Visual SciComm Seminar Series
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Fall 2026 Visual SciComm Seminar
Join us for this virtual speaker series on a wide range of topics related to visual scientific communication.
The Fall series will take place on Fridays (see each session for the exact times). Participants must register for each session separately to receive the Zoom link.
Sign up to receive updates as this and future semester’s speakers are added to the series.
If you are interested in being a future speaker, please email Sara Kobilka at [email protected].
Check out select past talks on our YouTube Channel.
Friday, September 18, 9am AZ time/noon ET
Speaker TBD
Friday, October 16, 9am AZ time/noon ET
Speaker TBD
Friday, October 30, 9am AZ time/noon ET
Will floodwaters reach me? Using social science research to help improve risk communication and flood forecast product visualization and design
Kathryn Semmens, PhD
Science Director and Grants Administrator, The Nuture Nature Center
There are millions of people living in flood vulnerable areas around the world making effectively communicating flood forecast information a critical need especially in a rapidly warming climate with increasingly frequent heavy precipitation events. The Nurture Nature Center (NNC) has over a decade of social science research related to flood forecast products and communication, using a mixed-methods approach involving scenario-based focus groups and surveys to understand the information needs of stakeholders and inform forecast product visualization and design. NNC will share general findings from our research, how our product design recommendations have been implemented, and about our iterative research design process and close collaboration with weather service agencies. Our work supports efforts to make forecast information useful for decision-making – a challenge when end users have a wide spectrum of knowledge and varying ways they access information. Careful consideration of these challenges and creating new approaches to sharing and displaying data can support decision-making related to severe weather events, such as flooding.
Friday, November 13, 9am AZ time/11am ET
Speaker TBD