ReBooting STEM

On June 2nd between 17:00 - 19:00 GMT Professors Without Borders think tank and Lecturers Without Borders will cohost 'Rebooting STEM: New Era, New Curriculum' to discuss aspects of STEM that were traditionally neglected, yet have proved particularly relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic: soft skills, ethics, and credibility. 

The first session, titled 'Improving Soft Skills in STEM', will be moderated by virological, science comms educator, and Lecturers Without Borders scientists co-ordinator, Eugenia Covernton and feature speakers Meenakshi Narain, Professor of Physics at Brown University, member of CERN Laboratory, and fellow of the American Physical Society; Tram Anh Nguyen, Co-Founder of CFTE, Board Advisor of EDHEC, and Industry Fellow at Imperial College; and Nikolena Christofi, PhD Student at IRT Saint Exupery, and Soft Skills Trainer with the Board of European Students of Technology. 

The second session, titled 'Ethics and Credibility in STEM', will be moderated by Victor Warlop Piers de Raveschoot, researcher in Nanomaterials, Photonics, Condensed Matter Physics, and Magnetism at Stanford University, and feature speakers Rajan Kumar, Lecturer in Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University; Oliver Geffen, Epidemiologist and Surveillance Scientist Consultant for the WHO, and Visiting Researcher at Imperial College, and myself. Find further information on the speakers' credentials here.


Extract from the conference programme

"The conference explores the STEM curriculum and makes suggestions for a 21st century reboot including a focus on soft skills and ethics.

It will be divided into 2 panels of 3 experts, each panel lasting 1 hour. The panels start with a short introduction by each of the panellists in which they describe their background and expertise, followed by a 40-minute Q&A with the moderators and the audience. 

Panel 1: Improving Soft Skills in STEM

Being a scientist or engineer involves much more than being able to perform experiments and interpret data. It involves being able to communicate effectively, show empathy, creativity, flexibility, and open mindedness. These soft skills are hard to acquire and sometimes even harder to evaluate. We have all heard that "soft skills are important", but exactly why is that so? How do we evaluate our own abilities in order to improve? How do we motivate others to improve their soft skills when they may not even know there's a problem? And how do we help without imposing our own views, biases, and judgements? This panel will aim to address and debate over these questions and propose ideas for action.

Panel 2: Ethics and Credibility in STEM

The Covid-19 pandemic showed some of the best and worst of the scientific world: while millions of scientists around the world openly shared their research and collaborated towards finding treatments and ways to prevent new infections and deaths, several big scandals arose involving forged results, badly designed clinical trials and other types of misconduct. How can we, as a scientific community, discourage "cheating"? What are the factors that may be tempting scientists to commit scientific fraud? And how do we recover the public faith in science when scandals resonate louder than the "good science"? In this panel the focus will be on how to combat the speed of misinformation by encouraging ethical science and by increasing the credibility of scientists in the public eye." 


An event open to the wider scientific and research community, registration is free, but advanced booking is necessary. Find out more and book a place here.