Soapbox Science 2023

Soapbox: What was the key moment that brought you to the place where you are today?

RG: After high school, I worked as a volunteer abroad which raised my awareness of societal challenges like poverty, inequality, and discrimination. At the same time, this experience taught me that it does not matter where you go, people are welcoming, helpful, empathetic, and passionate. How do these two extremes fit together? And more importantly, how can we maximise humankind’s potential and minimise morally bad behaviours? I am aware that there is not only one way to address these questions. But at this time, looking into the human brain sounded the most plausible to me. Now, ten years later, I not only aim to improve human-human interactions but also understand and predict how humans integrate non-human agents, like robots or chat-bots, into their social lives. 

Soapbox: What is your scientific superhero power? Or what superhero would you be?

RG: Combining science and art. Art and science are often thought of as completely separate fields. However, a rich overlap exists between the two, and they share many connections that are begging for exploration. Both science and art are fundamentally concerned with the exploration and discovery of the unknown. In science, you are exploring something in the external world. In art the exploration is internal, it is a personal journey. 
Beyond this exploration, scientists can use art as a means of communication. We, scientists lean towards complexity due to the nature of our work, but this can be highly inefficient when it comes to communication. Communicating our ideas through art, for instance, art illustrations or installations, forces us scientists to simplify our ideas strategically. It is a fine balance between being detailed and being accessible. Here It is important to strike the right balance. Art can also engage the audience in a way that is nearly impossible with simple text. This, in turn, makes our ideas more graspable for a wider audience.

Soapbox: What is the most exciting aspect of your research?

RG: Its interdisciplinarity. I work in an extraordinarily interdisciplinary team of neuroscientists, psychologists, engineers, and philosophers. Together we are trying to find answers about how our brain, mind, and body work, how we perceive and interact with our environment, and what role artificial intelligence plays in social interactions. I find it incredibly rewarding to learn about different perspectives on these topics on a daily basis. This can be during team meetings, over an afternoon coffee, or even on our way to a conference in places like Tenerife or Croatia.

Soapbox: If you were stranded on a deserted island, what scientific equipment would you bring with you?

RG: My laptop, no doubt! It is my partner in crime – from brainstorming ideas and reading other scientists’ articles, over designing my experiments and analysing my data, to writing my articles, and most importantly listening to my playlists 😉 
However, the brain measures themselves are usually done in research labs where you invite people to do different types of tasks while recording their brain activity. I wonder if I would find the right conditions to conduct such an experiment on a deserted island.
However, given it is a modern island with wifi, my laptop would allow me to come up with a compromise:  running my experiments online and measuring peoples’ behaviours which provides first insights into what might happen in the brain and body. Researchers also fell back to this method during pandemic times.

Soapbox: What challenges do you encounter in science?

RG: The main challenge I am facing on a daily basis is integrating different perspectives on one topic. Human interactions are complex and understanding the brain areas and neural mechanisms that are involved in this process is not straightforward. Researchers from different fields are constantly publishing new findings and theories that often do not align with each other. Being a good researcher to me means making sense of all these different findings and theories –  and then moving the field forward by developing new studies that address remaining research gaps. 

Soapbox: What motivates you to give a talk in Soapbox Science? 

RG: Many scientists never translate their groundbreaking findings to the society that has made their research possible, often because of a lack of time and awareness.  I believe that scientists must do better in communicating their research to society. Science communication has the power to inform individual people about the benefits, risks, and costs of their decisions, ultimately leading to more sound and ethical choices. Soapbox Science is a wonderful way to bring scientists and society together. As the talks take place in the streets, the reach of their talks is not limited to an exclusive target group but allows scientists to interact with an audience from various age groups and backgrounds. I am especially looking forward to sharing my passion for my fascinating job with the new generation and am ready to take an unlimited amount of inspiring questions from young curious minds