Science Communication
Interview with Joachim Ennoo
The Night Sky We Should Know
A Profile Piece of Amirali Momeni
“The night sky inspires me,” Momeni reflects, as he recalls his childhood fascination with astronomy. When he was young, he would eagerly read newspapers, translating from English to Persian, archiving and absorbing, preoccupying his mind with details of astronomy. “I remember encountering the term Milky Way, without fully understanding what it was. But when I saw it in the sky, I knew.” A hazy band of light, gas clouds in a never-ending line with thousands of scattered stars. “What else could be called a Milky Way?”
One memorable evening his family had gone out for an evening picnic, “Usually where we sat was littered with light pollution, we couldn’t see the stars,” he describes. A sudden power outage revealed the spectacle, “and there I saw the Milky way, I just assigned it that name that I read. From then on, the best moments of my life have been witnessing astronomical events.” This experience deepened his fascination and connection to the night sky and inspired him to protect it for the next generations.
Amirali grew up in a family where many individuals had studied in the social sciences, but his aptitude in mathematics and physics led him towards engineering fields.
Amirali chose Aerospace engineering for his bachelor’s degree, but his interest in the relationship between science and society lingered. After graduating, he took a significant step as his interest in Astronomy had provided him an opportunity to become the Editor in Chief of an Astronomy magazine AvaStar in Iran where he lived. Here he began producing content and explaining complex science to the public.
During his time at AvaStar, he led a dedicated team that started as colleagues but soon became his closest friends. Together they produced content, translated news articles, organized educational programs, hosted observational events, provided live coverage of space missions, conducted astronomy competitions, and more. But what was most fulfilling for Amirali was interacting with the audience. He said, “the fruits of our labor and realizing we had successfully instilled a sense of understanding and wonder about the scientific world.” To Amirali, this was the greatest achievement for a science communicator.
The support of his boss, a mentor, along with encouragement from friends and family played a crucial role in encouraging Amirali to push himself further in the field of science communication. When both his boss and a close friend passed away shortly after starting at AvaStar, devastation turned into determination as he honored his boss by pursuing the career he had helped to carve out.
In 2021, Amirali began a Master of Science
Communication in Iran for two years
before traveling halfway across the world
to the University of Rhode Island where
he now is in his second year as a PhD
student in Environmental and Earth
sciences. He now works as a research
assistant for the Science Communication
Identities Project (SCIP), on the evaluation
team. He organizes and evaluates
workshops for pre-tenured faculty.
The SCIP empowers scientists from diverse
cultural backgrounds to communicate their research effectively, addressing a critical gap in science communication training.
Amirali dreams of one day working with science organizations that produce multi-media content regarding complex scientific issues. He appreciates the contrast in language towards audiences among different media production, “With a movie or documentary, you have a much smaller audience where they are sitting down specifically to watch what you’ve created. But with social media, your audience could be billions of people who might not be interested, so you must portray the information very quickly and effectively.” For Amirali, he wants to continue to explore a multitude of communication tactics.
To add to his array of media communication
techniques, Amirali developed a podcast
series exploring the historical significance
of quadrivium, where arithmetic, geometry,
music, and astronomy were all taught as
part of the seven liberal arts and sciences.
“The fact that in the past, humanity studied
these sciences together and in relation to
each other captivated my attention.”
Amirali’s passion for the worlds of science
and art and journalism guides his career,
but also the way he lives his life. He loves
to hike and travel, listen to and play music,
watch movies and documentaries, read
fantasy literature, stargaze, and chase eclipses.
“Astronomy is science intertwined with art,
those are my interests.” With his enthusiasm,
diverse interests and motivation, Amirali’s
impact on his field has been, and will continue to be, inspirational.
A Mutiny
or a Mutuality?
The Yellowjacket
and our Ecosystem
With a growing population of urban areas, a 2024 study by Farkhary & Neyazi has shown a direct relationship of disgust towards insects due to less contact with nature. Yellowjackets have earned their place at the bottom of the human empathy spectrum due to their aggressive nature, and a disregard for an invitation to human picnics and barbeques. They have also been known to attack honeybee colonies with murderous intent, and honey thievery.
As with most creatures in our world, there is a larger network of symbiosis, or mutually beneficial relationship, underneath the iceberg. “I often hear people calling wasps, and yellowjackets in particular, ‘aggressive’ but I try to change that mindset, so we consider them ‘defensive’ instead,” says Casey Johnson, research associate at the URI Bee Lab. “If you accidentally step on a wasp nest in the ground, that is the equivalent of someone knocking down your front door when all of your family, babies, food and provisions are inside.” Wasps are incredibly diverse and important in our ecosystem, servicing pollination. They are also scavengers, often cleaning up decaying material from plants and animals. Johnson mentions there can even be a symbiotic relationship for us with wasps as they aid in decomposition and biocontrol for garden pests either through a food source, or parasitic relationship with a pest.
In the photo above, Johnson explains, the insect the yellow jacket has captured is called a crane fly, which is in the same order as mosquitoes (Diptera). “This wasp is likely bringing it back to its nest to serve as protein-rich food for the larvae.” Yellowjackets are one of a few species of wasps that are eusocial, which means they live in large colonies with a queen. Many other wasps are solitary which means there is only one female that creates a nest and provides food. Those species tend to be more docile as they don’t have an entire brood to defend.
Breece, from Oregon State University writes about the protection of Yellowjackets, “Yellowjackets do not need to be controlled unless they are a current stinging hazard to humans, or severely impacting honeybee colonies,” both of which can also be managed through other solutions such as strengthening a bee colony and being cautious of where you step. Johnson also comments that for yellowjackets, only the reproductive female will survive the winter, thus a safe time to remove a nest would be during the winter when it is empty.
Next time you find your fresh watermelon swarmed by Yellowjackets, who don’t realize they’re a nuisance to you, think twice to yourself about your size, wouldn’t you want the same respect and empathy from something larger than you? “I pray nobody kills me for the crime of being small”- assumed quote from local Yellowjacket
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