Christine Zachow

The slam is really about science communication.

how to communicate really complex science to a non-specialist audience.

Christine is one of the two people who founded the National Lab Slam.

Them being able to tell me creates some trust there, and that helps bridge that gap between science, policymakers, society in general.

It's good for us to fully understand what they do.

I'm two miles down the road.

Before I got my job at the lab, it was a mysterious place, what goes on there.

I didn't know.

These scientists are so smart, and if they can't tell me what they do, I'm not going to get it.

We saw the great talks that were given.

We could identify that these were skills that were so important for young researchers to have to be able to communicate their science.

I have a really close working relationship with my counterpart at Lawrence Berkeley Lab.

I said, hey, you got to come see what we're doing.

She saw it.

She loved it, thought it was great.

So she took it back to Lawrence Berkeley and did one for their postdocs the following year.

Man, wouldn't this be great if we could do this on a national scale?

It very quickly progressed to all 17 labs.

We had commitment from every single DOE laboratory across the nation that they would train a finalist, prepare them, select one, and send them to Washington DC for this event.

He froze.