I love finding and telling stories about science that everyone can understand.
From quantum physics and genomics to shower curtains and blind birds, I’ve covered just about everything.
I am the Communications Lead for the Genomic Surveillance Unit at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, just outside Cambridge in the UK.
It’s a job that has me commissioning, writing, and editing all sorts of content about genomics, public health, and infectious diseases for audiences around the world.
My career so far
I used to lead a team of content producers at ScienceUpFirst, an online campaign combatting COVID-19 misinformation.
Before the pandemic, I was a Communications Officer at CIFAR, where I worked on the website, newsletter, and on social media. Right before I left in 2021, I led on content for a total website refresh. In nearly 3 years at CIFAR, I wrote dozens of articles and posts, including interviews with up-and-coming researchers, an obituary for a leading quantum physicist, and the announcement of major funding for AI researchers in Canada.
Before that, I worked in London, England for two and a half years (at the Royal Institution and the Science Museum). Before that, I studied in Edinburgh, Scotland (MSc. Science Communication) and in Hamilton, Ontario (Bachelor of Arts & Science).
Check out my LinkedIn profile for a full run-down of my experience.
Origins of the blog
I started this blog in 2012 as a place to put interesting astronomy coursework after it was done. Then it evolved into my contribution to a friend’s essay-a-week competition and in the summer of 2013 I started my first series: Awesome extinct animals. The blog went quiet for a while after that, until mid-way through my scicomm degree, when I decided to write 26 articles, released once a week: the ABCs of Interesting Things.
More recently, it’s been a repository for my writing and videos. I am always happy to hear from anybody who reads the blog and if you want to get in touch, leave a comment here or reach out on LinkedIn. If you have a topic in mind that I haven’t covered yet, let me know and I’ll get to it!
Of all the weird things I’ve done in my career, one of the coolest is send a towel to space. When I was working on the Christmas Lectures at the Royal Institution, we had the chance to send something to the International Space Station. So we sent a towel (about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have), and a Christmas card.
Jon Farrow 