Looking Outwards 08: Lucianne Walkowicz

As her biography page stated, Lucianne Walkowicz is an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, and the 2017-2018 Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/LOC Chair in Astrobiology. She got her PhD in Astronomy from the University of Washington. Lucianne is a TED Senior Fellow and a practicing artist who works for a variety of media , ranging from performance and sound.

The work I admire about Lucianne is her creation of JustSpace Alliance, a non-profit organization advocating for a more just and inclusive space exploration, because her work attempts to solve threshold problems, relating more ordinary people to space technology. One example of this is when she gives people in the New York Subway the opportunity to ask her questions about astronomy.

One strategy Lucianne used is to tell some jokes about herself to reduce stress from herself and the audience, which, I think, allows her to talk more fluently and casually. She also uses many images to visualize her presentation as she talks about each topic. One thing I learned is that I can add an icebreaker in the beginning to relax myself and the audience when presenting my own work.

Link: Not Not Rocket Science