Science requires communication—our work only has an impact when it's shared with others. Starting in my PhD, I have been involved in science communication focusing on both general and scientific audiences.
- Sitek, K.R., Wearn, A., DuPre, E.M. Communication is the foundation of an impactful and resilient scientific community. Aperture Neuro. 2025;5(SI 3). doi:10.52294/001c.143510
- Wearn, A., Sitek, K.R., Valk, S.L., Forkel, S.J. The Organization for Human Brain Mapping Time Machine: A freely accessible archive of Annual Meeting talks on YouTube. Aperture Neuro. 2025;5(SI 2). doi:10.52294/001c.138647
Northwestern University CSD 550-3: Communicating Science. Why do we share our research? How do we best communicate research with different audiences? What are best practices in oral, written, visual, and multimedia communication? This course helps Northwestern PhD students craft their own scientific narrative and develop communication skills for sharing their work with diverse audiences.
Harvard MGH LINC Camp: Science Communication. The LINC Camp is an 8-week virtual program that immerses high school students in the fields of neuroscience, neuroimaging, and coding through scientific seminars and hands-on activities, while also offering guidance on college readiness and STEM career opportunities. LINC Camp scholars will take a 6-week introductory coding course, while also participating in neuroscience seminars. They will then spend two weeks applying their coding skills to help map the wiring of the brain. In 2025 and again in 2026, I co-taught a LINC Camp session on Science Communication with Yohan Yee and Anastasia Yendiki where we covered communication within science as well as with the general public and how it's affected by technology, particularly artificial intelligence (AI).
I first attended OHBM in 2025 and have attended almost every meeting since then. I got involved with the Student–Postdoc Special Interest Group in 2019, helping share the cool mentorship and training work being organized by our students and postdocs. Later, I joined the Communications Committee, where I edited (and sometimes appeared in) podcasts and blogs, maintained the burgeoning OHBMonthly member newsletter, and helped kick off a new annual award winner blog series and a quarterly newsletter in collaboration with The Transmitter from the Simons Foundation.
- OHBM Communications Committee Member, 2021–2025
- Chair, 2023–24
- Blog Team Lead, 2022–2023
- Neurosalience Podcast Production Team, 2021–2022
- Student–Postdoc Special Interest Group, 2019–2021
- Social Media and Communications Lead
- S5E13: OHBM 2025 preview with Jean Chen, Marta Garrido, Michael Breakspear, and Lena Oestreich (co-hosted by Kevin Sitek)
- S4E19: A Preview of OHBM 2024 in Seoul with Sofie Valk, Kevin Sitek, and Hae-Jeong Park
- S3E09: An interview with OHBM's ComCom
- S2E20: Turning the microphone around on Peter Bandettini (guest hosted by Kevin Sitek)
- Interview with Dr. Laura V. Cuaya, winner of the NeuroImage Editor’s Choice Award 2023
- New meeting dates for OHBM 2023 in Montreal: July 22–26, 2023
- A Conversation with Takafumi Minamimoto (OHBM 2023 Keynote Interview Series Pt. 6) (co-author)
- A conversation with 2023 Talairach Lecture presenter Hongkui Zeng (co-author)
- Introducing the OHBM2022 Series with a conversation on conferences in the era of COVID-19 (co-author)
- OHBM aims to Sparkle at its 2021 virtual meeting
- A conversation on conferences in the era of COVID-19
- Two MIT Neuroscientists Explain Yanny vs. Laurel (with Dana Boebinger)
These Scientists Set out to Build a Silent Room, But Discovered Something Way More Terrifying Claire Maldarelli, Popular Mechanics (quotes and background)
In grad school, I got involved in sharing science beyond the lab through Science in the News, a public science outreach program led by Harvard University PhD students. Throughout my time with SITN, I edited blog posts by grad students for the general public and eventually took over the Twitter page, regularly compressing 1000 word blog posts down to 140 (and then 280) characters—while (hopefully) staying interesting!
- Social Media Outreach Lead, 2015–2019
- Editor, Science in the News Blog, 2013–2018
- Author, Can Computers Use Brain Scans to Diagnose Psychiatric Disorders?
- Co-Lead Editor, Neuroscience Special Edition