In our EMBL Skills & Careers Webinar in July 2025, Shreya Ghosh, Communications Editor at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), shared strategies and tips for writing texts that are both scientifically accurate and engaging, while remaining accessible to audiences with or without a background in science. Below, you can find a brief career profile of Shreya, along with a transcript of the questions asked by participants during the live webinar. Shreya’s presentation slides are available here, and we have also summarised the key takeaways from her talk here.

Career profile

Shreya started her career as a researcher in neurobiology, obtaining a PhD from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India, in 2018. She indulged her passion for science communication through various routes during her PhD, including a personal science blog, a science journalism internship at a peer-reviewed journal, and a two-week training in science journalism organised at one of India’s leading research institutes. Afterwards, she worked as Program Manager – Science Communication at IndiaBioscience, an organisation for science outreach that aims to elevate the culture and practice of doing science in India. In 2021, she joined EMBL as Communications Editor. In her current role, she focuses on writing and editing news and feature stories that help showcase EMBL’s exciting science to diverse audiences.

Building habits in science communication

What are some practical tips or strategies for making science communication a regular habit during a PhD? And how can that habit be maintained and developed during the postdoc stage?

The more you do it, the better you get at it. Science communication isn’t just for professional communicators, it’s a skill that benefits every scientist at any stage.

If you’re a PhD student, look for opportunities at your institute: does it have a press office, a communications team, or a public engagement group you can volunteer with? Personally, I started as a blogger during my PhD because I wanted to practice my science writing skills. I didn’t know how to get published in big outlets, so creating a blog gave me a safe, informal space to try.

At EMBL, for example, we even have a science writing club on campus. However, there are a lot of opportunities and a large community of people out there. So, try to start small, take little steps, and start by working on short projects as a way to experiment with different mediums and formats. Maybe your thing is art, maybe it’s Instagram. Figure out what resonates with you. The more you do it, the more comfortable you get with it and the more natural it becomes for you.

Understanding and engaging your audience

How do you prepare for audiences like high school students, who may have very different interests or ways of communicating?

Yes, this is always a challenge. When you’re younger, it’s easier to relate to younger audiences, but as you get older, you can feel out of touch. The same is true for any group that you may not be interacting very much with in your day-to-day life.

The best option is always firsthand information. If you know a teenager, talk to them and ask them directly. If you’re speaking to another specific group (say, police officers), reach out to someone in that group or seek out a representative. If that’s not possible, go for secondhand input. For example, ask teachers who work and interact with students on a daily basis. Or maybe a teacher is helping you to organise a talk for students, so you can ask them beforehand what information and knowledge would be useful for the students. I recently attended a course where they also talked about the potential use of ChatGPT or LLMs to simulate an audience. However, I would take this with a grain of salt, and some tools are better than others.

So, this is the order of preference: firsthand information; if that is not possible, try secondhand information. There is also a third layer: searching the web, and then finally, the fourth layer: going to (and potentially trusting) AI. Sometimes, it’s a combination of these.

What about practical tips for tailoring a talk to different groups – let’s say, high schoolers, senior citizens, and policymakers?

Starting to prepare well in advance is one good tip. That gives you enough time to make changes based on feedback. Secondly, get multiple pairs of eyes on your talk. Even if you can’t test it with the exact audience you’ll address, try presenting it to a relative, partner, neighbour, or even a colleague who may have a different background from yours, and practice with them. They can help you to identify blind spots.

I often start by asking myself, if I were in their place, what would I want to know? That’s a good starting point, but it may not be enough. That’s why outside feedback is essential.

How do you deal with very heterogenous audiences, for example, at a science festival, where you might encounter kids, high schoolers, scientists, and policymakers all together?

That’s a common challenge. So far, when I was talking about audiences, I was always talking about a particular audience. However, you are rarely ever talking to only one person or one kind of person, even if in a small group that seems similar. The term “general public” is often used, but we try to steer away from the term, because the “general public” doesn’t really exist. Audiences are always layered, mixed, and diverse in various ways. What sometimes helps is preparing three or four different versions of your explanation:

• A short version for someone who already knows a lot.
• A more detailed version for those who are curious but have less knowledge.
• A very simple version for beginners or kids.

When you interact with someone, you can quickly decide which version fits best. Sometimes you mix and match. Having those frameworks in mind helps you adapt on the spot.

Balancing detail and simplicity

How do you avoid oversimplifying and generalising while maintaining the important details when communicating science?

The key is to identify which details are indispensable, and build your story around those. Simplification is not the same as generalisation. Generalisation takes a piece of information that’s relevant in one context and implies that it’s relevant everywhere. For example, a specific protein X contributes to disease Y in a particular type of tissue under certain conditions becomes protein X causing disease Y everywhere. Instead, provide context, but select which details are important. It also helps to start with the assumption that your audience is intelligent, but might have limited capacity for how many new details they can absorb at a time. Focus on what they need to know and understand.

On the other hand, how do you know when you’re including too much detail? Sometimes everything feels important.

I’ve been there, especially when I first started. When you’re trying to talk about your own research, every detail seems important – and in context, they certainly are. The trick, however, is to frame a narrative or a story. Let’s say a new research paper from the institute is coming out, and my job is to write an article about it. My task is not to provide a summary of the paper, but rather to highlight the most interesting aspects of it. I usually start by writing down, in a single sentence: what’s the story, and why should anyone care? Then I answer these questions and gather the information that is absolutely necessary to understand that one sentence. That already helps to set up a filter for what is important.

For instance, going back to protein X from above: in that scenario, maybe it would be important to mention what its function is, but not which particular methods or techniques were used to study and decipher that function. However, sometimes the technique might be the story. In that case, those details become important, and the focus would shift to describing how you came up with this new innovation or method, while you could omit the details about which proteins you used to validate the novel technique.

To summarise: start by choosing the story, then select the details that are crucial to tell it. This will help you prioritise.

How do you find a balance between making ideas understandable and not making them too boring or too basic?

That’s a valid worry. Am I telling my reader too much of what they already know? If I tell them things they already know, it may not be interesting for them. That was, by the way, a fear I had for this webinar as well. I thought all of you might already know most of what I was saying earlier in the presentation. But it really helps to know that people are usually less bothered by being told things they already know than by being expected to know things they don’t. So it’s safer to err on the side of explaining.

Secondly, even very basic facts may become interesting if presented in a new way. For example, everyone knows the central dogma – DNA makes RNA makes protein. But if you present it with a fresh perspective or in a creative format, it’s often enough to engage people. 

Dealing with fear and misinterpretation

Do you have tips for handling the fear of being misunderstood, or the tendency to stay silent rather than speaking up, especially in short social media posts or casual conversations?

That’s an important concern. Consider this: is not speaking up really the opposite of being misunderstood? Isn’t it sometimes worse if the person walks away without fully understanding? Everyone already has certain beliefs, so not speaking up (and thereby withholding additional or even contrary information) only reinforces those beliefs.

That being said, you also have to pick your battles. You cannot correct every person who might be wrong. I think it’s a matter of choosing situations where you are at least likely to be given a fair hearing. Choose those forums. Secondly, as I mentioned earlier, if possible, having a second pair of eyes review something that might be misinterpreted will help you avoid those situations. And don’t just show it to them, ask, “What do you take away from this?” Then see if it matches your own preconception.

Picking your battles is always important, especially on social media. Sometimes you can give the most detailed information possible, and it has no effect. Other times, a few well-chosen words are enough to dispel misinformation.

How can scientists avoid their research being exaggerated in the press, for example, being portrayed as a “miracle drug”?

It is a challenge. We saw a lot of this during COVID-19, when nobody had enough information. People were afraid that whatever information they had would be blown out of proportion, that all nuances were going to be lost.

Most reputable journalists do their best to maintain accuracy in reporting, but they also face so-called newsroom constraints. They often work under very tight deadlines and must pitch their story among hundreds of research articles released the same day. In addition, as a journalist, you serve the public – so why should the public be informed about this particular work but not all the others? Journalists are not serving individual scientists; their job is to gather and share information that is important for the public to know.

Of course, there are always outliers in every field: some people engage in shady practices, and some journalists sensationalise research. Unfortunately, there is often little you can do. You can’t stop them from publishing what they decide to print. However, sometimes the problem lies in the communication between the scientist and the journalist. Here, media training for scientists can be very helpful. If you know how to speak to a journalist so that your research can be clearly interpreted and its importance understood, they don’t have to go hunting for ways to sell it.

Many institutes have press offices that provide media training. At EMBL, we certainly do. There is also a free course on scidev.net on how to talk to journalists as a scientist. These are just a few suggestions that can help reduce the risk of sensationalisation and misinterpretation.

Careers in science communication

What would you recommend to someone interested in exploring a career in science communication?

People enter this field from many different directions. Some, like me, come after a PhD; others after a postdoc, meaning they switch from academia to academic, scientific, or general science communication. Others come with expertise or degrees in journalism, literature, or communication science. It’s often a collaboration between these. It’s really a portfolio career; experience often matters more than formal qualifications.

If you want to become a science writer and have already published in formats such as a blog, your university’s magazine, website, or other small outlets, all of those clippings count and can help you make the transition. Internships can also help, both for networking and for giving you clippings for your portfolio. Once you’ve started, it’s a lot of learning on the job, learning from your peers, and learning by doing.

I can give a few more details about my own path: midway through my PhD, I realised that I didn’t want to become a PI. That’s when I started exploring other career paths. I always enjoyed writing, so I thought science writing could be a way to connect the two areas I was very passionate about. Back then, I also didn’t know whether this was a viable career option. I didn’t know anyone who was doing it. So, that’s why I started with a blog. It was an experiment to see if I enjoyed it and whether I had a talent for it. I also ended up taking some short workshops and courses in science communication and journalism. I attended a two-week journalism course, and I think that was really the turning point for me. It was two intense weeks, from 9 in the morning to 6 in the evening, and we did nothing else but write. I expected to be really tired, but I just wanted more. That helped me make a decision.

I still needed to go back to the lab to finish and write my PhD thesis, which I did, and then I started an internship with a peer-reviewed science journal that had a news section. They were looking for journalism interns to populate that section. That experience was incredibly helpful, because after one year, I had 20-30 published pieces that I could put on my resume. Afterwards, I started my first full-time science communication job in a not-for-profit organisation in India. Later, I moved to Germany and started working at EMBL.

Do you think being a non-native English speaker makes a career in science writing more difficult?

I am not a native speaker myself. In fact, there is a very big need for science communication in languages other than English. English tends to be the international language that most of science is conducted in, and a lot of science communication is carried out in English, but that means we are often not reaching very important audiences, sometimes entire populations, who don’t speak English.

If you want to communicate in English, but it’s not your first language, it will always get better with practice and reading. As an editor, I often work with people whose first language is not English and who struggle with grammar or specific turns of phrases. However, those things are much easier to fix than logical inconsistencies or problems with narrative flow. If you get the hang of those crucial aspects of writing, then language can come after. As I said, it’s much easier to improve with practice. And read a lot!

Are there platforms where aspiring science communicators can contribute articles to gain experience?

Yes. The Open Notebook is a great place to start learning about this. It’s run by a community of science journalists, and it provides a lot of practical information about getting started in science writing and journalism. It also has many examples of successful pitches, which are basically what you send to an editor to ask if you can write for their newspaper, magazine, or website.

Another way is to gain experience through fellowships or internships.

Blogging or microblogging is also a good way to get started, because you don’t have a gatekeeper. In most other places, you will have to make sure that your idea is a good fit for the outlet that you are pitching to or want to write for. If you are at an institute, start with your own communications office. If you are at EMBL, come and talk to me or my colleagues. If you’re not at an institute, look into smaller websites, newspapers, and magazines. Sometimes local is better. They are often very happy to get input and fresh ideas from people in their neighbourhood.

Good examples of science communication

Could you recommend examples of excellent science communication, written or recorded, that you personally admire?

Absolutely! Especially in science writing, as that’s the area I myself work in. There are some writers who are really fantastic at talking about science. Ed Yong and Carl Zimmer are a couple of examples. Ed Yong’s book ‘An Immense World’ is one of my favourites, and I think it’s a great example of how to explain a very complex topic in an easily understandable way. There are many excellent popular science books and talks worth exploring. A few more of my favourites: The Emperor of all Maladies (Siddhartha Mukherjee), I Contain Multitudes (Ed Yong), The Brain that Changes Itself (Norman Doidge), The Drunkard’s Walk (Leonard Mlodinow), A Primate’s Memoir (Robert Sapolsky). 

Other useful resources:

• The Open Notebook: Offers science journalism case studies, successful pitches, and advice.
• Showcase (CASW): Breaks down great science stories to show why they work.

Additional resources from the EMBL Fellows’ Complementary Skills Programme are available on our website.