Q&As

Yanne K. Chembo and Joe Niemela were part of the committee that put together the successful proposal for the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. They recount their experience of the process and of working with the UN.

John Gribbin, physicist and popular science writer, reflects on the long running, and evolving, fascination of quantum mechanics.

Trained as a particle physicist, Yangyang Cheng now works as a researcher on the history of science in China and US–China relations. She contextualizes the current tensions between the two superpowers.

In 2021, physicist and writer, Carlo Rovelli, helped launch an open letter to the world’s politicians calling for a small proportion of military funding to address climate change, poverty and pandemics — the Global Peace Dividend. He discusses the pressing need for global cooperation on common interests.

Erica Goldman, Director of Day One and Policy Entrepreneurship at the Federation of American Scientists, discusses how scientists can go from communicating science to advocating for science and doing policy entrepreneurship.

Mónica Bello, Curator and Head of Arts at CERN talks about the programmes that have been fostering the dialogue between artists and physicists for over a decade with the aim of exploring the cultural significance of fundamental research.

The organizers of Science Fiction and the Future of Detection and Imaging, a series of workshops exploring the role of technology in future societies, share what they learned from these events.

Connie Potter and Rob Appleby, editors of Collision: Stories from the Science of CERN — an anthology of short science fiction stories — share how they brought creative writers, scientists and engineers to work together on this book.

Stéphane Kenmoe, editor-in-chief of the African Physics Newsletter, discusses how the project helps foster communication among physicists in Africa and the African diaspora, and brings African physics worldwide.

Raphaël Lévy, one of the principal investigators of NanoBubbles — an interdisciplinary project that explores how, when and why science fails to correct itself, talks about the importance of questioning and correcting the scientific record.

Denise Völker, Head of Sustainability at DESY, shares how a dedicated sustainability office can lead the way in cutting the environmental impact of a big science facility.

Praveen Paul, director and co-founder of Pint of Science, tells us how a supposedly one-off, fun event ten years ago led to an unexpected journey.

Erin Barker and Ben Lillie, co-founders of Story Collider, share how the organization uses the power of storytelling to reveal the human side of science.