Samantha Yammine

Samantha Yammine is a Canadian Science Communicator and PhD candidate at the University of Toronto.

Education

Yammine is of Lebanese heritage and was the first in her family to pursue a degree in science. She completed her Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Toronto, with a Specialist in Neuroscience and Major in Cell and Molecular Biology. She is a PhD candidate in the Department of Molecular Genetics researching in Derek van der Kooy's Neurobiology lab at the University of Toronto.^[1] She researches activation and quiescence of neural stem cells and the fate specification of their progeny using clonal lineage tracing and single cell transcriptomics strategies.^[2][3][4][5]

Career

Yammine is a popular science communicator. She worked privately as a math and science tutor for many years, and is a Teaching Assistant for Introductory Neuroscience and Genetics courses at the University of Toronto. She began science communication online doing the tweets for the Ontario Institute for Regenerative Medicine during the second year of her PhD.^[6] Her primary platform is Instagram (@Science.Sam), where she shares pictures of brain cells, laboratory equipment and local science events to tens of thousands of followers.^[6] Yammine created this account to increase transparency and communication between scientists and the public, and she now has one of the largest Instagram accounts run by a scientist sharing research from a lab.^[7] She also communicates science via Facebook and Twitter.

In August 2017 she joined a group of science communicators to launch the Scientist Selfies project, a crowd-funded experiment using social media to test whether scientists sharing science through selfies on Instagram are rated differently in terms of warmth, trustworthiness, and competency.^[7][8] Using the hashtag, "#ScientistsWhoSelfie", the international and interdisciplinary team raised over $10,000 and collected over one thousand images from across the world.^[9] Yammine is very interested in how science communication can be done strategically and efficiently to advance access to science, and science literacy and policy.^[10]

She was an invited speaker at the 2018 USA Science and Engineering Festival and the 2018 Science Writers and Communicators of Canada.^[11][12] She has been profiled by several online platforms, including CBC Television, Plenty magazine, Signals, Thermo Fisher Scientific.^{[13][14][15][7][16][17][18][19]} She collaborates with artists to make science more engaging to broader audiences, including Tjallien de Witte, who illustrated astrocytes Yammine grew in her lab.^[20] She has also worked with calligrapher and engineer Jennifer Ma, and scientist and illustrator Maria Abou Chakra.

Yammine is an up-and-coming science video host and producer, and was recognized as such by the World Congress for Science and Factual Producers in 2017.^[21] She has appeared as a science expert on several TV shows, including Secrets and Science on Leafs Nation Network, and When I Grow Up on TVO kids. She produced and hosted a web series with GE Canada highlighting unique careers for Women in STEM.^[22]

In March 2018, Science magazine published a personal essay by a PhD candidate that critiqued academia’s readiness to celebrate Yammine’s and others’ use of Instagram as a way to correct for systemic gender biases in STEM fields.^[23] The piece was met with frustration from many other researchers, communicators and journalists.^[24][25][26] Yammine is passionate about science policy, equitable access to science education, and equity, diversity, and inclusion in STEM, and she has contributed to several online blogs to discuss efforts towards improving these matters.^{[27][28][29][30][31]}

References