Invite us to your university (of applied science), institute, PhD day, conference or summer school and we will inspire you and your colleagues or students to get your message across in more attractive, contemporary and effective ways. Besides, learning about communication is a transferable skill that will benefit all careers, in or outside of academia.
Choose from our science communication workshops
All our workshops are about science communication. However, for each workshop we chose a different focus: strategic thinking about the basic questions, performing a pitch, telling a story, writing a social media post, creating a presentation, or designing a graphical abstract.
Short interactive workshops
Do you only have an hour to fill, but do you want prefer an interactive workshop with exercises or group work? We’ve created two workshops just for this purpose.
For the past three years, the poster design course has made a real impact on our researchers at DLN Research School. It has helped them create clearer, more engaging posters, leading to more successful presentations and even a few award-winning ones. A course that truly makes a difference.
– Rosalie Zwiggelaar, Senior Advisor Training and Career Development, Centre for Digital Life Norway
The 2-day poster design course from The Online Scientist exceeded my expectations. Liesbeth and Stephan are energetic and supportive and they connect easy-to-understand theory with hands-on practice. You can tell they love what they do, and the days were genuinely enjoyable. I didn’t just learn how to design a poster, I learned how to communicate my research. Every student should take this course!
– Participant poster design course, MARUM Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen
We’ve given hundreds of workshops and lectures at universities, hospitals and scientific organisations across Europe:
The success of my poster and my pitch is the result of what I learned in your extraordinary workshop. The outcome was exactly what I wanted. I had a lot of interaction with the public, feedback, questions, many post-it notes, lots of connections in LinkedIn and possibly new collaborations also, my supervisors are extremely proud and happy. I couldn’t ask for more! THANK YOU
– Viviam Solangeli Bermudez Paiva, PhD Candiate in Computational cancer biology
Our research team enjoyed the IMPACT workshop very much! We learned how we can create more impact with our research by thinking one step further. An interactive workshop with a lot of positive energy!”
– Ilgin Arslan, Researcher Healthcare Data
Last week I received the “1st Excellence Poster Award” at the 10th Manufacturing Engineering Society International Conference (out of 100 posters!!). I would like to thank you for the help with the work and for planning a great course!
– Leonardo Giannini, PhD Candidate Mechanical and Industrial Engineering NTNU
Liesbeth and Stephan helped me clarify the main message I wanted to convey and how to visualise it without walls of text. During the drafting they came up with so many ideas for visual improvement. Using this poster, I won an award at the 2025 DLN conference in Norway, and I couldn’t have done it without the workshop.
– Line Kierkegaard, PhD student, NMBU Norway
A workshop that fits your schedule and group size
Multiple-day sessions
Some of our workshops work best when the workload is spread out over multiple sessions. And perhaps it suits your schedule better too! Especially participants with busy lab or experiment days appreciate more distributed workshops.
Design benefits from time
Spreading it out is especially good for our design workshops, because it allows more time to work on your design: we can split up a 4-hour workshop into an introductory lecture, homework for the participants, and then a second session for feedback and in-depth learning.
A whole day of science communication
If you have a whole day, we also offer workshops that offer more bang for your buck, and will cover, for example, not only the basics of science communication but also storytelling or media.
Liesbeth and Stephan inspired me to think better about the communication of my research. I thought it was especially cool to learn how to convey a message in such a way that you can attract attention even with the most complex topics. In the future I will package all my messages in a more creative format.”
– David Oerlemans, student at HAS
I wanted to express my gratitude for the exceptional experience and invaluable knowledge I gained during the recent science communication workshop in Trondheim. The workshop, organised by the Digital Life Norway Research School, truly exceeded my expectations, and I appreciate the opportunity to learn from your experienced team.
– PhD Candidate, NTNU Norway
Words from our workshop participants
As a former teacher, I thought I’d gotten the basics of presenting down- until Liesbeth’s workshop showed me that presenting posters is a whole new ball game. In an engaging and interactive way she managed to keep everyone’s attention (which might be the toughest part of online workshops) and gave us tools and tips on how to improve your work immensely with simple changes. I’ve now gone on to share these tips with friends and coworkers so I would definitely recommend it!
Malu van Schaijk
During Bessensap, an annual event where science meets press, Stephan told a fully booked room about the do’s and don’t of science presentations. With all kinds of beautiful examples, he explained how graphs, photos and other visual support can complement a story, but also can take away from it. I’m sure it has inspired many members of the audience to create their next science presentation in a clear and creative way.
Anouk Broersma, Bessensap
Liesbeth gave a great motivational ‘Impact with research!’ workshop for PhD students. She helped us dare to think bigger and gave us many tips to get started ourselves. Highly recommended!
Dorine Duijsens, PhD student (FWO-SB) at Lab of Food Technology, KULeuven
Liesbeth gave a 2-hour interactive workshop to our PhD students on how to create impact with scientific research. So much was discussed: How do you keep a poster readable? What do you put and especially NOT put on your slides during a presentation? What is the one-liner of your research? Liesbeth presented in a very spontaneous and open manner, and inspired us to get more out of science. Our participants were excited to put what we learned into practice.
Famke Mölenberg, PhD candidate in Social Epidemiology, department of Public Health at Erasmus MC
Trainers
We have a combined 30+ years in science communication and have given hundreds of workshops. We would love to share our enthusiasm for science communication with you as well.
Liesbeth Smit
Liesbeth is the creative force behind The Online Scientist. She is on a mission to make science sexy and find creative ways for researchers to communicate their work. Since stepping away from her PhD in nutrition science in 2012, she has created dozens of websites, infographics and explainer videos.
With a workshop from Liesbeth you’re guaranteed to stay awake and pay attention. She has trained thousands of researchers in all fields to create killer presentations, posters and graphical abstracts. Her goal is to create memorable forms of science communication that grab attention and make an impact.
Stephan van Duin
Stephan built a diverse portfolio in science communication over the years. After starting as a science journalist, he wrote books, appeared in the media, created TV-shows and museum exhibitions and brought science to festivals and the media. His experience as science press officer also means he knows the academic environment.
All this combines into an improvisation skill that will help anyone in one of his workshops – it’s hard to find a better sparring partner for science communication than Stephan.
How can we help?
We believe good science communication is the key to a better relationship between science and society. If you are curious about this and want to know what science communication can do for you, get in touch! Fill out the form below so we can develop a custom talk for your event.