Public Engagement, Communications, and Outreach Plans
Ensuring wider awareness of EMBL’s knowledge
EMBL’s public engagement, communications, and outreach activities ensure wider awareness and application of EMBL’s knowledge by general scientific audiences, policymakers, teachers, young learners, and the public.
Given the societal and environmental relevance of EMBL’s new Programme, strong public engagement, communications, and outreach will help inspire, inform, and educate a range of audiences. EMBL can contribute to building global science literacy by increasing local public engagement at EMBL sites, multiplying communications activity through collaborations and partnerships, embarking on the TREC outreach initiative in member states, supporting European teachers and young learners, and engaging with policymakers to improve evidence-based decision making.
EMBL believes it is more important than ever to build a scientifically and technologically literate society that provides scientific facts and contributes meaningfully to debates as well as decision making. EMBL’s public engagement, communications, and outreach activities will help translate complex and vast scientific research into accessible and enriching information.
EMBL’s public engagement, communications, and outreach activities seek to be dynamic, influential, and daring, in line with the Molecules to Ecosystems Programme. EMBL will reach scientists and the public by providing mobile scientific services, training, and outreach to enable collaboration, discovery, and capacity building. EMBL will also draw on its strong alumni community in raising awareness of EMBL’s work and its benefits to society. Key partners and collaborators will further multiply EMBL’s communication activities.
Drawing on EMBL’s unique science and staff, EMBL will offer dedicated training to teachers and young learners in member states and contribute to raising EMBL’s profile as a provider of science education in Europe. EMBL’s Science & Society Programme will seek to develop new mechanisms for multidisciplinary and multi-stakeholder dialogue and further strengthen engagement with society at all levels, as well as with European policymakers.
Key contacts
Briony Jackson
Head of Science Education and Public Engagement
“Reaching out to the public and advancing life science education is an important part of modern science. Science can change people’s lives in many ways, whether it’s impacting their health and environment or opening up a whole new world of discovery.”
EMBL’s vision is to advance understanding of ecosystems at the molecular level and study life in context. The result will be fundamental research that expands what we know about life on earth and provides the means to address major global challenges.
This new Programme will expand EMBL’s scope to study the molecular basis of life in the context of changing environments, transforming our understanding of life on earth and informing potential solutions for some of society’s biggest challenges, such as irreversible loss of biodiversity, antimicrobial resistance, pollution, climate change, food security, and emergent pathogens.
