Part time bartender & scientist, JP Flores, talks about new funding to support a community engagement project in North Carolina

BOSTON — At the 2025 AAAS Annual Conference in Boston, we interviewed JP Flores, an HHMI Gilliam Fellow & PhD candidate in Bioinformatics & Computational Biology at UNC Chapel Hill, who is leading a newly funded initiative (via Research!America’s Civic Engagement Microgrant Program) to expand engagements between scientists and local communities. A former bartender, JP leverages his unique background to show that “public engagement is just part of being a scientist.”

He outlines a two-pronged program:

• Aim 1: A series of bi-monthly, one-hour Zoom workshops designed to empower emerging scientists. These sessions will feature panels of graduate students, post-docs, and faculty sharing how they’ve executed successful science outreach projects, followed by interactive Q&A sessions.

• Aim 2: An in-person, two-day science communication and civic engagement event at Steel String Brewery in Carrboro, NC. A highlight of this event is a creative beer label design workshop, where JP notes, “we are having several labs come in, and we’re going to walk them through how to create a beer label.”

JP’s vision is to not only bring science to non-traditional settings but also to build sustainable community engagement that feeds back into scientific training and policy advocacy.

Fanuel Muindi

Fanuel Muindi is a former neuroscientist turned civic science ethnographer. He is a professor of the practice in the Department of Communication Studies within the College of Arts, Media, and Design at Northeastern University, where he leads the Civic Science Media Lab. Dr. Muindi received his Bachelor’s degree in Biology and PhD in Organismal Biology from Morehouse College and Stanford University, respectively. He completed his postdoctoral training at MIT.