Overview: Scientists are increasingly challenged to communicate their work to broader, more varied audiences. Traditionally, scientists are trained to tell fact-based scientific stories. Although a carefully constructed scientific story may be crystal clear to other scientists in the same discipline, they are often inaccessible to broader audiences. 

This webinar will highlight a simple, flexible framework for translating a complex scientific publication into a broadly accessible comic format. Comics, by transporting information in a largely visual manner, can be easily understood by a wide variety of audiences. However, turning scientific content into a comic requires reducing and generalizing the content of scientific publications. The webinar will provide an overview of a framework that provides guidelines on how to develop a conceptual foundation, a scientifically-relevant setting and characters, as well as a detailed storyboard.  

Speakers:

• Jan Friesen, PhD, is an eco-hydrologist in the Department of Catchment Hydrology at the Helmholtz Centre of Environmental Research - UFZ in Leipzig, Germany.
• Skander Elleuche, PhD, is a trained biologist and biotechnologist at Miltenyi Biotec GmbH in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany.  In 2018, he published his first popular science book that includes cartoon illustrations on “Microbes From Extreme Environments” (in German).