Digital outreach – communications in a post-Covid world

The abrupt halt to in-person outreach activities in 2020 inspired organisations to trial innovative online experiences for education and outreach activities. NCI Australia launched their new supercomputer, Gadi, which debuted at #24 in the June 2020 Top500 list, during Australia’s Covid19 lockdown period. With researchers, school groups and conference attendees no longer allowed to visit the site, the Communications and Outreach Team began running live virtual tours. The first tour, held during National Science Week, ran on Twitter's Periscope platform, and subsequent tours have used both WebEx and Zoom.

Join this presentation and the NCI team will take you on a virtual tour of Australia’s #1 supercomputer. Join communications and outreach professionals and share your experiences of running digital outreach in a post-covid landscape.

Lucy’s passion for STEM began on a sheep farm in Northern NSW where her childhood was spent exploring, experimenting and investigating. The National Youth Science Forum cemented ‘science’ as a career path, and a Bachelor Science/Law undertaken at UNE. It was the NYSF that brought her to Canberra, where she worked as the Marketing and Communications Officer, relishing the opportunity to introduce the joy of STEM to next generations. Lucy joined NCI as their Communications Manager in 2012 and is committed to championing women in HPC.

Chris Wilkinson, NCI Communications Officer has a background in journalism and media production, and has been with NCI Australia as a Communications and Outreach Officer for over four years. First and foremost a storyteller, Chris translates the incredible scientific achievements made possible by high-performance computing and data services in Australia and shares these amazing stories with the world through moving images, research highlights and other media.

Aidan Muirhead, NCI Communications Officer grew up in two Australian territories – the ACT and the NT – as well as Singapore and Serbia. She loved that maths gave her a universal language and has always wanted to know more about how things work. Passion for STEM and sharing stories led her to complete a Bachelor and Graduate Diploma in Science Communication at ANU. After 8 years at Questacon developing and delivering STEM programs across Australia, Aidan moved to NCI in 2019. Aidan is proud to support diversity in HPC, HPD, and eResearch.

Adam Huttner-Koros, NCI Communications Officer, is a science communicator from Canberra, currently working at the National Computational Infrastructure. He came to do comms in the supercomputing world after some time dabbling with freelance writing. With interests spanning across science and in particular to linguistics, his broad experience in languages and science writing often comes in handy for cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary communication. Currently attempting to add German to a language portfolio including English, French, Hungarian and Japanese, Adam finds the science of language use, sharing and development fascinating.