After about an hour, we’d had a lot of fun and learned about a lot of cool research-including how harder it is to teach bonobos than humans. The scientist thoughtfully answered all our questions, kept the conversation going by asking my daughter about her interests and sparked a lot of new follow-up questions.

It turned out that the scientist’s research draws from many different disciplines, including archaeology, neuroscience and psychology, so we had a lot to talk about. I was nervous that my daughter would quickly ask the dozen or so questions she’d prepared and we’d have to end the call after 10 minutes. She works with bonobos at the Ape Initiative, teaching them how to make stone tools and testing their language comprehension. We were matched with a graduate student researching the evolution of human cognition. We received our match the next day and scheduled a call with our scientist the following week. I remember wishing this program had existed when I was a high school science teacher, so I was ecstatic to learn it was now possible to participate and immediately filled out the online application for our family to be matched with a scientist. I learned about Skype a Scientist a few years ago after listening to an episode of the HelloPhD podcast. You can also request a scientist from a group that is underrepresented in STEM fields so that participants can see a scientist who looks like them or can relate to their experiences.

Teachers (and now families) can choose the type of scientist that is a good fit, from computer scientists to marine biologists and everything in between. Skype a Scientist provides an easy way to for people to meet a scientist and allows scientists to reach people from all over the world without having to leave the lab.

Skype a scientist stickers