Season 2, Episode 1 -- Future of Work (part 1): Communication Conundrum

Science in Parallel

In our first two episodes of Science in Parallel’s Season 2, we’ll be talking about how the pandemic pivot to remote work marks a turning point in workplace structure for many computational scientists. We talk with computational scientists who worked remotely about what they struggled with, what functioned well and the lessons they’ll take into the future.

In this first part, we’ll also focus on the social science of how people experienced remote work.

In part one, you’ll meet:

Jerry Wang is an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. He was a Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship recipient from 2014 to 2018 while pursuing his Ph.D. at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Jerry works on particle-based simulations to study soft and active matter, for applications ranging from nanoscale devices to pedestrian mobility.

Elaine Raybourn is a social scientist in Sandia National Laboratories’ Applied Information Sciences Center. She is also an institutional principal investigator for one of the DOE Exascale Computing Project’s many individual research teams: Sandia’s interoperable design of extreme-scale application software (IDEAS) team. IDEAS focuses on team of teams, software developer productivity and software sustainability.

From the episode:

Elaine has organized the ECP’s Strategies for Working Remotely panel series since 2020. Check out their slides and videos about topics such as setting up a home office space, parenting, working with interns and hybrid work.

The increased use of video conferencing during pandemic lockdowns highlighted the problem of degraded communication, a concept that is commonly called “Zoom fatigue.”

You can also read more from Elaine about how ECP members experienced remote work and how they coped with the loss of office whiteboards.

A version of the interview with Elaine Raybourn is also available as an ASCR Discovery article.