Sarah Boon

Sarah Boon (PhD, FRCGS) is a science writer and editor. Her articles have appeared in Nature, Science, Water Canada, Hakai Magazine, iPolitics, and CBC’s The Nature of Things. Sarah is a co-founder and serves on the Board of Science Borealis.

Women in Science: Britt Wray

June 12, 2018 | 5 minute read

Canadian Britt Wray is based at the University of Copenhagen’s Center for Synthetic Biology, doing a PhD in a field you’ve probably never heard of. Financially supported by the University of Copenhagen’s Excellence Programme and Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), she’s developing new methods for science communication in synthetic biology using her art and radio experience.

The Synthetic Biology Project describes synthetic biology as “an emerging area of research that can broadly be described as the design and construction of novel artificial biological pathways, organisms or devices, or the redesign of existing natural biological systems.”

Wray’s thesis requires that she study and understand not only the details of synthetic biology, but also science communication. It’s an interdisciplinary project that seems specifically designed for her.

Credit: Arden Wray

 

“I was on Twitter one day and noticed that people were tweeting about an open PhD position at the University of Copenhagen. I couldn’t believe how well this esoteric PhD fit the description of my life and research activities, as I’d moved from studying biology to making art about synthetic biology and then becoming a science communication broadcaster. The ad fit my profile eerily well.”

She maintains that, had she not checked Twitter at that exact moment, she would never have learned about the position. “I never saw the PhD position advertised anywhere before or after that one small window of time when I checked Twitter,” she says.

But how did she get to this point?

“In high school I had this romantic ideal of being a female scientist because they seemed to be rare in my world at the time, which made them interesting to my 17-year-old self. I was also inspired by David Attenborough and his life long career broadcasting the natural world with the BBC. This gave me the confidence to pursue science, even though I felt I might be a better writer than researcher.”

Wray graduated from Queen’s University in 2008 with a BSc in biology. While at Queen’s, she also started a science radio show on the local campus-community radio station, and fell in love with making science come to life through conversation and montage.

Following her BSc, Wray decided lab work wasn’t for her, and instead sought out journalistic and artistic avenues for exploring scientific knowledge. She completed an Interdisciplinary Master’s in Art, Media, and Design at the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) (2012, MA) but her ideas never really strayed far from what she’d learned in the lab. “My Master’s thesis focused on the interdisciplinarity of artists and scientists working together in the field of synthetic biology,” she explains.

After her MA, Wray joined the CBC to create science-themed radio programs for Radio 1. That’s when she saw the PhD ad, and moved to Copenhagen.

While working on her PhD, Wray remains heavily involved in broadcasting and media, where she finds her projects are shaped by how she’s learned to think about science communication and emerging technologies during her degree.

Wray co-hosts a BBC podcast called Tomorrow’s World with engineer Ellie Cosgrave. “We explore the possible future directions in which science might lead us, and the ethical questions that could arise as we navigate a changing world,” she says. She will also host an upcoming episode of CBC’s The Nature of Things, and is directing a documentary series with the National Film Board of Canada on personal genomics and human genetic modification. “This documentary is a creative platform for exploring critical questions about the genetic future of humanity,” she says.

Wray is also the author of Rise of the Necrofauna: The Science, Ethics, and Risks of De-Extinction which, as she describes it, “dives into how conservation biology and synthetic biology are merging, allowing researchers to try and recreate close versions of extinct species in the name of ecological restoration.”

Wray is married without kids, and finds it hard to create boundaries between work and family. She relies on feedback from her immediate family and friends to gently remind her when she’s working too much. Like many of the women in science we’ve interviewed, Wray tries to strike the right balance of taking on enough projects, but not more than necessary. Her husband and close friendships are highly important to her, but she wonders what will happen if she has children. “I can’t imagine how difficult it must get when kids enter the picture,” she says.

Will Wray become an academic after finishing her PhD? “It seems that between teaching, research, and administrative duties, there’s not much left for oneself or one’s family and friends. That just doesn’t scream ‘worth it’ to me over an entire working life time,” she says, candidly. “I see a lot of good academic work in my field—work that takes a lot of energy to produce—fall to the wayside with limited impact.”

Wray feels more connected to the public engagement that she does outside of academia than to the process of writing research papers, particularly given the publish or perish mentality. “Since I’m on the communication side of things, I want to be out there, communicating with people,” she says.

That doesn’t mean Wray is against academia, however—she recognizes how helpful it’s been for her, and how the academic model is changing to accommodate public scholars. “For me, the biggest reward about academia is that it allows me to learn and exchange ideas with people far smarter than me, and then use that as a foundation for my broadcasting and public engagement work,” she explains. “It’s exciting that academic science is becoming more open to scholars doing ‘practice-based research,’ where they can make an art exhibition, documentary, or theatre piece as a form of knowledge production, instead of simply writing a tome of (sometimes highly obscure) text or conducting lab experiments.”

Her advice for young women just starting out in science and science communication is to find something that you’re (healthily) obsessed with. “Find projects and other people’s careers that you find totally over-the-top inspiring, and then get obsessed about them!” she says. “Obsession is a wonderful tool to produce contagious, lasting interest, which is what you need to do great things.”

Wray is thankful that she hasn’t experienced much sexism or scientific discouragement to date, but is well aware of its existence. “There are a lot of preposterous issues that women still face in science,” she says. “You can get a quick impression of it from the #distractinglysexy hashtag, or read about any of the recent scandals where male scientists in positions of power have categorized women as a group that lacks scientific and mathematic talent based on some kind of biological foundation—and treated them as such.”

When asked if she would do anything differently, Wray provides an emphatic “no.”

“I really appreciate the interdisciplinary space between media, literature, art, public speaking, and science that I’m able to occupy,” she says.

Sarah Boon

Sarah Boon (PhD, FRCGS) is a science writer and editor. Her articles have appeared in Nature, Science, Water Canada, Hakai Magazine, iPolitics, and CBC’s The Nature of Things. Sarah is a co-founder and serves on the Board of Science Borealis.