Student Organizations

BioEASI (Bio Education and Art for Science Innovation) is a group of graduate students in the UCSD Division of Biological Sciences and the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences. The mission of BioEASI is to facilitate the interaction between scientists and the public through outreach, education, and the arts in order to increase public interest in and support for basic scientific research, and to enhance the communication and creative thinking skills of scientists. BioEASI believes that by achieving these aims, we can help further scientific innovation, recruit the next generation of diverse young people into scientific careers and increase scientific understanding among the general public.

Every quarter, a group of our volunteers prepares and teaches a series of lessons on a scientific theme to a group of students who are incarcerated at East Mesa Re-Entry Facility or Las Colinas Detention and Re-Entry Facility. This program is a partnership between BioEASI, CREATE at UCSD, and the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department.

Classes emphasize hands-on activities, relating science to everyday life, and scientific thinking. One of the goals of this program is to bring science and scientists to those who generally have less access to them and to empower everyone to be a scientist and engaged in science.

Past course topics have included:

• Organs from cells to behavior – Las Colinas Winter 2020
• Science through the Centuries – East Mesa Spanish Winter 2020
• Marine Science – East Mesa Fall 2019
• Science of Construction – East Mesa Summer 2019
• Science of Cooking – East Mesa Spring 2019
• DNA – East Mesa Winter 2019

Want to get involved? Check out BioEASI's website, Facebook or Twitter.

Colors of the Brain (CoB) was formed in order to build a community for underrepresented brain scientists within the UC San Diego campus.

Through undergraduate mentorship, CoB hopes to share its members' enthusiasm for the brain sciences by providing disadvantaged students real conversations about academia, graduate school applications, and the chance to jump into neuroscience research.

CoB hosts graduate school application and funding panels for minority undergraduates interested in STEM graduate programs, as well as travel award application information sessions for various scientific conferences aimed at increasing minority participation in STEM.

For more information, please visit the Colors of the Brain website.

Communicating Science (ComSciCon) is a workshop series organized by graduate students, for graduate students, focused on science communication skills. Our goal is to empower future leaders in technical communication to share the results from research in their field to broad and diverse audiences, not just practitioners in their fields.

ComSciCon provides a unique professional development experience to graduate students engaged in and committed to communicating research.  Attendees interact with graduate student leaders in technical communication, from around the country, learn from professional communicators including journalists and educators, and produce original works of science communication for publication.

The ComSciCon San Diego chapter will be hosting a virtual conference this year. For more information, please visit the ComSciCon San Diego website.

Job Talk is a science career blog founded by the UCSD Neurosciences Graduate Program Career Development Committee. Job Talk features informational interviews with professionals in various STEM-related fields including industry, science communication, policy, education, consulting, patent law, and more. 

 NeuWrite San Diego is a collaborative group of scientists from UCSD Neurosciences, Psychology, Cognitive Science, and many other departments. We publish weekly neuroscience articles for a broad brain-interested audience, and meet every other week to critique writing samples, discuss science communication, and plan events to bring science to the community. Our work has been published in Scientific American Mind, The Toast, HIPPO Reads, and more.

NeuWrite was co-founded in 2008 at Columbia University by students and postdoctoral fellows in the Department of Neuroscience in collaboration with students in the non-fiction and poetry MFA programs. In addition to two groups at Columbia, NeuWrite has since expanded to include other universities and cities, including right here in San Diego.

While each NeuWrite group has a different focus, each one aims to raise the bar of science communication by directly creating content or by collaborating with local writers and communicators.

• Want to read our work? Check out our website and our Twitter.
• Want to get involved? Join our email list, then check our NeuWriteSD guide.
• Need a science writer? Contact us.
• Want to meet our writers? Check us out.
• Interested in submitting your writing? Here’s a list of resources.

Taste of Science is an annual festival powered by over 150 volunteers across the US. Many of us are scientists either in training or professionally. Others are: engineers, teachers, science communicators and those who do no science at all. Our goal is to help share science with all who are interested.

For more information about Taste of Science San Diego, please visit the Taste of Science SD website or Twitter.

The UCSD Neuroscience Outreach Program brings graduate students from the UC San Diego Neurosciences Graduate Program to local classrooms and science festivals throughout San Diego. Our mission is to teach the community about fundamental principles in neuroscience and inspire students to explore scientific fields as they develop their educational and professional goals.

For more information, please visit the UCSD Neuroscience Outreach Program's website.