The Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science is a cross-disciplinary organization founded in 2009 within Stony Brook University's School of Communication and Journalism, in Stony Brook, New York.Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science
/ref> Its current director is Laura Lindenfeld. Its goal is to help scientists learn to communicate more effectively with the public, including policymakers, students, funders and the media. It was inspired by

Alan Alda Alan Alda (; born Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo; January 28, 1936) is an American actor, screenwriter, and director. A six-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner, he is best known for playing Captain Benjamin "Hawkeye" Pierce in the war come ...

, the actor, writer and science advocate, in whose honor it was renamed in 2013, and is supported by

Brookhaven National Laboratory Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory located in Upton, Long Island, and was formally established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. Army base and Japanese internment c ...

and

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) is a private, non-profit institution with research programs focusing on cancer, neuroscience, plant biology, genomics, and quantitative biology. It is one of 68 institutions supported by the Cancer Centers ...

Programs

All Alda Center programs are based on the Alda Method, a form of communication training that blends

improvisational theater Improvisational theatre, often called improvisation or improv, is the form of theatre, often comedy, in which most or all of what is performed is unplanned or unscripted: created spontaneously by the performers. In its purest form, the dialogue, a ...

exercises and message-design strategies. The Method helps scientists and researchers connect more directly with listeners and respond more spontaneously to their needs. By 2020 there had been 15,000 attendees at these improv workshops. In 2012, Alda and the Center issued the "Flame Challenge", asking scientists to come up with the best explanation for a

flame A flame (from Latin '' flamma'') is the visible, gaseous part of a fire. It is caused by a highly exothermic chemical reaction taking place in a thin zone. When flames are hot enough to have ionized gaseous components of sufficient density they ...

for an intended audience of 11-year-olds.

References

External links

* {{official Stony Brook University Brookhaven National Laboratory Science education in the United States Science in society