Your research is finally out? Congratulations! But, let’s not forget that the research publication is not the end of the process, but the beginning of another one, also important: communication. Mastering communication, and all communications tools, especially social media, is now crucial to promote your research. Scientists themselves are sometimes embracing roles that were conventionally taken on by trained science communicators.

But how to exist regarding the huge flow of communication generated on social media? How to engage with new audience? How do people, outside of the scientific life, learn about science or crystallography?

The ESRF’s communication group has developed a digital strategy based on humanising science to reach new audience but also to engage people with science. This strategy aims to explain the stories behind the science carried out at the ESRF, to highlight the people behind the research projects, through digital campaigns such as “Humans of ESRF”, EBS stories or video portraits.

Social media, as the name suggests, is a useful tool for staying connected socially with one another, however more recently it has also been used to spread ideas and communicate science to a broad audience. Social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube are increasingly being used to explain difficult scientific concepts in easy to understand language to a broad audience of both other scientists and other members of the public. This presentation will discuss how scientists can use social media to communicate their science, and how I have used platforms such as Instagram and Twitter to talk about crystallography and biochemistry in an accessible manner. This presentation will also dive into how scientists and science communicators have used social media in an attempted to break down the barriers between scientists and the rest of the public, and improve public perception of who scientists are and what we do.

Social media has the power to change people’s lives, from what we wear and eat, to where we go and who we socialise with. How can we leverage this influence to help inspire a new generation of scientists and crystallographers?

At the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) we are involved in several projects to demonstrate the power of structural data in fun and engaging ways on social media. Over the last year we have created games and content targeted at inspiring a new generation of scientists. This has included a wide variety of activities and social media campaigns and is often done in conjunction with people in our community.

This talk will highlight some of these efforts and explore what we have learnt along the way. We will demonstrate how we have used social media to enable people to play fun educational card games, to share instructional videos and playlists, to share educational tips (#CSDTopTipTuesday) and to encourage good data sharing practices.

We will conclude by summarising what we have learnt along the way and explore how we can better help others to spread the science of crystallography and its application as far as possible inside and outside the crystallographic community.

There is no doubt that the internet and social media has changed the way in which information is communicated and spread throughout the world today. Perhaps one of the fastest moving forms of media are memes, a small statement, image or video that is spread across platforms similarly to the game of ‘telephone’. Wikipedia defines a meme (/mi:m/MEEM) as “an idea, behaviour, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture – often with the aim of conveying a particular phenomenon, theme, or meaning represented by the meme.” [1] With the rise of meme groups such as “Inorganic Memes for C2v Teens” and “X-ray Crystallography May-Mays” on platforms such as Facebook, we see the spread of scientific memes and crystallographic ideas across the younger generation [2,3]. In this presentation, we will provide an overview on the use of memes to spread scientific information and their use as a tool for education and outreach for the next generation of crystallographers.

Since the turn of the century, secondary batteries have become big business. The portable electronics industry in the 1990’s was driven by the design of the Li-ion battery, and in more recent times, these batteries are underpinning the drive for electrification of vehicles to mitigate the increasingly apparent effects of climate change; thus Li-ion batteries can be described as being everywhere in everyday life.

With our reliance on portable electronics, and the growth of the electric vehicle market, it is important to not only inspire the younger generation to think of their future career in the sciences, but also allow for important concepts which relate to policy to be accessible and understandable to the wider public.

Common current outreach demonstrations for battery work make use of potato-/lemon-electrolyte batteries with a copper coin and zinc nail. Although a great demo to introduce the concept of electrochemical potentials between the metals and circuits, students often struggle to differentiate between the two types of batteries – primary (non-rechargeable) and secondary (rechargeable) and often mistakenly assume the voltage generated to originate from the potato/lemon itself.

With this in mind, we have set out to create demonstrations, which can complement primary battery demos, while showcasing operation of rechargeable batteries using the LiCoO₂ – graphite as a basis of the set-up. The talk will highlight our work from the past year through a variety of demonstrations, including our battery jenga¹ set-up and the Royal Society of Chemistry IYPT2019 funded Lithium Shuffle Project battery operation videos². The talk will also touch on outreach funding – the highs and lows, and how the group has continued their engagement work during the difficult period of COVID19.

The Italian Young Crystallographers (trad. Giovani Cristallografi Italiani aka GCI) group was formally established in 2019 driven by the need of having a common place for students and young researchers to share their experiences and develop a common sense of affiliation to the main national association.

However, the possibility to meet each other at conferences and congresses are rather modest even without the well-known pandemic constraints, so, we decided to use social media to share information among the community on a regular basis. The social media platforms soon became a virtual place where the young generation of crystallographers are informed of job vacancies around the world, promote their latest research and enrich their crystallographic knowledge.

As a consequence, the number of younger scientists associated increased significantly in the last two years and the GCI, fully supported by the national crystallographic association, plays a central role in all the scientific activities organized locally and at the national level.

I here report the strategies used to develop the social media platforms and the initiative promoted by GCI to engage young researchers in crystallography.