“We wanted the Science Café to be a place where people could grab a beer, listen to a non-dense science lecture, and ask questions directly to an expert—all with no cover charge.”
Rishi R. Masalia
The Athens Science Café is an outreach organization co-founded by Stephanie and Drew Pearl, Rishi R. Masalia, James Hataway, and Terry Hastings to improve public engagement with basic science by facilitating a dialogue between the university science faculty and Athens, GA community. Sponsoring free to the public, jargon-free science presentations ASC has become a staple of the Athens community, receiving funds from the University of Georgia, the City of Athens, and the NSF. Notable speakers: Roger Hunter (Kepler Mission Director, NASA), Jenna Jambeck (Plastics), Marshall Shepherd (Climate Change).
Started over a decade ago, this organization is on-going, with numerous cohorts of passionate UGA students spearing heading the effort. To date, Athens Science Café has put on over 100 free to the public events, with an average head count of 150 enthusiastic attendees.
Sponsored events have hosted diverse audiences, varying in age, educational background, gender, and race, as well as providing opportunities for a diverse set of speakers, tied to universities, industry, and the regional community.
Legacy
A decade later, and I am now just a passionate fan of the Athens Science Café, frequently watching events live from my home in St. Louis, MO. It’s both heartwarming and astounding to me that this organization is still going after all these years, and give all credit to the passionate students who kept it going during COVID and after the ‘science communication is new’ hype died down. Since I have left running the organization, the group has received NSF funding, flown in national academy scientists to give talks, and expanded to having student talks. The legacy of the Athens Science Café is a nice one, often credited as the organization that started the science communication boom at UGA, and creating a cohort of strong science communicators, many of whom pursued science communication professionally after graduate school. I remember filming our first ever café – the Science of Love on February 25th 2014, thinking it was so cool. But if you gave me a million guesses, I’d never think it would have the success it has had.
It’s been a massive undertaking and involves many helping hands – with special shoutouts to Nick Batora, Stephanie Halmo, Rick Field, Summer Blanco, Jordan Argrett and countless students, post-docs, UGA staff and faculty, and Athens, GA community members. Athens Science Café has been meet with enormous support, and we are eternally grateful.
A YouTube Repository of our work can be found here, including a special honor – my own Athens Science Café presentation the day before my PhD graduation in 2018 – Last Call at the Oasis: A Look at Water & Agriculture.
Featured Press:
- Making Research Accessible: Athens Science Alliance still going strong (Research UGA)
- The Science Café is a fun loving society for the scientist in all of us (UGA Graduate Student Magazine)
- Science Café architects leaving, but popular series remains (Athens Banner-Herald)
- Athens Science Café discusses GMOs (Red&Black)
- Lovey Dovey: First Athens Science Café discusses science of love (Red&Black)
ASC is constantly striving to make science and scientists more accessible to the public. As such, we collaborated with other interested parties in North Georgia to create “Science Cafés” for elementary and high school students in Athens Clarke County, GA, as well a Dahlonega, GA. Through friendships in other graduate schools, we were instrumental in establishing Columbia, MO’s Science on Tap series, and were invited to give lectures on starting and disseminating our model to the others.
Expanding on Science Café, Jeffery B. Cannon, John Spiekerman and I co-found the Athens Science Observer, a student organization aimed at improving science communication skills for graduate and undergraduate students. More details about the Observer can be found here.
rishimasalia.com 
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