My Instagram handle for science communication (ajitjohnson_n)

For those who don’t know me: Hello! 🙋‍♂️ My name is Ajit Johnson (You can call me Ajit or A-J) and I am from the most beautiful and diverse corner of the world- India. For those who ‘do’ know me, you might be wondering why I have an additional Instagram account.

I created this IG account because I see an enormous gap between scientists and non-scientists, which lately with the emergence of social-media and bit-sized messaging has led to the internet being over-run with fake news and misinformation- Anti-vaccination, flat earth movement, climate change to name a few. This has translated into a lack of trust in science among people.

In my opinion, many of the challenges modern society faces are because of the difficulties of the metaphorical intersections in communicating research/discoveries between people. Policy creation in government is just a series of these intersections.

Being a scientist myself, I want to effectively communicate discoveries with the public, cutting out on unnecessary assumptions and exaggerations. Thereby to re-build empathy and trust between the public and scientists. I have been doing this for a while now (since my PhD days). I regularly tweet about the latest discoveries to 100K people via my Twitter handle and also founded a platform called ‘The Surg’ for scientists to blog about their latest findings to the public directly. While doing so I have been extremely happy to see genuine concerns and questions being discussed in the comments section.

As I believe in the enormous potential of social media in science communication, this Instagram handle is all about that. I hope to effectively communicate science in a fun and understandable manner and talk to you guys about your thoughts.

On a lighter note, I recently moved to Boston (USA) to pursue my post-doctoral research at the Harvard Medical School. I specifically moved to Boston because it offers resources from some of the most respected universities in the world such as Harvard, MIT and number of world-class hospitals such as Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, MGH that has access to unique clinical samples and a variety of pharmaceutical/ biotech companies, Boston is like a candy-land for cancer research.

Harvard alone has been the birthplace of over 50 Nobel Laureates. Since I am here, I will also show you guys where some of the important discoveries were made and how it shaped the world. I have made this account specifically for you guys to learn about how is it like to be and think like a scientist and hopefully I will also get to show you the exciting research environment at Harvard.

If these excite you, I would recommend you to hit the follow button and share it with your friends who might also be into the same thing. Most importantly talk to me via the comments section. I will reply to all your comments. If you are someone randomly following people, my humble request is to skip this one because your non-interaction with my subsequent posts will affect the people who are genuinely interested in learning and celebrating science. Thank you.

When your sole purpose is to believe in something bigger than yourself, you act differently. Have a nice day 😊

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