After participating in a workshop at ASM Microbe last year, PhD student Olivia Barber suggested that we all might want to learn more about science policy, advocacy, and how our work intersects with government. The American Society for Microbiology runs an educational gaming experience called Political Capital and was gracious enough to visit us over Zoom during our weekly lab meeting. With the ASM’s help, we split into teams and navigated our way through a frantic 4 week period leading up to a big vote on a bill to support microbiology research, fighting against an anti-spending group. Mistakes were made, lessons were learned, and in the end, one team prevailed!

Science policy is a multi-faceted and complex process where scientists can participate both as individual constituents and subject matter experts. It was really fun to learn more about the process. Huge shoutout to Adam Katz, Lauren Gabel, and Allen Segal from ASM for teaching us about science policy and leading us through this game! To bring them into your group, email advocacy@asmusa.org.