We’ve been in business for over a decade. We’ve handled the publicity for the Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science since 2004. We helped L’Oréal Australia create and manage their For Women in Science Fellowships from 2007 to 2015. We’ve worked on almost every other major science prize in the country from the Eurekas to Clunies Ross. And we’re the national publicists for National Science Week until 2018.
Some recent highlights of our work include:
The big announcements
The world’s first printed jet engine: we helped Monash University and CSIRO secure a full sweep of ABC news and current affairs coverage for their jet engine. Then we secured hundreds of stories across the world including The Economist, Daily Mail, NHK Japan, and Xinhua. And that led to the engine visiting Parliament House to see the Prime Minister, and visiting CeBit Sydney.
The Great Barrier Reef: we helped reveal the loss of half the coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef for the Australian Institute of Marine Science. That story attracted two front pages, and hundreds of on-message stories around the world, and led to policy change and a new focus on controlling crown-of-thorns starfish.
The God Particle: we helped CERN reveal the Higgs boson to the world, holding a series of press briefings, organising 130 interviews in 48 hours, and ensuring that Australian scientists from the universities of Melbourne, Monash, Adelaide, and Sydney led the Australian reporting.
Wi-Fi and astronomy: we helped CSIRO and the Australian Government reveal the story of how Australian astronomer-engineers made wireless computing fast and reliable. Before our work there had been no public connection.
Science prizes
L’Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science: we helped L’Oréal create their For Women in Science program in Australia in 2007 and then, over nine years to 2015, make it one of the most prestigious prizes for women in science. Every year the Fellows featured in Fairfax papers and we generated hundreds of other stories on TV, radio, print and new media.
The Prime Minister’s Prizes: we helped the Australian Government grow the reputation and impact of the Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science, providing publicity support from 2004 to 2018. We usually got photo stories in most of the daily metropolitan newspapers and significant television and radio coverage, both commercial and ABC. The 2015 Prizes alone generated over 250 media stories on TV, radio, online and in print. The official hashtag tracked more than 1,500 tweets on the night, from almost 600 contributors, and the conversation reached more than 1.3 million people.
The Eureka Prizes: from 2013 to 2015 we created a collaborative program to boost the public profile of the Eureka Prize winners. The 2015 results included over 100 media stories, winners featured on the front pages of both The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, and on ABC radio around the country. There were also over 50 online stories from stakeholders and sponsor organisations.
Fresh Science: since 1998 we’ve helped over 450 early-career researchers find, and then share, their stories of discovery though Fresh Science. This national competition takes up-and-coming researchers with no media experience and turns them into spokespeople for science, giving them a taste of life in the limelight, with a day of media training and a public event in their home state.
We’ve also worked on the Metcalf Prizes for Stem Cell Research, CSL Florey Medal, Centenary Institute Lawrence Creative Prize, the Clunies Ross Awards, and Gruber Prizes. Our work ranges from promoting the winner of a prize to organising the call for nominations and the judging process.
Conferences and Events
National Science Week: we have provided public relations support for Australia’s largest community festival since 2015. In 2020, over 1.1 million people participated in over 1,200 National Science Week events around the country and online. Nearly 3200 media stories mentioned ‘Science Week’, an 11 per cent increase on the previous year, despite fewer events and a global pandemic.
International Years: we’ve helped organise a series of international year celebrations in Australia, including Einstein Year (International Year of Physics), International Year of Astronomy, Biodiversity Year, International Year of Light, and the Evolution Festival.
Conferences: we’ve organised press rooms and public programs for high impact international conferences, including the World Congress on Public Health, the International Genetics Congress, the International Conference for High Energy Physics, the UN Advancing Global Health conference, the International Botanical Congress, and many others. The Genetics Congress alone generated 90 minutes of television coverage, 16 hours of metro and national radio, and sixteen pages in The Age.
Winning conferences for Australia: we won and organised the World Congress of Science Journalists for Melbourne in 2007. We secured the World Congress of Science and Factual Producers for Melbourne in 2009.
Storybooks and publications
The stories are available at stories.scienceinpublic.com.au, along with PDF copies of the publication and over 500 stories from our previous collections in a searchable database. And we’re sharing all the stories on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter via @AusSciStories.
National Marine Science Plan: we’ve also created many longer-form narratives including Australia’s new National Marine Science Plan, where we synthesised the contributions of 20 academic white papers to create a single voice for the plan. It was launched in Parliament House, Canberra, last August.
Factsheets and stories of international collaboration: last year we also pulled together a series of seven fact sheets on Australia-Japan collaboration for use by the Australian Embassy in Tokyo. These were delivered as hard copy flyers in English and Japanese, as well as being available online at stories.scienceinpublic.com.au/japan.
We’ve also produced other special collections such as:
- US stories – 40 examples of how Australian science has changed America – developed for the Australian Department of Industry
- China stories – 30 stories of Australia-China collaborations – developed for the Australian Department of Industry
- Indonesia stories – developed with the Australia-Indonesia Centre
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Australia-Japan collaborations – Stories of Australia- Japan collaboration, prepared with the Australian Embassy in Tokyo ()
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Stories of French-Australian Innovation – 12 stories of Australia-France collaborations
- Tomorrow’s Medicine Starts Today – 11 stories celebrating the work of Stem Cells Australia members
International promotion
Our international promotions of Australian science include:
- annual dinners in the US for international science journalists, that usually attract the science editors of The Economist, Asahi Shimbun, BBC TV news, The Guardian, PBS Nova and 40 others
- attracting an international conference of science journalists and documentary makers to Australia
- Stories of Australian Science, an annual collection of short articles on the best Australian science of the past year
- a promotion of Australia-Japan science collaboration – in print and at Japan’s Science Agora.
Science in Public showreel
For a larger size, click here.