, material science is sort of like at the intersection of physics and chemistry. And like people, the professors from my program did a really good job packaging in selling it. They're like, this is the future. This is a future. I like a lot of research topics and they really exciting. But yeah, that's why I did material sciences, my major and I just like, stuck with the whole way through.

Nic 
Well, so what are those kinds of research topics? Like what are the things that you're that drew you to it and what are the things that you worked on for your doctorate?

Boran Ma 
Yeah, I think as a high schooler, we're really got me was some like, biomedical applications in the material science field, like developing new drugs, new like treatments for like a lot of diseases that got me really like interested but when I was an undergrad, I actually did a lot of metal matrix composites Materials Research, which was very, like, experimental heavy. And when I started grad school, I wanted to do like a little bit of computational research trying to like learn more about the fundamental science side of things, learning like the underlying physics and a lot of the mechanisms of how those like materials and systems work. When I joined the Ph. D program at Northwestern University, I started doing like a lot of molecular modeling. of polymer materials were the focus on like energy applications. For example, like for lithium ion batteries, the traditional lithium ion batteries use a lot of like liquid electronic materials, which can be unstable sometimes. That's why like, I don't know if you guys remember like a few years, a few years ago, maybe 12 years back, there were like some accidents that happened to Samsung phone or when they were charging their phones, like the battery exploded. That was because of the unstable material in those batteries. So people have been trying to like replace traditional liquid electrode materials with solid polymer electrolytes, because the polymer electrolyte materials are more stable, but the drawback is is not as efficient as the traditional liquid ones. So we're trying to study the mechanisms of how it works, so we can improve and design better materials for those applications.

Nic 
Yeah, but see, that's really really cool. That is much more. That is not just materials Laura. See so but that's really cool. It really is really interesting. So like, so from that you'd have the research aspect of it. So I'm assuming there's jobs that material scientists get in academia do you find them and other reason research driven position like is it almost exclusively like you do research, you find new data and that helps either the school or company that you work for? Is that where you find those materials scientists?

Boran Ma 
I think in a lot of like, industry, you're like very focused on research. And the end goal is to like develop a product that will like bring more profits to the company, but in academia is a little bit different. Because a lot of times people might be interested in more like fundamental science and research certain topics. And in academia, there's also like the teaching and mentoring aspect of the job, where you want to help the younger generation to become good scientists and researchers. And so research is is a huge part of jobs in academia, but it's not everything. There are specific job titles in academia that are mainly focused on research, though, for example, like Research Associates, and there are some research professors who mainly do research, but for like, regular professorship, I think the school usually expects you to do like research teaching mentoring students and also like service within the school and also like having some societal impacts.

Nic  
Yeah, yeah. You're gonna be working as though how you're gonna be working with the University of Southern Mississippi, right?

Boran Ma 
Correct. Yeah.

Nic 
So is that also what what you what drew you to it? You want to do those mentoring as well, not just learning, not just researching?

Boran Ma  
Yes, yes, teaching and mentoring are really what drew me to like a professor job because if I really loved research there are other options like industry or like research position at a university, but I really enjoy teaching. I just love how like sometimes you explain something to people and and the moment they get it, it's so rewarding. And I love seeing that. And I love seeing like students learn and grow.

Nic 
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I couldn't agree more. And actually, to that end, can you kind of give us an idea of what goes into the molecular modeling process? Because it's in my head, it's really, it's very abstract thing because you're, you're studying stuff that you can't necessarily see all the time you see the end results, but like getting to that point, is really, I guess, it's kind of it's hard because you can't just see what you're doing. You have to kind of map things out a little differently. So can you tell us a little bit about that?

Boran Ma 
Yeah, that's a great question. Molecular simulations. It's really, you can think of it as doing experiments on your computer. But what you're really looking at is your material from a molecular point of view. So when we do modeling and simulations, we're representing molecules with our models, for example, for like, polymers, polymers are basically materials with repeating units, what we call monomers. And in our molecular simulations, we model the polymers as a chain of beads. And the beads are connected with springs in between. And in simulations, we're going to see how they behave and how it look like from a microscopic point of view. For example, for the polymer electrolyte study we did we wanted to see how fast the battery would charge, then, in that case, we wouldn't need to apply some external force to represent the current when we charge our batteries. In molecular simulations, we get to see how those molecules would behave with the external electric field. There's like a lot of good open source software's that help you do the simulations. And once the simulations are done, there are like visualization tools as well. So you actually get to see how those molecules behave.

Nic 
So like, you know, is it how collaborative is the process, you know, like, Are you like, doing research and it's like, you know, by the end, you're gonna be like, this is Bose batteries. You know, like Bo has this new method that she's done. And you talk about, like getting data from having open source data. Programs that you use to help run the models. Do you also like, solicit or kind of like open source scientists that you're already talking with people all over the place? Are you talking to lab mates? So how collaborative is what you do?

Boran Ma 
Yeah, that's a good point. So the point of running molecular simulations and modeling is to provide insights into materials design, and hopefully we can provide some guidance to experimentalists as well. A lot of times these collaborations happen in academia. And how it happens is a lot of the time is an experimentalist would reach out to us with some interesting results they've been observing in their lab. And those results could be very counterintuitive, and they're trying to figure out what's causing a certain phenomenon. And with the help of competition all people like me, we will be able to figure out why certain things work the way they do. This forms a really cool feedback loop, because the simulation results will help the experimentalists to better their experimental design. And then there are going to be more results coming from the experimental side as the feedback to our modeling and simulation to make it a better model. So this like iteration, back and forth between experimentalists and theorist or a computational person really helps this whole process and idemia an industry. The research community in general is very collaborative, and people are very open to talk about their own research and progress with their colleagues and potential collaborators. So for example, a Duke we have a really cool project that happened about a year ago, an experimentalist in our department, they were working on this smart cloth. It's a personal heat management device where you can think of it as like a patch you can put on your clothes, and they cut open the pouch into like, tiny slabs and when we like exercise our body would sweat and the material the polymer material would absorb water and the flaps would open up which helps the airflow and eventually helps your body cool down. And once your body cools down, those flaps would shut down to the flat position again, that's why we call it like smart class. And in experiments, they tried to like design this as multimodal device. So they deposited like a really thin layer of metal on top of the polymer material. They expect the metal to like sort of reduce the opening of the flaps, but actually in experiments, what they observed was having a thin layer of metal actually enhanced the opening or the bending behavior of of those flaps. So they came to us trying to figure out an explanation of this. We did some mechanical analysis and modeling after that to help them figure out why having a thin layer of metal actually helps the flaps open up more and we also figured out there's an optimum value for the thickness of that thin layer of metal as well. That's the insights we were able to gain from the modeling and simulation perspective.

Nic 
Wow. That's pretty cool. That is pretty cool. I love that. I love examples and stuff like that because I don't know it kind of reminds me you know, there's been a lot of talk about plastics and recycling and how challenging that is, is that some of the kinds of similar kinds of research like we're trying to figure out how do we actually recycle plastic and reuse it because it's not as simple as just melting it and redoing it. Because the chemicals break down separately?

Boran Ma 
Yeah, absolutely. I think in the polymer research community, there has been a lot of efforts going on in terms of the recycling or upcycling of plastics and just like polymer materials. In general. Because like, decades ago, when plastics were first invented, everybody was like, This is awesome. This is the best invention ever. We were really making the mess around and find out face. Decades later now like we realized, Oh, this is actually not good to our environment. So part of my research goals, once I start my own research group that started this is to looking to some environmental remediation problems, because there are a lot of like, really toxic and harmful chemicals in our environment and in our human bodies really like it's everywhere. So how do we deal with that? How do we like clean it up as much as we possibly can? And molecular simulations can offer a lot of insights in these areas as well. For example, like the battery example, we were talking about earlier, molecular simulations will be helpful in terms of understanding how those molecules would behave, would they attach to you know, like certain surface of certain materials, which we could later use to like absorb those toxic materials, or chemicals. That's a possible idea in terms of like environmental remediation, in terms of plastic recycling. I think there are a lot of chemists who are working on developing like, good catalysts to help or facilitate the process of recycling or breaking down of polymer materials.

Nic  
Yeah, and so that's really cool. You're gonna be working on remediation. So when you say that you're going to be like looking into like the P FOSS. Materials and how to take them out of the environment, like the tough ones of the world that are in everyone's blood and all that fun stuff that we all found out about. I think that's one of the most fascinating things. It's like, well, we got to find someone who doesn't have it in their blood and are like, Well, okay, sorry, everyone does. My bad. Does that guys we're gonna be working on those kinds of things.

Boran Ma 
Yeah. PFOs is definitely something that I'm really interested in. And the really cool thing about USM the school of polymer science and engineering is a lot of my colleagues are working on the experimental side. So there's going to be a good synergy there. Where we are gonna be able to collaborate on a lot of projects. Like I said earlier, molecular simulations could help figuring out how to like remove those materials from our drinking water. I mean, we already have some in our body so let's let's hope that we're not going to get any more.

[Comedy]

Laura 
Yeah. Well, you're basically like our Lucius Fox when we need to have our Bat Man suits made which is comfortable over here. In our materials made that's super awesome and very exciting stuff. And I think you know, that all sounds really amazing, but kind of series. I heard that you like to also have fun and tell some jokes. Yes, absolutely. How long have you been doing comedy?

Boran Ma 
I've been doing comedy for a bit over three years now. I started in October of 2019. Yeah, that was like, one month before I was defending my thesis. I was reaching okay.

Laura 
Like I need to tell some jokes or I'm gonna go crazy. Oh, well, that's, that's interesting. So what made you just did you go to an event? Did you start writing jokes down like how, what did that look like? And then I was going to ask you and I think this is an appropriate spot for it. Then, if you started in 2019 How did then COVID affect both your comedy career and your actual career? Because I know it did.

Boran Ma  
Um, so I was in grad school at Northwestern and we were in the Chicago area. And I was basically just like 30 minutes away from Chicago and I knew at some point that I was gonna leave Chicago and move here to Durham. So I was thinking, I gotta, you know, take advantage of what the city has to offer. And, like, I knew that, like, I'm funny that people have told me that I'm funny. So I was like, Hey, Ashley, you know given this thing called comedy to try. I took a class at the second city, and I just really ended up enjoying it. So after the graduation showcase, I just kept doing it. And it's been really fun ever since. I remember the first time like the first show the first mic I want to since I moved to the triangle area. I just met so many welcoming local comics, and they were telling me all about the comedy scene. And that was just like, super helpful. I felt like so good about moving here and meeting all these amazing people, which was really helpful also, because because of the whole like, pandemic thing, because that was really just two months after I moved and everything shut down. A lot of things like a lot of people were still trying to figure out what to do. They were like, is this thing gonna last? Just like for two weeks or they were like, Should we just lay low for a little bit and then go back into it or and I think starting April like we moved a lot of things online, I think I hosted like an open like, some online platform and we did a couple virtual comedy shows as well. Just we really, we really did. Well, we could fight to like stay creative and sane. Through the whole thing. It was a lot. And last year was the last last year when a comedian friend of ours, Brett Williams moved to South Carolina. We did a virtual showcase for her as well. And Nick and I were both on the show. Yeah, it was fun. Yeah, like the I mean, technology or internet really provide a good like good platforms for a lot of the comedy events. And in terms of like professional career. I think it definitely gave me a rough start from my postdoc position, because I was really trying to learn everything about the new job. Yeah, and then just I had to work from home. So it definitely took me a while to get to the productivity level I would like to have but luckily my research group is pretty cool. Like, my my colleagues are nice people. So we used to do a lot of like, virtual happy hours, which helped a lot and North Carolina is a great place to live in. Like with all the easy access to the nature, all the trails you get to you get to go to and just other fun outdoor activities. definitely helped a lot. But just like the mental health impact from the pandemic, was a whole lot for sure. Yeah, yeah.

Laura 
So your jokes do you draw where do you draw inspiration for your jokes? Is it to talk about material science or to kind of keep the two separate?

Boran Ma 
My jokes mostly are about like my observations of my daily life. I do. I tend to do a lot of like, self deprecating jokes. I think that helps because like, people would just laugh with you and nobody would feel like offended I don't I don't talk a lot about like material science. You might come this that I guess I do have a little bit materials about like life as a grad student, or like as a scientist or researcher, as I try to make it like more approachable. I don't want to seem like too nerdy to my audience. But I guess sometimes they just they just see me for who I am really helpful.
__________
Laura 
comedy like a lot of other spaces, there's fewer females that are really getting up there on stage and doing stuff to you. How's your experience with that been and or do you feel like you've gotten a lot of like, Oh, she's funny for a girl kind of stuff or, you know? You feel like you fill it in with it with the dudes.

Boran Ma 
Oh, man, that is such a great question. I don't think if I've got like the common like, Oh, she's funny for a woman or for a girl. yet. Maybe people just don't think I'm funny. No, but I mean, the comedy scene, like the science world is very like I think it's still like male dominated field. And luckily, there are a lot of female comedians who are very supportive of each other. And there are some really awesome male comedians, as well. Like being one of them are also like supportive of us. So I think that makes it easier. I mean, sure, like, you know, comments like, Oh, your next comic is very funny and female comedian. That still happens, you know, comedy shows, people still like see you, like differently, but I think it's getting better. I'm hopeful in that regard. I think things are getting better in a lot of ways, both in the comedy world and the science world. Yeah, for sure.

Nic 
Yeah. And and, you know, it's funny, like, one of the things about like, comedy in general, that I think is really interesting, and I'm gonna dive into your workshop in a second, but you haven't just done comedy. You also do like, you know, different shows and you do open mics. And so in a way, you're giving space to performers and you're, you're able to control that to a degree as well. Do you enjoy doing the jokes? Do you enjoy hosting? Is there something you'd like more and you're kind of on stage?

Boran Ma 
Well, I definitely enjoy the hosting and producing perspective. It really, really helps you understand comedy better, because before I started hosting, and producing my own shows, I was just just a regular comic who you know, performs at open mics and getting booked on shows. I don't get to see a lot of perspective from the other side. But when I started hosting, and producing I started putting more thoughts and efforts in terms of like, what kind of lineup Do you want to showcase? Like diversity is definitely a main thing that I consider when I book shows like diversity in terms of like, the comedy style of the comedians, like gender, sexual orientation, age, everything you want to, it's really tied to like the values of me as a host. And I think this way, like you would attract audience, also values like diversity. And just throughout that process, I think, I got to like, provide a platform and a stage time for a lot of folks in our scene, and hopefully also got to, you know, like, contribute to like building up the community a little bit as well, because there will be like, certain audience members who would like start following some comics social media after like seeing them on a show. And they were like, keep coming back to our shows. And that's just a really nice feeling to have. Yeah, it's like, all about like building a community and a safe space and welcoming space for everybody.

[Communications]

Nic 
Yeah. And honestly, like you've done a great job with that. I think it's been fantastic to watch and thank you I really appreciate that. I know you do. I know but I really it's such a great thing to see. And you know, when I when I heard you're doing these integrated comedy writing skills on science communication, tying tying both of your worlds together, so having this workshop and going through that process is so unique and so cool. So please tell us a little bit about that first.

Boran Ma 
What is Yeah, for sure, for sure. So the idea really started when I was trying to combine these two worlds, science and comedy, and also just seeing how especially when the pandemic first started, all the misinformation about the vaccine, that was just really saddening to see like people not trusting what the scientists are saying. And I think a lot of that is because there's this gap between the science and research community and the general public is as scientists and researchers we understand, really the research cycle it really takes a long time for for us to figure out how something works and how we can make things better. But like for challenging for them to understand, like, this moment, you're telling me one thing, and then the next day, it's like another thing, it's not like, it doesn't mean the scientists are not trustworthy. It's just we're communicating our research and there's there could be like updates to that so there's this gap. And I think in order to make the general public trust scientists more, we need to bridge the gap. So what we need to do is to better communicate our research and science. In a more accessible and approachable way. to bridge that gap. Scientists need to learn better communicate their research and scientific concepts in a more accessible and approachable way with languages and terms that are easier to understand. So like to avoid jargons and to explain their ideas to people like with maybe little backgrounds in science. Yeah, so that's really why I wanted to do the workshop. And earlier this year, at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, there was this class in their department of American Studies. It's called ethics of stand up comedy. It was taught by Professor Michelle Robinson, and she invited some local comedians to join as guest speakers. Luckily, I was one of the one of the local comedians and I got to like try out this idea with the students at UNC Chapel Hill offers and there was a it was a nice variety of students. We have students from like, biomedical background, and we have students from economics, nursing background and civil engineering. It was a whole variety, and I tried out this idea of being a grading comedy writing skills into science communications, and it was a 50 minute session, and they all had a lot of fun. And with the feedback I got from the students, I was able to like, develop this into a three session workshop, which just happened three weeks ago at Duke University with some engineering graduate students.

Nic 
Yeah, that's really cool. I mean, it's, it's one of those things where like science communication, I always joke that you know, I have an undergrad in psychology and a master's in biology. And I make the joke that like I know how am I biologist that knows how to talk to people. Right? Like, that's the thing and it shouldn't be funny, right? It shouldn't people shouldn't laugh, because like, Oh, right. He is He is able to talk to people is he is the only one you know, and so so I guess in my mind, that's why I love you having you doing this giving other people opportunities to be that person, you know, to be somebody who's able to communicate those difficult things. How do you do it? Is there stuff that for you that when you're talking like you, you mentioned, we're talking about really complicated things and you boil it down to oh, you know, we're just learning how to make a battery more efficient. We're learning how to make athletic clothes more efficient, you know, for you, and so is there a method or a tool that you'd like to use or something that you even incorporated in that class? You can share with the group?

Boran Ma 
Yeah, for sure. So in the workshop, we were telling the students that like, the point of this workshop is not trying to help you write a comedy set we're not trying to make people laugh. We're trying to use comedy writing skills to make the contents more like make the contents easier to understand. That's really the goal, the objective of the workshop, some methods that I find helpful, or like, for example, you can use a lot of like everyday examples that people can easily relate to. When I mentioned the accidents that happened to some Samsung phone errs, right people can relate. They're like, oh, like I've heard of that from the news, you know, like, so that's something like daily examples that are like helpful for people to like, understand, What are you're trying to do, what problems you're trying to solve? And in like, demonstration, you can also incorporate a lot of like, daily examples as well. Like, how can you make an analogy to help explain something? One example I used in the workshop was, if you want to explain, for example, data storage, it's hard to imagine or visualize zeros and ones, but if you use an analogy of like storing other stuff, like using file cabinets, people can visualize that because they've seen file cabinets in their lives before. So like analogy is a huge thing. And visual aids is also important. It's hard to like incorporate it in just like pure text blocks. But like if you make videos to explain things, you can use a lot of visual aids as well. It could be plots and graphs, showing your research results. Or it could be just simple schematic drawings explaining the workflow of your project. And just like writing a good joke, you might want to have some like, good punch lines or tag lines as well. So making it like coming up with those like smart punch lines to explain your research can be very powerful as well. So it really, really impressed people and could be a good like, takeaway message that they can they can get from the demonstration.

Nic 
Oh, yeah. I mean, we've talked about on the show a few times, like it's one of those things that like good speech that has a bad ending is a bad speech and it's just kind of one of those things where you don't have those points you don't have those that things solidified your your point solidified, you don't have a message you don't have a way to say this is what I mean, you know, like, and in the end all was lost. Okay, everything's gone. Okay, cool. Got it. Which is really, and I love that and I thank you for doing that. And we are, we're close to being out of time. But is there anything else you want to mention before we let you go?

Boran Ma  
Well, I'm looking for students who are interested in research in polymer science and engineering to join my research group. So if anyone is interested, please feel free to reach out to me and we can talk more about you know,

Nic 
research. Okay. Yeah. And where can people reach out to you?

Boran Ma 
They can reach out to me through email forum.ma@usm.edu. Or you can connect with me on LinkedIn by just looking up for an MA Oh, comedy stuff.

Nic 
I was wondering if you're gonna say anything about that too, right. Yeah, I

Boran Ma 
would. I would love to connect on Instagram. as well. My Instagram handle is at BM underscore comedy. Please follow me for upcoming shows and science content.

Nic  
Awesome following now. Perfect. Thank you so much for being here. We had a great time with you and Yeah, appreciate it.

Boran Ma 
Thank you, Nic. Thank you, Laura.

[Outro]

Nic 
That's our show. Thank you both for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. See you everybody.

Laura
Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai