Engineering SciComm! A Chat with SciComm Shardul

SHEEVA: Welcome to the Fancy Comma YouTube. Today I have the distinct honor of being joined by Shardul Lokapure, AKA "SciComm Shardul," a 19-year-old science communicator in his second year of pursuing mechanical engineering in Pune, India. His interest in SciComm started with a telescope when he was 16 years old and peaked when he got to know about SciCommers such as Veritasium and Smarter Everyday. They made him realize anyone could be a SciCommer. In 11th grade he started FLOS: For the Love o

f Science, sharing science news and science experiments he did to astrophotography. FLOS is all about sharing knowledge and making everyone realize the true beauty that lies in our nature. It's about being overwhelmed by the beauty of the world. Knowledge, unless applied in real life, is no use according to SciComm Shardul. FLOS is now a community run by a small team. He's also intern for a SciComm company in India called SciRio. He also loves to build cars with Formula Student Team. Welcome, Sc

iComm Shardul. [reading his shirt] Formula Bharat 2024. SHARDUL: I was part of this- yes yes yes- I was part of this. So this event was held in Tamil Nadu Coimbatore this Jan- January- and we came the- our team, college team, came fourth in it, all over India. That was like a very big thing. SHEEVA: Congratulations! That's huge to come in number four in all of India, because- SHARDUL: Yes. Thank you. SHEEVA: India has like a lot of really good science because it has- I went to MIT here. I know I

ndia has IIT, which is like the MIT of India. SHARDUL: So we competed with IIT, so IIT were in the top first, second and we, our college, were in the top- like, were the fourth. So we're competing next to them, yes. SHEEVA: So, you competed alongside IIT. Fourth is pretty good. SHARDUL: Yes. Kind of. SHEEVA: That's nice. Wow. So what exactly do you do for Formula- you just build a car from scratch or you soup it up so it can go really fast or what do you do for Formula Student Team? SHARDUL: So

this is a Formula Student Team, so the main aim is to make the safest car and so we are a- so of course we are students. We are students and we are also learning uh in the process so no one expects us to make the correct- make the right car, I would say. Formula- formula-based car. So formula itself says, "formula" means being- uh making it- making the car according to the rules, so that's our main aim. So there are a set of rules and you have to make the car according to it and there are a lot

of scrutinies, like checks, like accumulator check, and then mechanical check if- have you made the car according to it- according to the rules? Is it safe to drive? That is the main aim, and of course we don't have wheel-to-wheel racing, because the drivers itself are among us, like they are the students itself. So it's more of like, test, and um can your- so the whole event is of like, thousand points, something like that, and you have to score among- it's divided into sub points, yes. SHEEVA:

So it's like if there's a certain thing you do right, then you get certain points for those, and then- SHARDUL: Yes, yes, yes. SHEEVA: Um and then do you race the cars together, like different cars? SHARDUL: No no no. SHEEVA: Evaluate them. SHARDUL: We evaluate them and then we have like uh events like you have to- and there is an endurance event where you have to run the car for 21 kilometer - a track of 21 kilometers - so if you are- so it tells- so it it shows about the car that, okay it's r

eady to run- in a ready- to-run condition and the team with the least time in that gets more points. Something like that. SHEEVA: That's pretty- that's a really- very complex- well, you're- so you're a mechanical engineer, so for you that's not complex, but for me that's complex, but it's like part of mechanical engineering kind of- um I when I was in MIT, I was a chemical engineer for a couple years and that was really fun but it was also really hard but engineering like- I guess you actually l

ike equations. I find them really scary. SHARDUL: Equations and working hands-on and getting my hands dirty. That's what I love the most. SHEEVA: That's a really cool thing about engineering- it's also good in science- you can- I used to do brain dissections or like- I'd get sheep brains and we'd all- me and high school students would dissect sheep brains and that was really hands-on and fun, but there were no equations involved in those, no underst- but it's like knowing how the car works reall

y helps you. Like if you know about momentum, helps you drive better. SHARDUL: You know the dynamics of the car because you have worked on it in some part of the other, so you- it gives you a different perspective, to be honest. SHEEVA: Before we started recording, you were telling me about how you followed Fancy Comma and I remember you followed us. I don't remember when it was- it was like 2021 or so, I would say. SHARDUL: Yes, kind of, during the lockdown, when the lockdown was at peak, yes,

mostly during that time. SHEEVA: So what have you derived from Fancy Comma and how have we been able to help you with your SciComm goals? SHARDUL: So I remember uh talking to you about how do you manage the team how do you assign uh the work and like managing both Instagram and Twitter with the same enthusiasm. I remember talking to you and even one of your teammates, I guess. I was very active on Twitter, so I used to read all the tweets and everything you posted and so I was also in a learning

phase, right, back then when I was in- three to four years ago- so it really helped me to build- to make me what I am today. SHEEVA: I remember you reaching out to me and I just kind of like- it was really- I was I was- I can say that like, your question- I was like, I guess you're starting your own SciComm thing- I was like we don't really- we have a team, but everyone does a little bit, and that helps us get stuff done and I guess you- I remember when you started For the Love of Science. I wa

s like, oh, this is cool, and now- and I- you posted a tweet of you doing like a event with young people and they were actually like really- everyone looked like they were having so much fun, like- I want to be like SciComm Shardul, too, because you have like really good energy. I feel like you really love science and love bringing science to the masses. FLOS is now like a- it's a whole thing, so like what was it like- SHARDUL: Feel free to call it- wait, wait- you can feel free to call it "flos

" instead of- so, we call it "flos" instead of F-L-O-S. SHEEVA: Oh! Okay. So, "flos." What's it like starting FLOS? SHARDUL: There was no aim like, I have to make a community, I have to do- get into SciComm. It was more of like a process. So I started with sharing astronomy photos on the Telegram channel, so it it started with 11 people. All of them were my friends- close friends. During during the lockdown I started with- I remember- started with sharing them uh with the Jupiter-Saturn conjunct

ion. It happened in I guess 2020- November. So conjunction is when two planets come really close to each other and you can see them uh so it was a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction. You can see them in a- one frame from the telescope and it's a very big thing. It's a very rare event and I even love taking Moon photographs, so I started sharing that on the Telegram group and everyone was like, okay, this is a very- this is very cool stuff. You should make sure that it reaches to the masses and more peop

le should know about this and throughout the process, we started naming the channel as FLOS: For the Love of Science. Then people were calling it FLOS, so I was like, okay, this is a cool stuff, and then throughout the process, towards 2022, I guess, I approached my some of my- some of the parents in my society, so like, more of like, should I- can I conduct a SciComm event where I I bring my own telescope- so I have a telescope. I bring my own telescope and show the kids uh some planets, some m

oons, and they were like, okay you can do that. So I remember, so all the- all my team from uh places- from Pune- so they live very far to- far from me. They came all the way from their home for just for the event and and it was- the event included some quizzes, some uh- I showed them a YouTube movie about solar system. I projected it on a very large screen and then of course showed them Jupiter and I guess four moons of Jupiter, so it was a very big big thing for them. I even asked them while w

atching the Jupiter, do you know how many Earths can fit in a in a Jupiter? So they were like 100, 180, so when I told them, okay, it's not- it's more than that. It's 1,500 Earths, so Jupiter is that big. So they were like, okay, wow. This is a very- so Jupiter is that large. So my college started and college started in maybe more of 2022. I was still doing FLOS for a major amount of time but as the college peaked, so academics and all took place, and later on, so FLOS was more of like, okay, si

de project. I was- I got a team, so they were making content, posting weekly and all and uh so meanwhile we were even having outreach events and all collabs and I was even active on Instagram um and Twitter, my own Twitter, collaborating and stuff. The major event for FLOS was when there was a uh what do you call - SciComm - there was a SciComm conference in IIT Gandhinagar, Gandhinagar is in Gujarat, in one of the IITs. So where we had to present what is uh what is FLOS, what what what are what

did we do- what do we do- and- as a poster. So I remember making a poster of uh a brief thing about what we did in FLOS, about all the years and every every contribution every outreach event and we presented it in uh in one of the IITs and we were the youngest to present a poster there - about FLOS - and all the other participants were either PhD graduates or either doing some SciComm as a profession, something like that. So you asked me how is it like running FLOS, so it's more of like uh dele

gating tasks to my team. I have a person who writes, specifically, a person who manages, a person who uh takes on the creative stuff and I also do the creative stuff most of the time. The one thing that helped me most was buying a science communication course. I bought it from SciRio and the best part was, a few months later, I went on to intern for them and writing their own content, so it was like uh buying their course- from buying their course to helping them uh marketing and getting their I

nstagram account- handling their in Instagram account, etc. SHEEVA: I remember when you asked me- you asked me about like- oh, how do you start like a SciComm company, and then you actually um you started one and now has like 500 people, so I feel like- I feel grateful that I was able to be part of the ideation process for this, but also like- I feel like I just responded to your DM. You seemed very dedicated about starting FLOS. So you said it's now a community. It's run by a small team. You're

an engineer. I don't really- I don't know if I've talked to many engineers on my YouTube yet, um but like I know a lot of engineers, but like- what are- what are the challenges and opportunities you face as an engineering SciCommer? SHARDUL: Pursuing- suppose- engineering, I find it uh I find very few people who love science the way I love- the enthusiasm- because uh it kind of feels like they're in for the- they're not in for the science of the engineering part, they're in for the engineering

part only, because engineering is- science is engineering. Engineering is not science. Maybe I said it correct. SHEEVA: That- science is engineering in that engineering relies on like physics, math- but then it doesn't go the other way. Engineer isn't science, because engineering is like uh systems thinking. Like I remember I learned about systems and um the systems aspect was like, here's- because I was a chemical engineer. So they'd draw like a piston and say, like, here's a piston. Because yo

u're working in Formula One, so you know a piston is part of a car, and it's like, the gas is doing this pressure, and then like what's happening with the every- then you do the thermodynamics. You like work it out, but that doesn't- like it has science- like, it uses chemistry, physics, but it's not actually science. When I was a kid, um I went to our local university and I kind of did like what you're doing and it was like we had an engineering day so we had an engineering- I think I was in hi

gh school. Maybe I was in middle school. I don't remember exactly. The engineering thing was cool, because we like- we had a thing where we'd like have an egg and we tried to make the egg travel, like an egg launch, but we had to like insulate the egg so that it wouldn't break when it was like in the air and then there was like a bridge building contest and we got to go into a wind tunnel and it was like so cool. I was like, oh, this is like- it's the- really coolest part about it was seeing- be

ing able to like understand through doing through physically- like hands-on, seeing science in action. SHARDUL: Yes, engineering is hands-on science. SHEEVA: Yeah, I and I love that about engineering and that's one thing. I I do like have a love of engineering and of systems thinking, but I'm not good at the equations. I have really bad math anxiety and so that makes me- I could probably do some engineering but it's like, I I really enjoy science and I think I- but I'm not an engineer. Like I tr

ied to be an engineer and I failed and I just did another YouTube talking about how much I I failed my exams in engineering and then had to switch to science because I didn't want to- the- engineering is so hard. Like it's normal to get a bad grade on your exam, I feel like, but then like... SHARDUL: Yes. SHEEVA: Because I feel like all my engineering friends that I know, they're always talking about like failing their exams. They're like, oh, engineering is so hard. I'm like, true. We were talk

ing about engineering fairs and how fun engineering fairs are. I had a lot of fun in those and they're they're fun because they're hands-on and you get to see- like you learn about some stuff happening in your classroom then you go and you actually see that happen and be like, wow. Science is actually amazing, and kind of- as you mentioned, creating that sense of awe that comes from understanding our natural world is I think a really cool aspect of science. SHARDUL: So, you tinker around, you ma

ke mistakes while building stuff- you Tinker around, you make mistakes, you prototype, you design, and you can see the whole process from designing to like making anything, so it's a very beautiful process I would say. SHEEVA: You've also interned for a SciComm company in India called SciRio, which I've heard of SciRio, and I follow the I follow the founder of SciRio. I forget- well- it's- she's really famous. SHARDUL: Yes. Suchitha. Her name is Suchitha Champak, yes. SHEEVA: Yeah, Suchitha. I s

ee her posts and she just posted about ways that SciComm is like marketing and I was like, yeah, it really is like marketing, and I've been trying to say that. I've been trying to tell people that for a while and she's been talking about that in India. I feel like SciRio is much more established in and known for its scientific impact, especially in India. SHARDUL: Yes. SHEEVA: What was it like working at a SciComm company because I thought about having interns, then I was like, I have to pay the

m, and like- but then it's like maybe I can just not pay them and they can get on-the-job experience but it's like, what did you do there and like, did you enjoy that work and how did that help you with FLOS? SHARDUL: I got to know about the professional aspect of how to handle a team, how to run a business, so the main- uh so my work was to handle their Instagram, handle their Twitter, and the marketing stuff, handling social medias and the marketing stuff, so uh it was fun fun having meetings

late at night. She was very open to- so she knew I was having- I was busy in college during the day, so she was very open to having meetings at any time of the day according to me, and she's so all-rounded, she she will have the knowledge of every everything- she can do- she she runs the company like her- on her own so like her her knowledge based on the software she uses, everything is like- I would call her the lone hero of what she does, of her business and the other aspect of learning was- y

es- the how to manage your team. So I was there for like one and a half month and that was kind of like uh people know me- like I- okay I interned for SciRio. My relationship, my friendship and all grew very stronger with her, because we used to have meetings every- kind of every day, late in the night- strategize, like- how we can do any marketing better, how we can do our Instagram better and even- I even ended up designing some posts for them, designing in the- like a- templates. So they have

one segment called Wednesday- some- I don't remember- when some vocabulary something, so I I was the one who designed designed the template for them- so kind of fun fun thing to do in first first year of college. Something to brag about to your uh batchmates, like, okay see I did an internship in first year itself. SHEEVA: I feel like I just saw a post about her talking about burnout which I just also did something about burnout as a SciCommer. I can't just do SciComm like 24 hours a day, as mu

ch as I love doing SciComm. At some point it's just like, you can't do SciComm like every waking moment of your life. Have you struggled with that as a SciCommer? Well, you're a college student, so you're like incredibly busy with like school and stuff. SHARDUL: Yes, yes- uh so we also have- going in college clubs, plus I'm in a club, so I get barely barely any time for myself so it's kind of hectic. It's kind of busy, but it's fun, it's fun being busy. SHEEVA: It's better being busy in college

than not being busy. SHEEVA: I was- I I did a lot of stuff in college as well. I did debate. I had a radio show at the radio station. I had- I worked for newspapers. I um- there was a lot of stuff I did- and then I hang out with my friends. Back in my day, so like memes- science memes- they were different than now because I was in college from 2001 to 2005, so if you can imagine what the internet was like from 2001 to 2005, the internet basically had just started. Flash videos were the thing. Yo

uTube with like the immersive 3D experiences and stuff- those didn't exist yet, so like- the best meme was like just some random cat being like, "LOL" - LOLcats - and I don't- do you guys have LOLcats? You guys still watch engineering- engineering people, do you guys still do internet memes? Like memes were it for our MIT engineering people. SHARDUL: Yes, yes, yes, we do. We do. SHEEVA: I feel like you posted some memes and I was like you know that's the exact kind of like culture and like vibe

that we had as like engineer- MIT is mostly engineering mind people and like one of our mascots when it's- it's like the beaver, but also- we're also MIT Engineers, and so I I feel like I was steeped in this like culture of like really like engineering memes, where it's like- I can't think of like a really good engineering meme right now, but there's- like there's some really good ones and especially math math memes as well um but yeah, so- and then the other thing you wanted to- maybe you can t

alk about how Twitter has helped you become a SciCommer. You joined- you followed me in like 2021 or so and um Twitter has undergone some changes but it's run by- I guess Elon Musk isn't really an engineer, but he is- he runs engineering- several engineering- type companies like SpaceX and the- and it's still- I still use Twitter a lot, so how do you use Twitter to- or X- I don't know- to do SciComm? SHARDUL: All the people I know from the SciComm community is through Twitter, so Twitter has has

been the major- what do you call- a backbone in building my SciComm knowledge, so like from meeting uh Suchitha from SciRio to even you and even collaborating with India Ask- why I did the collab- so everything I did was on Twitter- so this is the reason I say a lot to everyone, so you should be on Twitter. You will meet a lot of professional people and so Instagram is for the fun part of it, but Twitter is for building, networking making new friends, meeting new people, collaborating- SHEEVA:

You're based in India. What are the challenges of doing science communication in India? SHARDUL: The major challenge, I would say, is people are still learning what being a science communicator is, so- so they are still new to okay, the science communicator is a job. It's not a hobby. So they're still new to this thing and even uh after COVID, people people are trusting more and more about- people are getting interested more and more about getting into science, watching videos, maybe uh followin

g people on Instagram accounts who share science knowledge, so it's still growing, but yes, these are the main challenges, I would say. SciRio is also new to this. So SciRio makes content based- especially for SciCommers and the community in uh in India, yes- it's- yes, it's- it exists, but it's very small community and still growing. SHEEVA: So do you guys do- so one thing in India I know, is there's a- I interviewed- do you know Sandhya Shekhar? She's a- she does- oh, what is her podcast calle

d? It's called "Nothing Is Rocket Science." SHARDUL: I'll search for it. SHEEVA: She interviewed like different people- she's a optometrist and she did her training in India, but then she moved to the US and did her training here and now she has this goal of reaching 1 million people through science communication. She did Indian SciComm in regional languages, so like different languages. She- I forget what languages she speaks- but she did it- she used to train optometrists, and she trained them

in regional languages. So do you guys at FLOS do regional languages or whatever you guys know? You just talk to each other and is that- is that a strategy that you use? SHARDUL: So the content part basically goes in English and the content on Instagram and all the carousel posts, and basically, uh- so while talking to the kids, of course, we have to speak according to them, they have to adjust according to them, during the outreach events, and all- so yes, we talk in the regional- in Hindi, we

talk in Marathi, yes, depending on it, depending on the crowd, depending on their age. SHEEVA: In the US, we don't have- maybe we'll have like Spanish SciComm and there's- we have Spanish language SciComm on our site, but that's a good way of meeting people where they are. The Indian SciComm landscape seems very much similar to the US SciComm landscape, because I guess there are a lot of people on their smartphones and internet and stuff. SHARDUL: But I would say it's more diverse. It's kind of

more diverse, because uh people from like the villages and all, they're still new to this, still learning new stuff, and they- they don't have access to the phones, I would say. So we have to teach SciComm in the regional language and all. So it's very new to them. I remember one of- one of the SciCommers, her name is- uh, what is her name? She's from IISER Pune, so what what what they do is they go to uh- I will I'll just search for her name, because she's very- she's a very cool person. So wha

t they do is they go around places all over India and they teach the small kids. They host sessions and all. You might know uh- they host sessions and all for the small kids. They go in very backward- backward colleges backward schools- and from her stories and uh all the things she she shares, it's very fun to watch. Okay, so she is doing something for these kids. Also, they need SciComm more than ever. More than us. Yes. Her name- I don't remember her name, okay, what was her name? SHEEVA: Tha

t's okay. If you remember her name, we can link to her in the description box, if you think of it after the chat. So, is there anything you want to tell our viewers about SciComm that you've learned, that you want anyone- people to know anything? SHARDUL: SciComm is fun and everyone is doing SciComm in one or the other way, I would say, and like sharing some facts with maybe your younger sibling, maybe your parents is also SciComm. Sharing some story - SciComm story - some historical facts is a

lso SciComm. SciComm is all around us I would say. SHEEVA: We kind of discount these interactions where it's like just talking to everyday people, but it's so important, because that's who science is supposed to help, so if you don't- they don't understand it then... SHARDUL: ...science is of no use. Yes, if it can't reach masses, it can't- if it can't have a greater impact, it's of no use. Yes. SHEEVA: That's such an engineering thing to say, because engineering is so applied and uh there's a n

umber of SciCommers I know that are engineers. SHARDUL: There are a lot of mechanical engineers who who are now turning into SciComm- SciComm space and they're very active on Twitter and all. SHEEVA: Engineering is kind of- can be inaccessible. A lot of my in- my feelings of inaccessibility of engineering come from my own anxieties around equations and everything, but I I love your applied approach to- approach to SciComm, which is much needed, because SciComm is very much also very applied, lik

e engineering. Thanks for being on our YouTube. SHARDUL: Hope you enjoyed this chat as well. SHEEVA: Yeah, I had fun. I I had a lot of fun. SHARDUL: Maybe we can click a photo. Maybe you can do like this. You can do a thumbs up. SHEEVA: Yeah. SHARDUL: Yesss!