Student radio brings scientific research to the airwaves

“Research Remix” is a new show on UC Davis radio station KDVS, co-created by Jonathan Berlingeri, a doctoral student in the Department of Plant Sciences. The public affairs programming features interviews with graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, airing 8 to 9 a.m. on alternate Fridays on 90.3 FM.

Berlingeri is in the lab of Christine Diepenbrock, an associate professor in the department, and part of the horticulture and agronomy graduate group. In his studies, he breeds beans to have greater nutritional value. But on the air, he’s DJ Beans, playing indie music and digging into both science and the people who do it.

The aim, Berlingeri said, is to “pull their research out of academic journals and bring it to the public.”

A recent interview with fellow grad student Maria Rottersman, for instance, delves into her work in the lab of Jorge Dubcovsky to develop wheat for people who are sensitive to gluten. In the course of the interview, we learn that Rottersman’s path into science was influenced by watching a segment of the television comedy-satire, “South Park.”

The radio project grew out of Professors for the Future fellowships that Berlingeri and another hort and ag student, Danyelle Forte, landed last year. One of the final outcomes of the fellowship, Forte wrote in their proposal, would be a vehicle to explain science to non-scientists and “encourage participants to engage thoughtfully with societal and community-centered issues.”

“Research Remix” does that.

Berlingeri hosts the show with co-creator Joanna Rothwell, a postdoc at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, and it first aired in April. “Now it has legs,” Berlingeri said, “and we are going to continue even after completing the fellowship.”

"This radio show is such a great benefit to the community to come out of our Professors for the Future project,” added Forte.

We asked Berlingeri to tell us more:

Q: What motivated you two to start this show?

Berlingeri: “Some of the most useful research happening right now never makes its way to the general public. It gets stuck behind paywalls, technical language and the assumption that only experts will care. ‘Research Remix” is an attempt to fix that and to educate people about important ongoing issues in science and scholarly research.”

Q: Why radio?

Berlingeri: “Mostly because radio is awesome (KDVS is amazing), but also because it is ephemeral. Participants don't have to worry about the permanence of a podcast or video. It provides a comfortable, supported, low-stakes environment for talking about research that doesn't seem to give students the same jitters they have when speaking at a conference.

“It’s been loads of fun! ‘Research Remix’ also gives students and postdocs the opportunity to translate their research for broader audiences, and this is a really important skill to learn.”

Q: Why do we need to disseminate graduate student research?

Berlingeri: “Students and postdocs are making discoveries that should be shared! Research can be very challenging, and each milestone and achievement should be celebrated.

“Also, a lot of research is very siloed. This expands the reach of research and provides our audience with perspective.”

Q: How will you be choosing your subjects?

Berlingeri: “Joanna and I are both primarily agricultural researchers, so we are somewhat biased in that we have chosen to involve colleagues that we know from our departments. However, we have made efforts to recruit guests from other disciplines, and any discipline is welcome! We have had economics and social science students, researchers in medical clinical studies, microbiologists and engineers.

“We are actively looking for students in the humanities as well and hope to have some discussions about history and classical literature.”

Listen up

“Research Remix” airs at 8 a.m. Fridays on 90.3 FM. You can find the program calendar here.

You can find the June 26 interview with fellow grad student Maria Rottersman here. Click on the arrow at the very top-left of the page to play the interview. The recording will remain online only until Friday, July 10. The table below the play button lists the songs played during the breaks on the show.

Learn more about Berlingeri, Forte and their Professors of the Future fellowships here.

Learn more about the UC Davis Professors for the Future program and apply here.

Scholarly Public Communication Program

In addition to the radio show, a component of Berlingeri and Forte’s Professors for the Future project was the creation of a university-hosted webpage. The Scholarly Public Communication Program features short articles written by grad students and postdocs about their research for a general audience.

“It had the overarching goal of connecting early researchers and their work to the broader public,” Forte explained. It also gives participants practice at explaining their research in plain English.

Learn more about the UC Davis Scholarly Public Communication Program and read the research briefs here.

The briefs include an item by fellow grad student Maya Shydlowski, on “Drone Imagery Can Measure Fertilizer Efficiency in Farm Fields.”