Building a Personal Brand in Science

Calling all researchers to think about the sentences they write! One of the most critical aspects of impactful research is the ability to translate findings into concrete, actionable recommendations. Too often, we see phrases like “....fostering collaboration between public and private sectors” or “integrating accessibility into tourism services.” While these may capture big-picture goals, they can leave practitioners, policymakers, and fellow researchers without a clear direction on the how. Here’s a tip: Link your recommendations directly to your findings. So, for instance, if your study finds that small, practical tools help visually impaired tourists navigate destinations more confidently, recommend specific accessibility features that hotels could implement immediately—like tactile floor indicators, audio-assisted technology, or staff training in descriptive communication. Actionable recommendations aren’t just the icing on the cake—they’re the bridge between research and real-world impact. Let’s focus on giving our audiences tools they can use, grounded in the specifics of our research findings. #Research #ImpactfulResearch #TourismResearch #AcademicWriting

90% of PhD programmes will subconsciously teach you that publishing is the ultimate goal of being an academic. (Yet this is just the first step to achieving impact with your work…) From my experience, it was my activity on LinkedIn that led to speaking, consultancy, and joint research opportunities, not my academic papers. Sharing your research with other audiences will help you to: 1. Amplify your research impact beyond traditional academic circles 2. Build an expert brand in your specialized domain 3. Create valuable networking opportunities with global professionals 4. Transform academic expertise into influential industry insights 5. Generate potential consulting and speaking engagement opportunities Best case, you establish yourself as a recognized expert nationally and internationally. Worst case, you expand your professional visibility and career prospects. That's a win-win. As an academic, your deep knowledge is a goldmine waiting to be shared. Thought leadership isn't just about publishing papers — it's about making your expertise accessible and relevant to broader audiences. Here's a simple roadmap to transition from an academic expert to a respected thought leader: ✅ Develop a consistent online presence ✅ Share original insights on LinkedIn and research platforms ✅ Create content that bridges academic research and real-world applications ✅ Engage with professionals outside your immediate academic network ✅ Speak at conferences and webinars Remember, thought leadership is about storytelling, not just data. Your research can inspire, challenge, and transform perspectives. Have you started your thought leadership journey? What's stopping you from sharing your unique academic insights? #Science #Scientist #Research #ChemicalEngineering #Professor #PhD #Publishing

For centuries, the way we communicate science has remained remarkably consistent. Since the 17th century, when scientific societies emerged during the scientific revolution, researchers have recorded their hypotheses, methods, and results in written articles for others to read and build upon. But now, we’re in the digital age—a time when sharing knowledge can be faster, more dynamic, and more accessible than ever. One format leading this evolution is video. At the University of Utah, my colleague Dr. Feng Liu from our Materials Science & Engineering Department founded Coshare Science, an innovative platform for sharing science in video format. This platform allows researchers to present their original studies or review articles through peer-reviewed, DOI-registered videos. Even better, these videos are searchable and accessible on platforms like Google Scholar, making them a credible and impactful way to share findings. I recently had the opportunity to contribute to this exciting new medium with a video review on generative machine learning for discovering new materials. It’s an exciting frontier, and I hope more scientists embrace this modern way to communicate their work. Check out my video and learn more about this platform here: https://lnkd.in/eMBrzkbd What do you think about video as a tool for sharing research?

How can you turn one research report into a year’s worth of content? ⬇️Start with a cornerstone report: Your research report is the foundation. This is your deep dive into the data, packed with insights, analysis, and takeaways. Use it as the main piece that sets the tone and direction for all other content. ⬇️Break it down into blog posts: Don’t let all that valuable information sit in one place. Extract key findings and turn them into multiple blog posts. Do an executive summary of the research, a stats roundup post, and then create several more articles that highlight different themes, dive deeper into specific data points, or explore each section of your report in greater detail. ⬇️Host a webinar or virtual event: Webinars are a great way to bring your research to life and engage directly with your audience. Use the data as a jumping-off point for discussions, bring in industry experts, and answer questions live to add extra value. ⬇️Create infographics: Visual content can make your data more digestible and shareable. Design infographics that highlight the most compelling stats or surprising insights from your research. These can also serve as great social media content. ⬇️Develop interactive quizzes or assessments: Turn your findings into a quiz that allows your audience to compare themselves against the data. Quizzes can drive engagement and are excellent tools for lead generation. ⬇️Build case studies and white papers: Use the data to create more in-depth content like case studies or white papers that demonstrate how your insights can be applied in real-world scenarios. These are perfect for middle-to-late-stage funnel content. ⬇️Leverage social media: Share key stats, quotes, and findings across your social media platforms. Use each post to drive traffic back to the full report, blog posts, or webinar sign-ups. Repurpose content for different audiences: Segment your research for a specific audience (industry, role, etc.) and then tailor your content to speak directly to different segments of your audience. Create targeted emails, sales enablement materials, or thought leadership pieces that align the research insights with specific pain points. ⬇️Pitch the research to industry publications: Use your findings to pitch guest articles, contribute to industry publications, or secure speaking engagements. Original research is a great way to position your brand as a thought leader. ⬇️Plan regular check-ins and updates: Don’t let your research become stale. Plan to revisit your data throughout the year. Are there trends emerging that align with your findings? Any updates or new data points you can add? By strategically planning your content calendar around a single research study, you can maximize the ROI on your investment, maintain a steady stream of valuable content, and continuously engage your audience with fresh, relevant insights. #contentmarketing #contentstrategy #originalresearch

Hey Scientists: How to get better at LinkedIn! More and more researchers are showing up on LinkedIn – and that’s a great development! But often, the posts are limited to “I published a paper” or “I attended this conference.” Totally understandable – these are tangible milestones. When I'm working with individual researchers or whole institutions on their LinkedIn game, this is what I'm suggesting: 𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐚𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠: 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐈 𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐝? 𝐓𝐫𝐲 𝐚𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠: 𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐝𝐨 𝐈 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 – 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐡𝐨𝐰? Because good science communication also means getting clear on your audience. A few examples: Want to inspire young people to pursue a PhD? Share what your daily life looks like, what drives your research, and what motivates you. Insight tops achievement. Want to bring your topic into the public conversation? Explain key concepts from your research in plain language, linked to current debates. Looking for collaboration partners from industry? Post about real-world applications, practical challenges, or where interdisciplinary input is needed. Impact comes from relevance. And relevance starts when your content provides value – for a specific audience. Science communication on LinkedIn shouldn't be self-marketing. Honest curiosity and a willingness to share is more than enough.

Had the opportunity this week to join Caryn Herder Fritz and Claire Mason for a thought-provoking panel discussion on the power of thought leadership for reaching and engaging senior executives. The session (hosted by Man Bites Dog) was chock full of great takeaways. These three tips for high-impact thought leadership seemed too good not to share: 1. 𝐔𝐬𝐞 𝐚 𝐠𝐥𝐨𝐛𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲-𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐝. Design your research to offer unique insights for each of your target audiences, geographies, and segments. If you serve the U.S., UK, and Germany, cultivate a statistically relevant sample of survey respondents from each country. If you target Finance and Supply Chain leaders, ensure both are represented in your survey pool. Serve enterprise and mid-market companies or multiple industries? Same thing. Building a respondent pool that reflects your target audience may take a bit more effort, but the payoff is worth it. Your research findings will be more valuable, prescriptive, and actionable. And you will be able to develop derivative works that give your thought leadership far more reach and impact. 2. 𝐃𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡. To avoid preconceived biases, gather a research advisory board of your target audience that can offer candid feedback and guidance on the true essence of the problems, challenges, and opportunities they are looking to address. This preliminary effort will help you structure a research approach and questionnaire that is more insightful and aligned with the needs of your audience. 3. 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐥 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐫 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐧𝐞𝐲. Don't just deliver a report. Create a franchise of value. Like Disney does with its animation classics, design your research to have multiple derivative works, with offshoots by geography, industry, or segment. Make it accessible in multiple formats -- e.g., report, infographics, social graphics, video, webinars, roundtables, and conferences. Use each audience interaction on your thought leadership to capture new insights and foster new dialogues and derivatives. A thought leadership franchise.

In academia, we often publish groundbreaking research that remains confined to journals—what if a few extra steps could amplify its impact and visibility? It's very common to generate valuable datasets, maps, and models, publishing our findings in peer-reviewed journals. However, these contributions often remain within the academic community. By taking additional steps—such as creating interactive visualizations and sharing them publicly—we can significantly increase the reach and impact of our research. This realization led me to develop two interactive tools based on the study "Integrated Socio-environmental Vulnerability Assessment of Coastal Hazards Using Data-driven and Multi-criteria Analysis Approaches" by a colleague of mine Ahad Hasan Tanim, published in Nature, Scientific Reports. Coastal Vulnerability Index StoryMap: https://lnkd.in/dTCrmgrq An interactive narrative that visualizes the study's findings, allowing users to explore various vulnerability categories across the region. Coastal Vulnerability Dashboard: https://lnkd.in/dJ7p24zA A dynamic dashboard that provides in-depth analysis and visualization of the coastal vulnerability data, facilitating informed decision-making. These projects were initially a way for me to apply and reinforce the skills I acquired from an ESRI course earlier this year. However, they also serve a deeper purpose: to enhance the visibility and impact of our academic work. Research indicates that sharing data and visualizations can lead to higher citation rates and broader dissemination of findings. Moreover, open access to research outputs fosters greater transparency and collaboration, accelerating scientific progress. I hope these tools inspire fellow researchers to consider how we can make our work more accessible and impactful. A few extra steps can transform our research from a published paper into a resource that benefits a wider audience. #CoastalResilience #OpenScience #DataVisualization #GIS #AcademicImpact #ClimateChange #PublicEngagement #visualization #dataViz #GISvisualization #vulnerabilityMap #coastalVulnerability #interactiveMap #ModernGIS

“A stable floor beneath the overdose decline?” is out now in #Addiction. The question of where the overdose decline will stop took a non-traditional path to publication. It started here, as a LinkedIn post about a year ago, when many of us weighed in on what the next phase of the opioid epidemic might look like. That post became a STAT First Opinion, the STAT piece led to a podcast conversation on #GrievingOutLoud, and now it appears in an academic journal. What matters just as much to me is how the question developed. Research is usually invisible until the final version appears, and often even after that. But this question developed differently. In public, with input and encouragement from people both inside and outside academia. The question we discussed was simple: where does a mortality decline like this stop, and will we recognize the floor before we reach it? At a time when research, and its value, is under attack, I think researchers should do more to bring the public into the process. Research should not be encountered only after it has been polished, published, and placed behind a paywall. Sharing work earlier, inviting others into the thinking, and making the eventual findings accessible are small ways researchers can begin to rebuild trust and demonstrate the public value of what we do. I hope more researchers will share their work in this way. 🔗 Link in the comments. #Addiction #OverdosePrevention #PublicHealth #ScienceCommunication

Communicating your results to practice (or getting outside of your typical academic process). While serving as a mentor in a workshop, a Ph.D. student asked one of the best questions I've heard in a while. Rather than asking, "How do I publish in a top journal?" They asked, "What is the best way to communicate my results to practice?" The question caused me to pause. I offered a bit of a glib answer. But, it left me thinking "What strategies can an early career researcher employ to share their work with practice?" As loathe as I am to suggest posting about your work, I encourage early career scholars to learn how to talk about their work online. Here is how I would go about it doing it. First. Engage offline. Attend meetings of practitioners and listen. Attend workshops. Meet-ups. and more. Make friends. Learn the issues they are concerned with. Learn the language they use. Second. Share. Share your work with practice. Take some time to share what you study with your new practitioner friends informally or formally. If you luck out, you can give a short presentation of your work to an applied audience. Third. Evaluate. Ask practice for feedback on a) your problem, b) your question, and c) your findings. See Roseman and Vessey's work on applicability checks for guidance (https://lnkd.in/dh9WtMdm) or one of the 563 papers that cite them for Fourth. Learn. If your contacts in practice find value in what you've done, consider taking your work online in more than a humble brag. Join the conversation on LinkedIn, Reddit, or other places in practice and learn the themes and language used in relevant conversations. Fifth. Establish. Establish an account. Post to it periodically relevant information. Comment from that account. Establish credibility. Focus on your topic of choice. Do not pollute the channel with too many off-topic posts. Sixth. Engage online. Weave your work into the conversation. Weave more than I published a paper into the conversation. Focus on either a) short bites of what you've done or b) crafting a longer blog post or newsletter on the topic. Seventh. Persist. If you want to be part of a space, you must be more than an occasional tourist. Post on the topic consistently. Post about your work. Post about other people's work - positive, negative, and neutral. Become an educated, judicious content creator. Most of all, it will take time if you choose to go down this path and do more than rely on your university to promote your work. It can take months and years to reach a broad audience. But. If you post content in the language of your audience, you will find the connection to practice that you seek! Best of luck!

Today I wanted to write a short post about dissemination for a broader (general interest, or policy-oriented audience) for research projects. This will be informed by my experience at IFPRI, where such dissemination is a major part of our mission -- probably more so than for the majority of university-based researchers -- but also aiming to provide suggestions for what those university-based researchers could do, if you're interested. So, your paper is ready! Either a working paper, or an R&R, or it's published. You may have had, or still have, academic seminars or presentations. What else? First: you can aim to present the findings (in an open or closed forum) to policymakers, partners, or other stakeholders. This typically occurs very naturally for field evaluations, where it is usually required (but still, you can do it at very different scales: a powerpoint presentation in the funder's office, vis-a-vis a half-day seminar with open invitations. The latter is probably much more rewarding, but budget and time are required.) For secondary analysis where you wrote a paper using xyz public data on xyz topic, this may or may not be feasible depending on the connections you have and your ability to assemble an audience; but it's worth consideration, at least. Second: you can aim to write up a somewhat more general interest summary of the results. The best-known venue for this for development economists is probably Voxdev, but there are many others; of course we at IFPRI have our own blog and produce policy briefs, other research or non-governmental institutions may have their own blogs (or newsletters, or briefs), there are other competitive venues (e.g., the Conversation). These generally still attract an audience of research-adjacent people, but broader than full-time researchers (NGO staff, policymakers, funders, etc.) Aiming for something like an op-ed in a newspaper would be unusual (and is typically very competitive), but is certainly possible. If you do any of the above (more general talks, briefs, blog posts, etc.), also make sure to link to them on your website next to the academic paper. (Reminder to myself - I need to update my own links.) Someone browsing your website who is interested in a paper but doesn't want to scan the full pdf might then happily click over to read a Voxdev post, or look through a slide deck. And finally - since I'm posting on Linkedin - I shouldn't omit the importance of posting on social media. Keep updates about your paper (usually) relatively short and non-technical, and with a heavy emphasis on graphical elements (much easier to absorb in short bursts). Link to the full output as well as to any other outputs you have. And there's no harm in repetition; you can't post about your paper every week, but certainly you could post about a new working paper, then again when published, or if you present publicly, etc.; you may catch new audiences each time. Good luck disseminating your results!