to boldly go where no one has gone before

Heading to #SciWri13!

A quick update for all our readers – Cristina and I (Atif) will be in beautiful Gainesville, Florida this week for the National Association of Science Writers/Council for the Advancement of Science Writers annual conference!

I will be speaking on a panel on Saturday November 2nd titled “Take a lesson from the universe: Expand” in the Dogwood room at 11am. I’m excited to be speaking on this panel, along with some of my favourite science communicators in Alan Boyle, Joe Hanson, Matt Shipman and Kirsten “Dr Kiki” Sanford. Thanks also to Clinton Colmenares for organizing this wonderful opportunity and what promises to be an excellent discussion.

A description of the session from the program:

Scientists know science. And they’re good at getting science news. Know who’s not? Non-scientists. Yet non-scientists outnumber scientists, and their attitudes, believes, intellects (or not) and their votes help determine science policies, from funding for stem cells to what’s taught in school. The near-extinction of science reporters at local news outlets has created a gap in a steady stream of legitimate, dependable science news. Yet today there are more ways than ever to reach the general public. This session is about expanding your audience beyond the science in crowd. We’ll talk with two young scientists who are passionate about finding new ways to reach new audiences and we’ll explore ideas for how PIOs, freelancers, staff reporters and even scientists themselves can take a lesson from the universe and expand.

If you see either of us around, be sure to say hi! We’ll be at most of the events, and would love to meet you!

This was published simultaneously on PLOS Sci Ed

October 28, 2013 0

Featured Interview with the Queen’s University School of Graduate Studies

Friend of the blog Sharday Mosurinjohn recently interviewed me for a profile on the Queen’s University School of Graduate Studies website. The first paragraph of her (very flattering) interview is below, and follow the link provided for the whole thing.

Atif Kukaswadia – AKA Mr. Epidemiology – is here to help you understand the science that’s important to your life. As a PhD candidate in Queen’s Department of Public Health Sciences and a science writer for the Public Library of Science (PLOS) blogs network, Kukaswadia is immersed in creating and reporting on scientific knowledge of direct relevance to the public, and he wants to share the wealth.

Kukaswadia moved to Canada in 2002 with his family from the UK. He started his undergraduate degree in Biology at Carleton University, where he focused on ecology and studied caterpillars, butterflies and mud shrimp. The thing Kukaswadia most enjoyed about ecology was how “everything was interconnected – you never study one squirrel in isolation. You study the whole environment and how elements of the environment interact.”

While he enjoyed Ecology, he realized that studying butterflies and caterpillars wasn’t for him. So he started a second degree in Health Psychology. Using his background in ecology, he began looking at humans the same way he had been trained to look at non-human animals and, specifically, at how the environment affects humans. This combination of interests led him to Queen’s, and the Department of Public Health Sciences.

Click here to continue reading!

September 24, 2013 0

Battlestar Pedagogica: Using Science Fiction to teach Science!

Science fiction is educational - SO SAY WE ALL! Picture courtesy BattlestarWiki — Science fiction is educational – SO SAY WE ALL! | Picture courtesy Battlestar Galactica Wiki

I’m a huge fan of science fiction and fantasy. There are few feelings quite as impressive as when an author crafts a world that draws you in (See: Arrakis, Middle Earth, Westeros, LV-246, Hogwarts etc). Perhaps what I find most fascinating though, is how quickly science fiction can turn into real life. For example, the tricorder from Star Trek was a fictional device that could scan different aspects of the environment depending on the requirement, ranging from geological, such as mineral content of rocks, to metereological, such as air pressure and temperature, to biological, such as heart rate and blood pressure. While this sounded like a great dream in the 1960s (when The Original Series aired), we’re now, within a single generation (pun *totally* intended), able to turn this into reality. The new Samsung Galaxy S4, for example, is slated to be released with a suite of health apps (dubbed S Health), including apps to measure heart rate, blood pressure as well as track caloric expenditure. Even things as simple as being able to communicate without needing a bulky cellphone have now become a reality.

As teachers and educators, we suffer from a very real limitation when it comes to teaching. Either due to time, lack of equipment or other constraints we cannot teach some issues the way we would like. But even in the most well-equipped lab, sometimes we can’t teach a concept because the technology doesn’t exist. In those situations, we can use outlandish examples to discuss a concept, and then work backwards from there to discuss the limitations we currently face, a concept called a Thought Experiment. By imagining a scenario, we can push the boundaries of our understanding, discussing the issue from a “what about if X happened,” or “Would Y still occur if A and B happened.” There are many types of thought experiments, and it means different things to different disciplines. I’m going to be using it to refer the use of a metaphor to explain a concept, which corresponds to the “prefactual” type of thought experiment, ie. what outcome would we expect if we had conditions A, B and C.

Click here to continue reading!

April 29, 2013 0

Mr Epidemiology is moving to PLoS Blogs!

Super exciting news! As of this week, I’ll be a PLoS Blogger! A PLoGGer! Or a PLoGster! Yay!

This is very exciting, and I’m looking forward to moving onto the PLoS network. For some perspective, I’m going from my blog (3-5k visits/month) to PLoS Blogs (>200k visits/month). I’ll be writing for their brand new Public Health blog and their Science Education blog, together with some incredible writers, including the very talented Viet Le and Beth Skwarecki on Public Health, as well Jean Flanagan and Cristina Russo on Science-Ed, as well as others (including frequent Mr Epidemiology guest, Lindsay Kobayashi!).

The blogs go live tonight (so if the links don’t work, check back later), and will be available at:

http://blogs.plos.org/publichealth/ and

http://blogs.plos.org/scied/

I’m going to continue to use Mr Epidemiology to aggregate my work on these sites and Gradifying, and will continue to update Mr Epid with other posts and thoughts that don’t fit those three blogs.

As always, I welcome your comments, and hope you’ll join me over at PLoS! And above all, thank you all for your support!

November 26, 2012 0

New Co-Authored Blog: Gradifying!

Exciting news everyone!

I’ve been invited to blog over at Gradifying, a new grad student run blog at Queen’s University through their School of Graduate Studies! The blog will be focused on life in Kingston and graduate life at Queen’s, but some of the topics will be applicable to anyone in graduate school, like picking a research supervisor. If there’s anything in particular you’d like us to cover, don’t hesitate to let us know.

The blog has more information about my co-bloggers Sharday and Megan, as well more about me there too. For more info, be sure to take a look at the Gradifying website, and also follow us on Twitter!

– Atif

June 19, 2012 0

Update: New address – www.mrepidemiology.com

Hi all,

I recently registered www.mrepidemiology.com. Assuming that the tubes realign properly, you should be automagically redirected to that URL. Otherwise, please update your browsers.

All the previous links should still work, but if there are any problems, let me know and I’ll have my tech guy take a look at them (i.e. me wearing a Transformers shirt).

Thanks,

Atif

February 6, 2012 0

Better Know An Epidemiologist: Alexander Langmuir

Better Know An Epidemiologist/History of Epidemiology is an ongoing feature where Mr Epidemiology pays tribute to people and studies who have set the stage for his generation of epidemiologists. All of the articles are listed here.

Epidemiology is a relatively new field. While John Snow made his breakthrough in the 1850s, even as recently as World War 2, there was no central epidemiology agency. However, with the start of the Korean War, the threat of biological warfare loomed. As a result, the government recognized the need for an organization who would track and monitor disease outbreaks.

Enter Alexander Langmuir.

Continue reading “Better Know An Epidemiologist: Alexander Langmuir” →

July 18, 2011 4

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to Mr Epidemiology! I’ve been hoping to start this blog for a while, inspired by colleagues and friends (a list of whom is on the right).

I’m assuming people have some questions, so I’m going to answer some of the most common ones: Who am I? Why am I doing this? What am I going to do? And finally: Does peanut butter and honey taste nearly as good as peanut butter and jelly?

More after the jump.

Continue reading “Welcome!” →

July 4, 2011 14

Mr Epidemiology

No, I'm not a skin doctor

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