Dear Colleagues,
I want to thank all of you for your support of iBiology over the past 15 years. This organization and effort was built upon countless volunteer hours by speakers and the tireless effort of a small team who wanted to support the scientific community and those who wanted to learn about different fields, new technologies, and deepen their knowledge in topic areas. We’ve produced over 600 individual videos that cover a wide range of science topics. These videos have had millions of views and are used widely in university and college settings.
About 5 years ago, we decided to start experimenting with a new style of video. For these videos, instead of having a speaker spend countless hours preparing an iBiology talk and delivering it in our green screen studio, we traveled to the speaker and interviewed them. With the tables flipped, we could dive deeper into topics we wanted to feature, and learn more about the scientist themselves. The speaker would only need to show up for 1-2 hours and that was it! We could then employ the tools of film, editing, animation, b-roll, and music, amongst others, to produce a more contained film that, ideally, would be of interest to the scientific community but also extend into educational settings and the public. It also allowed us to feature multiple speakers in a video, and expand the types of content we could create, for example, filming on location in a redwood forest after a fire. These experiments in film also came at a time when our main funder suggested that, with a library of over 600 videos, we should consider trying a new approach to reach more audiences. Thus, we decided to pivot in our approach to creating videos to focus on short, cinematic films. These films would still have the scientist speaking for themselves, talking about their research but would be shorter and more immersive.
In the past several years we have created content in this form, as well as studied it. We’ve found that our cinematic films, which feature personal storytelling and the nature of science affect outcomes such as trust in science, science identity, and understanding the process of science. These films are more engaging for a wide range of audiences including scientific and educational communities, as well as the general public. We can reach people through our website and YouTube channel, as we have before, but also expand to include film festivals, classrooms, and in-person screening events which provide the possibilities for further engagement afterwards.
As we are moving toward continuing this form of science video production into the future, we want to acknowledge the impact of what we have done in the past. We are “branding” this new cinematic form of science films under the Science Communication Lab, the name of our non-profit. They will be featured on our Science Communication Lab website. Meanwhile we will be maintaining the 600+ lectures and short talks prepared for and given by scientists under the iBiology name, and will continue to host the videos here, on the iBiology website. All of the videos we have made can still be found on our YouTube channels.
We are so grateful for the participation of the science community that helped make iBiology into an important resource for scientists and beyond, and for those who are helping us create the new cinematic films. We are looking forward to continuing to innovate in our science content, including how the public and educational audiences engage with the material. Thanks for continuing on this journey with us!
All the best,
Sarah Goodwin
Executive Director, Science Communication Lab
