Miquel Salmeron of the Materials Sciences Division and the Molecular Foundry was chosen as an invited speaker for the Scientific Literacy Project, a federally funded, Department of Education science education program.  Starting in 1999, the project has organized workshops designed to educate radio journalists about the latest advances in science.  One of its 2006 workshops was held in San Francisco and Salmeron was one of 26 leading researchers invited as a presenter.
 
Today’s scientific developments affect all of us. Moreover, in this technologically advanced and rapidly changing world, the general public needs to grasp not only the science itself, but also its interaction with economics, politics and public policy.  This creates challenges for journalists as they strive to present such complex information to their audiences.  Their hurdles include keeping up with the rapid pace of scientific discovery and developing a roster of  reliable sources who can be contacted quickly.  There is an additional creative challenge specific to radio - how to unfold a multilayered story using only sound.

The Scientific Literacy Project was designed to address some of these issue and provides a rare science training opportunity to mid-career public radio producers and reporters.  In each intensive six-day training workshop, twelve competitively selected, mid-career public radio journalists gain the tools and knowledge to tackle complex science stories in a perceptive, clear, balanced and imaginative way. 

MSDs Salmeron was chosen as the expert lecturer on nanoscience for the March 2006 workshop which was host by KQED-FM, a public radio station based in San Francisco.  His presentation “Nanoscience: Materials for the Future” encompassed a number of aspects of this new research frontier, discussing matter to properties, its control, the scaling of these concepts from atoms to "big" objects, and the current and potentially future applications of the technology.

M. Salmeron (510) 486-6230, Materials Sciences Division, (510) 486-4755, and Molecular Foundry, Berkeley Lab.

The Molecular Foundry is a National User Facility dedicated to the synthesis of nanomaterials.