Natasha Ward

PIPS Host Organisation: Royal Botanic Gardens Kew

PIPS Project Title: Science Communications

Over the course of Natasha’s three month placement with the Science Communications Team at Kew Gardens, she was involved in writing blogs, creating videos for social media and keeping the Kew staff profiles and project pages up to date.

Natasha gained skills in communicating science to a lay audience, as all content had to be accessible. She also learned about web design, video filming/editing and producing content for social media. She used her drawing skills to help illustrate complex ideas and learned how to animate these illustrations to produce videos for social media.

This was a wonderful experience for Natasha. Science communications is the only career outside of academia that she has ever really considered, but it wasn’t an area she had any experience in. Doing her PIPS at Kew gave me the chance to see if science comms is for her and if it’s something she’s any good at! Natasha has decided that, even if she does stay in academia, she wants to continue to be involved in communicating science outside the academic community; engaging the public and sharing discoveries.

Natasha has always believed that science should be for everyone, and she now has the skills needed to make her research, and that of others, accessible to all.

Natasha found her placement to be a valuable opportunity to step away from PhD life and explore science communication in a professional setting. In her post-PIPS report, she highlighted a key achievement: writing a blog on ash dieback that achieved the highest retention rate ever recorded by the Science Communication team at Kew Gardens. Since returning from her placement, Natasha has continued to build on these skills by launching a website for her lab group, for the benefit of her lab team and for external audiences interested in their research.