Good science communication is essential in winning proposals

Agnes Szeberenyi works in the European projects office of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, where she advises scientists with great research ideas on how to get EU funding and communicate their science. She is running a session on science communication at this year’s European Association of Research Managers and Administrators conference.

I help scientists work out what funding is most suitable for them and often help them write a successful proposal. I also lead the communication activities for strategically important EU-funded research projects at the European particle physics centre Cern, near Geneva.

I am a computer scientist by training. During my first internship I was part of the small Hungarian team which was part of the large international community that provided 24/7 computing infrastructure for researchers at Cern’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This work was part of an EU project. I soon realised that I have a great passion for talking about my work and how important it is to provide a reliable service for the scientists who can then focus on their simulations to find the Higgs boson. (Which eventually paid off in July 2012 when the discovery of the Higgs boson was announced and later a Nobel prize linked to it was awarded to the theorists.)