Begun in 2015 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, No Coast SciComm stages a public-vote science slam, a format UNL says it first brought to the United States in 2016
Bosley, left, and Baxter, dressed as an electron cloud, open the No Coast SciComm Science Slam livestream on Oct. 30, 2024. Photo: No Coast SciComm video
Dr. Raven Baxter co-hosted the No Coast SciComm Science Slam on Oct. 30, 2024, a Halloween livestream from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's science communication conference. She shared the stage with UNL's Jocelyn Bosley as six scientists told five-minute "scary science stories" and viewers voted online for a $1,000 prize.
The two hosts came in costume as an atomic pair. Baxter wore an electron cloud, a cotton-ball hat marked "e-." Bosley played a proton that changed through the night, based on a 2022 Quanta Magazine article on the particle's inner structure. Bosley introduced Baxter as her "celebrity co-host" and called the show a "virtual campfire."
The slam aired days after Pew Research Center finished a national survey on science. Of the 9,593 U.S. adults it surveyed from Oct. 21 to 27, 76% expressed confidence in scientists to act in the public's best interests, Pew reported in November 2024. Only 45% described research scientists as good communicators. A year earlier, Pew found that 57% of Americans saw science as mostly positive for society, down 16 points from before the pandemic.
A science slam puts researchers in front of the public, and the public picks the winner. If the Slammers "don't do a good job explaining their stuff," Bosley told viewers, "you're going to be like nope, not voting for you."
Before the first talk, Bosley asked Baxter for a scary science story of her own. Baxter named "spilling beta mercaptoethanol in the lab." The chemical has to be handled under a fume hood, she said, and "it smells like rotten eggs but like rotten eggs times a million." She added, "the smell doesn't go away, it just stays."
Jody Green of Nebraska Extension opened with horsehair worms that crawled out of a cricket she had fed her tarantula. Nicole Cavatica of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory described the underground body-count rooms of Argonne's former Center for Human Radiobiology. She tied them to the radium dial painters known as the Radium Girls. A bathroom by the waiting room had an incinerator toilet.
Asked for the spookiest detail, Baxter said, "I'm gonna have to go with radioactive human waste. That just really hits you at where you live."
Hannah Chu of the University of California, Riverside told of a blowfly survey in Joshua Tree that went wrong, live maggots included. Baxter answered with a story from college. "I'll never forget walking into the fruit fly lab and seeing two of my classmates in there just eating pizza," she said. She closed the door and laughed.
Crystal Uminski of Rochester Institute of Technology took on what test scores really mean. She used The Princess Bride and an a cappella rap set to the Beastie Boys. Bosley called Baxter "a very accomplished musical scientist" and asked for her review.
"I don't even remember the words to my own song, so I always get tickled when other people can sing them back to me," Baxter said. She told Uminski that "storytelling and music is such a great way to communicate" research. "Kudos to you," she added.
Baxter brings Carbon, her toy poodle, on camera between talks. Image: No Coast SciComm video
Then she brought a guest on camera. "This is Carbon, last name Bond. He is a toy poodle and my assistant," she said.
Ryleigh Grove, introduced as a soon-to-be doctoral student in plant biology at UNL, compared toddlers and snakes with her ball python in frame. Emma Knezevic of UNL closed with bumblebee pesticide fieldwork that kept going wrong, and why that was fine.
Before the vote closed, Baxter told the Slammers that "every single one of you brought something unique and very special to this spooky Spooktacular competition." She recapped the night. "We got pumped up with some rap music, we got creeped out in some old basement of a lab facility, we saw live maggots today, a snake is in the building."
Baxter cheers as the online vote closes. Image: No Coast SciComm video
Uminski won with 34.4% of the vote. Chu took 19.8%, Grove 16.0%, Green 13.7%, Knezevic 12.2% and Cavatica 3.8%. Bosley called Uminski a "three-time slam champion." Uminski won UNL's 2022 livestreamed slam with a parody of "Super Freak," UNL reported. At the close, Bosley thanked Baxter as "my oppositely charged particle."
UNL's science communication conference began in 2015. A 2016 UNL notice described that year's event as a follow-up to "the inaugural event held last year." It now runs every two years as No Coast SciComm, organized by UNL's Center for Science, Mathematics and Computer Education. The 2024 conference ran Oct. 29 to 31, with keynotes by Alie Ward, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein and Athena Aktipis, according to UNL.
Nebraska's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center held UNL's first Science Slam on March 16, 2016. The center calls it "a first-of-its-kind event in the United States." The format began in Germany in 2006, Popular Science reported.
Baxter, a molecular biologist known online as Dr. Raven the Science Maven, also writes and performs science rap. She gave the opening keynote at SciComm 2020 and spoke in Nebraska in April 2024 at the Nebraska Women in STEM Conference.
No Coast SciComm posted the full 72-minute livestream on its YouTube channel.
Dr. Raven Baxter joined National Fair Housing Alliance President and CEO Lisa Rice on June 28, 2026, for a fireside chat on housing discrimination at the alliance's national conference in Washington.
Dr. Raven Baxter joined three fellow University at Buffalo alumnae on the UB Distinguished Keynote Panel at the 4th Annual WNY Leadership Summit on May 29, 2026.
Dr. Raven Baxter made the case for training and support for scientists online on Geeks for America's Geeks Live on April 21, 2026.
