Mark Brake

Mark Brake (born Halloween, 1958, Mountain Ash, Wales, UK) is an author, broadcaster and professor in the communication of science, who has engaged the public with science on five continents. The UK's first chair in science communication, he has been professor in the subject at the University of Glamorgan since 2002. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and Director of the Science Communication Research Unit at the University of Glamorgan. He was a founding member of the NASA Astrobiology Institute science communication group between 2003 and 2006, and is one of the notable academics in the European Science Communication Network.

He is best known for his work in popularising the relationship between space, science and culture.

Space, Science and Culture

After receiving an education at Cardiff University, in 1998 Brake received worldwide publicity^[1] for developing an undergraduate university course, Life in the Universe, which examined the science and culture of astrobiology. The following year he launched the world's first undergraduate degree in Science and Science Fiction, again widely reported by the world's media.^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5], and which attempted to establish a Third Culture for science teaching in academia. Continuing this work in 2005 whilst a member of the NASA Astrobiology Institute science communication group, Brake launched the world's first undergraduate degree in Astrobiology^[6]^[7]^[8]^[9]^[10]. The program recognized not only that astrobiology's key issues are grounded firmly within scientific disciplines, and its goals represented by a major driving force behind current space programs, but that the subject also had a long history in philosophy and literature, associated with the plurality of inhabited worlds tradition.

Public Engagement with Science

Between 2003 and 2008, Brake was responsible for leading high-profile public engagement initiatives in science, which attracted around £5 million of funding. The RoCCoTO project was a community-based science course for the public, based around a robotic telescope facility, and was one of the largest astrobiology outreach programs in the world. By featuring ideas about science and their cultural context, the project engaged large numbers of the public in Third Culture studies. The RoCCoTO project received a Public Engagement Award from the Astrobiology Society of Britain in 2008. Another project, with indirect funding from the DTi, delivered high-quality science communication activities to schools in the principality, in an attempt to forestall the poor uptake in science subjects as a career.

Since 2006, Brake has been director and fund-holder for Science Shops Wales. This major public initiative is based on the European Science Shop model of engagement with the public, funded by the Welsh Assembly Government through the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales. A science shop provides independent participatory research support in response to concerns experienced by civil society. By encouraging community organisations to identify and meet their own research needs, Science Shops Wales aims to be genuinely responsive to, and helpful with, the problems experienced by the citizens of Wales. Science Shop projects also aim to enable university students and staff to strengthen their links with the community while developing research with real local relevance.

Since 2008, Brake has been a professorial champion for science in the Beacon for Wales. The Beacon is one of six centres for public engagement throughout the UK at the heart of a major new initiative to make universities more welcoming and accessible, and to deepen the social impact and relevance of their work. Along with the University of Glamorgan, the Beacon for Wales includes Cardiff University, National Museum Wales, BBC Wales, and Techniquest.

Publishing and Media

Over the last decade or so, Brake has been engaging the public with science, both nationally and internationally, through television, radio, print and electronic media. He has acted as consultant to Microsoft when they launched their Science Fiction Museum in Seattle in 2004; and to Tiger Aspect Productions and the Discovery Channel for their series on science fiction. He was also consultant to Blast! Films for The Martians and Us, a season on the history of British science fiction for BBC4, and to UKTV for a season of promotion on Dr Who.

And as one of the associate editors in the UK of the NASA Astrobiology Magazine's European Edition, Brake helped NASA commission a rap by Jon Chase on the topic of astrobiology, which attracted considerable global media attention in 2008 and 2009.

After acting as consultant to the Science Museum (London) on their The Science of Aliens exhibition, Brake began publishing popular science books. Different Engines: How Science Drives Fiction and Fiction Drives Science was published by MacMillan Science in 2007, claiming to be the first popular science book to explore the relationship between science and science fiction. FutureWorld, which claims to be an exciting look at how science fiction has merged with reality, was published by Boxtree MacMillan and the Science Museum (London) in 2008. Further titles, including one on science communication and one on Galileo and Darwin, are to be published in 2009.

Publications

Different Engines: How Science Drives Fiction and Fiction Drives Science (2007) ISBN 0-230-01980-3
Futureworld: Where Science Fiction Becomes Science (2008) ISBN 0-752-22672-X
Galileo and Darwin on Trial: A Tale of Two Revolutions (2009) ISBN 0-230-20268-3