Tom Zinnen

Background

About Tom Zinnen

Previously, Congressional Science Fellow, and Speechwriter for the Director of the National Science Foundation. Co-creator, producer and emcee since Feb 2006 of the "Wednesday Nite @ The Lab" public science seminar offered every Wednesday night, 50 times a year. Over 500 WN@TL presentations are available through PBS Wisconsin at wpt.org/universityplace. Among the most valuable insights scientists can share with the public are the ways researchers view and do science, and the ways we use science to probe the unknown and to invent the future. Creator and co-organizer starting in 2003 of "UW-Madison Science Expeditions," the annual three-day campus-wide science open house at the nation's 8th largest research campus by budget. Hospitality counts, and venue matters. If land-grant university scholars hope to be welcomed into communities around our state, then we in turn need to welcome to campus visitors from communities from across our state. Leader of "BioTrek," the public outreach program of the UW-Madison Biotechnology Center and of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension. BioTrek welcomes learners of all ages to come experience science as exploring the unknown here on the campus of Wisconsin's public land-grant research university. BioTrek emphasizes that even fourth graders, by virtue of their residency in Wisconsin and by virtue of their paying of sales tax whenever they buy a candy bar or a computer game, are both co-owners and co-funders of the university, and therefore we all have a stake in the scientific enterprise. Developer of the "Doing DNA" series of MacGyveresque hands-on puzzles, parables & paradoxes that give participants a chance to experience science as creating ideas and then designing and doing experiments to test this ideas. By focusing on developing science savvy, participants are better able to use science in making personal choices, in forming public policies, and in making decisions in the face of uncertainty. This is the foundational approach of EpiSTEMology.