Guest writer with The Petri Dish (PD), Shawn Keng, interviewed Universiti Sains Malaysia’s Dr Khayriyyah Hanafiah or more popularly known as Dr Kye recently.
Kye had impressed an international audience by contesting against participants from 27 countries and emerged the FameLab International 3-minute science talk World Champion.
Kye shares her thoughts on her participation in the competition and about her work on tackling tuberculosis (TB) at diagnosis as well as at the prevention level.
PD: What made you enter the competition in spite of your full time academia and research obligations?
As a full-time academician, teaching is one of my favourite aspects of the job because I am able to get instant connection and response from my students. The competition seemed like a good platform in trying to “teach” people about my field of research in an engaging way and all within the three-minute time limit.
PD: Do you think our scientists are doing enough to bring science and research to the public domain? What are the challenges?
Scientists are humans and we have our individual strengths and limitations but at the risk of stereotyping, many of us are also introverts! As scientists, our core responsibility is to conduct research, publish our data, and communicate with other scientists (at conferences or meetings).
This is already a huge time-consuming task, and so we forget our responsibility to also engage with the community.
