Early in my PhD programme, I discovered the challenges involved in communicating science to non-scientists. When I first started my studies, friends and family often asked, “Soooo, what is it that you actually do?” At first, my replies were terrible. To avoid boring loved ones to death with my long and convoluted explanations, I restricted myself to abrupt one-word responses such as “science” or “biology”. But being unable to convey the scope of my work — and the motivation and passion involved — was hugely frustrating. I needed to strike a balance between sounding like a textbook and dumbing my response down to monosyllabic grunts.

In my first attempt to achieve this happy medium, I decided to haul out my project abstract from a conference application and cross out all the science lingo, assuming that I could convert it into laymen's terms by deleting the occasional word. I was shocked to find myself executing a red-pen massacre. What survived the cull was nothing more than disjointed lines of gibberish.

I tried again. This time, however, I thought of analogies to replace all the complicated terminology. For example, likening a cell to a factory made explaining complex pathways such as endoplasmic-reticulum stress much easier. Soon, I had created a shorter, jargon-free version of my abstract. I would now be able to share the direction of my research without inducing narcolepsy.

This exercise proved to me how important it is to develop communication skills early in one's career. Communicating effectively with one's colleagues is not enough. Given that research is often funded by taxpayers and charities, we should enable and empower everyone to question and challenge our work.

So, would you be able to successfully pitch your research to someone with a level of understanding somewhere in between Einstein and Elmo? It starts with a simple question: what is it that you actually do?