Heather Doran

Image from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dirkb86/8444929253/ This January I visited London for an interview. I was feeling nervous and excited and, as I usually handle challenging situations, I tweeted about it. People on twitter offered words of encouragement and support. Some of the people that tweeted I have met and know well, others I only know through twitter (and I don't even know their real name). With all of these people I have built relationships completely online and we have shared advice, interesting news stories and silly memes. The tweeting helped, I found at the end of February that I was successful. The twitter conversations I had just before the interview helped me get through the interview, and reinforced my feelings about why I was there. The interview was for a project focusing on how science is shared via social media with the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust . The project is a Travel Fellowship and I'm going to be meeting with people across the US

I graduated from my PhD some time ago now. I moved away from research when my funding expired and after a lot of decision making and deliberating I took a post in Public Engagement at the University of Aberdeen. I started in late 2012 and I've really been enjoying it so far. I am involved with planning, organising and running lots of public engagement events along with speaking to researchers about the many different ways they can engage with the public, how to bring the public into research, a bit of training and also discussing how to use social media as a researcher (which I really enjoy). It wasn't an easy decision and I didn't discuss it on this blog at the time for a number of reasons. There was a post-doc opportunity too but that was in Canada and I wanted to stay in Scotland as my (now) husband is based here and I decided that I wanted to move full time into public engagement. I knew that I would enjoy the role and it seemed that this option would lead to a muc

I'm going to share a secret. I LOVE Valentine's day. But I don't do soppy, romantic gestures very well. So if you, like me struggle to share your feelings with that special someone and you live too far away from London (like me) to enjoy one of these fabulously, amazing real heart cakes (yes, these are for eating!) I have created a science themed Pinterest board , for your science love pleasure. Featuring everyones love favourites, the brain, serotonin, dopamine and Carl Sagan. Hope you enjoy it. Happy Valentine's Day! Don't forget to keep your eyes and ears open for any dubious 'science' valentines stories/research appearing in the news and online :-) Maybe we will all be enlightened with the 'love formula'. Source:  lily-vanilli.blogspot.com  via  hapsci  on  Pinterest

Published in Issue 1 (June 2011) of Au Science Magazine . Find out more about Helen here Helen’s show, 'It IS rocket science' is a humorous look at the people involved in space exploration. It was recently aired on BBC Radio 4 and has been performed at the Edinburgh Fringe. I caught up with Helen in Aberdeen where she did a short version of her show for, 'Skeptics in the Pub' in March.

Latex gloves, white lab coat and an expression of intense concentration. This is not your stereotypical image of a cannabis user, but it is one. Scientific researchers from all over the globe are devoting their time to uncovering the secrets of cannabis. If you are able to believe the hype, cannabis can relieve pain, prevent infection by HIV and fight cancer. In the UK, the first medicinal license for a cannabis-based medicine, Sativex , was granted in 2010, yet cannabis remains an illegal substance. So, is it medicine or menace?

Universities in the UK have embraced 'Public Engagement'. There is a Public Engagement Manifesto . My university (University of Aberdeen) have signed it. But who carries this 'vital' work out and are they being recognised for it? “ The University of Aberdeen is committed to achieving distinctive excellence across all aspects of its activities including the vital objective of engaging with society. We are building on a considerable track record, where public engagement has become ever more embedded in our core business. Moving forward, our Strategic Plan 2011-2015 reflects our ongoing commitment to support and empower our staff and students to help deliver a diverse, creative and accessible programme of activities with a measurable public impact. Partnership is central to our strategy and our active involvement with the work of the NCCPE extends back to its inception. We therefore endorse the principles of the Concordat for Engaging the Public with Research and fully s

I LOVE board games. I get aggressive, grumpy and bossy (but I NEVER cheat, despite what my family say). A couple of years ago I found this beauty of a board game on Ebay, NORTH SEA OIL (I think it is from the 70s). I bought it for my boyfriend (who works in the oil industry) - It is FANTASTIC. It's like oil Monopoly. It has mini oil rigs and real life oil situations (bad weather = no oil production). Board games have always been 'big' in my family... we have this one ' ESCAPE FROM COLDITZ '.. for a million years, although we have no idea how to play it. Our Monopoly board was bought by my Grandma when she was a teenager (she likes to tell us every time we play) with real metal pieces... I usually buy a board game for Christmas, the weirder the better.. here are some suggestions from the lovely people on my Twitter feed. They all look FAB. LOOPING LOUIE - some kind of crazy German game where you fly 'Louie' round a crazy obstacle course... (@sulsa

Blogging has taken a back seat recently, whilst I along with a team of others at the University of Aberdeen launched a new science themed magazine. I think I am in a very lucky position here at the University of Aberdeen. I mentioned this idea of a science magazine last September to the public engagement team and since then they have very kindly sent anything they came across (including people, interviews, events, stories) in my direction. I organised a meeting with 5 others that had mentioned creating a science magazine to the public engagement team. We met, clicked and then set on a mission to create the magazine. Without working as a team this would have been impossible. We have written stories that we think are interesting, but the science is not over-hyped. We do not shout about the latest cure for cancer, but we discuss how compounds in the cannabis plant are being tested for their therapeutic potential. We do not say there is life on Mars but we do talk about how we are expl