With the summer full-on even in Northern Europe, I decided to leave my beach island paradise and spend a few months in Germany. I finally got my vaccine and was hence able to see my family after more than one and a half years. This surely was my personal highlight of the last month!
This also means that I laid a bit low with my client’s work; everyone deserves a break – or even a proper weekend – once in a while. Yet, we managed to publish some really cool posts in the last weeks. Let’s have look.
For microbe lovers
Have you ever thought about which microbes live on the skin of your hands? In a guest blog post, Maria Martynova describes how the skin microbiome on our hands helps and protects us.
If you have not thought about the microbes on your hands, what about the microbes that live on our roads? The blog post “Which microbes live on our streets?” on the FEMSmicroBlog talks about how to detect road microbes and how their composition is influenced by traffic pollution.
For academics
In the post “The World Microbe Forum goes online”, I describe my experience at the World Microbe Forum. This online conference was the first of its kind. Two major microbiology societies, FEMS and ASM, did amazing jobs at bringing the microbiology community closer together and giving researchers an online platform to present their newest results and trigger discussions.
As researchers, we also need to think about how much plastic waste we produce in the lab. The post “We need to reduce the energy footprint of microbiology research” looks at this important issue and gives some advice on how lab-based microbiologists can cut down on plastic waste and improve our planet’s health.
For science communicators
On the FEMSmicroBlog, we highlighted the Bad Bugs Book Club as an exciting public engagement project. Joanna Verran founded a reading community of books with a microbial disease focus.
For everyone, who wants to dive into a science communication career: I gave a webinar “From the bench to the beach: a scientific career is as sunny as you make” about my journey into the science communication field and how I aim to reach my goal of improving lives by sharing knowledge. You can check out the video on the STEMcognito platform.
In new episodes of our STEMterview series on STEMcognito, I chatted with two amazing science communicators: Dr Manasi Apte and Dr Shane Huntington. Both told me about why they do what they do and how they got started in science communication.
That was MicroComms’ relatively short Summer Newsletter! I hope you can enjoy some Summer vibes wherever you are and relax a bit. Stay healthy!
