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mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
Matt Wilkins
@mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
630 followers 380 following 290 posts
Biologist, Founder of @galacticpolymath.com (GP). We help scientists do outreach in K-12 #SciComm #EduSky
When not doing that I like doing silly voices & juggling

🧪Hire Us bit.ly/3NiUzdn
🍎Get free lessons https://bit.ly/GPlessons
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mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
anybody know what kind of wasp this is?
September 23, 2025 at 2:02 AM
mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
Friends—1 week left! If you use science in your job (undergrad, in academia, in industry...anything!) & you want to help students understand what it's really like & why it's important—here's your chance! 🧪 from @galacticpolymath.com & @ncse.bsky.social
👉 www.galacticpolymath.com/blog/my-scij...
September 23, 2025 at 12:55 AM
mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
very nice! We have some American painted lady caterpillars we hope are gonna make it to butterfly stage
a caterpillar on a leaf zoomed out view of a caterpillar on a well chewed Partly Everlasting plant
July 17, 2025 at 1:04 AM
mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
When folks talk about whether we should dedicate time to #scicomm or "the fight against fascism, it's a false dichotomy. The infrastructure of scicomm is what's failing us—we're not connecting w/ target audiences. We need to construct the missing pieces to nurture civics, empathy, & science literacy
Figure 2. A figure showing a systems view of how STEM professionals connect to students as a circular puzzle. STEM professionals are the outer ring, with students in the center. Separating these are teachers, which are the primary conduit to students, and another layer that connects to teachers. There are very few connections between STEM professionals and teachers, making it very difficult to mobilize knowledge to Students. Original caption: Figure 2. The primary scalable infrastructure for mobilizing knowledge from STEM professionals into formal (i.e., not afterschool) K-12 classrooms. Individual efforts of STEM professionals to connect with individual teachers or students are not included, as this figure illustrates the knowledge mobilization infrastructure for classroom outreach. Critically, teachers are the conduit through which resources must flow to reach the target audience of students. Tabs on the puzzle pieces indicate the direction of knowledge flow. Yellow outlines indicate bidirectional flow of knowledge with teachers. The dashed line around “Scholar-Educator Alliances” signifies the fragmented and often transient nature of platforms like NSF’s defunct GK-12 and NIH’s ongoing SEPA program, that provide scalable training and resources for supporting formal classroom outreach.
June 18, 2025 at 2:50 PM
mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
Agreed! The #scicomm convo needs to shift from what's the message? to How do we disseminate it? The right mobilizes nonsense & lies in hours. It takes us 20 yrs to get new research into classrooms. We've completely neglected K-12 as the KEY place to inoculate the public against manipulation 🧪
Figure 1. (a conceptual figure showing a brick wall rising to the right, with points labeling types of outreach, with K-12 required classes being flat ground and scientific journal articles.) STEM identity is a barrier for certain types of outreach. This hypothetical curve represents the minimum level of STEM engagement required for audience members to seek out and/or benefit from a particular outreach effort. The Y-Axis represents STEM identity as the amount of overlap a person sees between themselves and STEM (McDonald et al., 2019). The X-Axis represents audience selectivity, maximized at the far right, as only highly STEM-engaged individuals (with complete overlap between how they perceive “Me” and “STEM”) will seek out, read, and understand scientific articles. At the far left, K-12 STEM required classes (e.g., general science) have broad audiences, including students who do not see STEM as relevant in their lives at all. In between are a variety of outreach approaches requiring intermediate levels of interest and prior knowledge to be effective in improving overall STEM understanding and engagement.
June 18, 2025 at 2:50 PM
mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
I offered it a piece of chocolate cake, a pickle, an ice cream cone, a cupcake and a watermelon, but all it wanted was this nice green milkweed leaf
a tiny caterpillar on a milkweed plant. One of the leaves has been seriously munched on
June 9, 2025 at 2:03 PM
mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
5 out of 5 pumpkin headed doctors think this is the best gboard emoji
a pumpkin-headed doctor emoji
May 21, 2025 at 4:16 PM
mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
I've put in ~60 hrs over the last 8 months trying to develop a free web tool for sound analysis & visualization. I get $0 from this. Every $80 we raise funds a skilled web dev for 1 hour to check off these tasks.

Despite all that's happening, we can still create nice things for the public good 🧪🔊🐦‍⬛
A bunch of tasks, all marked High priority. Add a reset button for Analyze settings...add persistent controls for Gain and FFT...add navigation arrows to recording if more than 1 recording...and more
April 24, 2025 at 1:40 AM
mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
Dear Colleagues: Now is the time to scale up public engagement with science

I address this letter to scientists, but it is an invitation for fans & defenders of science everywhere to unite & take action!
Let's focus a lot more on K-12 ed 🧪 #SciComm #EduSky
👉 civicsciencemedia.org/dear-colleag...
Dear Colleagues, The status quo is forcing—not fixing—the public’s growing disengagement with science. Yes, we have watched helplessly as programs, grant panels, and the basic functioning of the US research apparatus have been upended in a matter of days. Yet these events are, in large part, a catastrophic symptom of a much more pervasive problem – a profound lack of public understanding about how federal research dollars improve, enrich, and save American lives. This disconnect far predates the current mass layoffs and disassembly of US scientific institutions, and represents a glaring failure of our current ability to mobilize the knowledge we generate to engage, inform, and influence our fellow Americans.
April 9, 2025 at 5:13 PM
mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
Humans are visual creatures. We're missing out on so much because it's currently expensive & technical to visualize sounds.

Please help @galacticpolymath.com finish a web app to change this!
👇 $10 gets you access to the beta app. (Public release will be free, if we can reach our goal!) 🧪🔊 #edusky
April 6, 2025 at 5:24 PM
mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
that special swell of satisfaction when you cut open the perfect avocado
a perfect avocado sliced in half
March 9, 2025 at 6:20 PM
mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
I was honored to speak at the MN #StandUpForScience2025 rally yesterday abt the need to shift science outreach focus from informal settings to formal K-12.
Invigorating to gather w so many concerned abt anti-science efforts in the US!
Thanks for your leadership
@standupforscience.bsky.social👏👏👏
hundreds of concerned Minnesotans gather to show solidarity for science A postdoc who was fired from her government post 3 weeks into her work (for no reason) speaks from the steps of the Minnesota State Capitol protesters hold up signs saying Our Future Depends on Science Science-it just may save your life and Mad Scientist
March 8, 2025 at 3:14 PM
mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
ok any bird people want to weigh in? This is nonsense right? I haven't spent a lot of time in the tropics, but toucans seem to fly just fine #birds
From a baby book called Zoo's Who Toucan The toucan hops, it rarely flies, it's hard you see, with a beak this size! Moving around between the trees, picking fruits and nuts with ease.
March 1, 2025 at 11:46 PM
mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
I'm grateful for the NSF graduate research fellowship (GRFP) that allowed me to study barn swallow song divergence around the world! 🧪 Just found this news clipping from a Turkish newspaper in 2009 featuring my collaborator Hakan Karaardic & me.

Also, man I look young 😅
A Turkish newspaper: Serik Postasi. image of me recording male barn swallows singing & Hakan looking into distance. Caption in Turkish translated by Google as: Akdeniz University Faculty of Arts and Sciences Biology Department Research Assistant Hakan Karaardıç announced that Ornithologist Matthew Reed Wilkins from Colorado University will also join the project carried out in Bogazkent Bird Paradise as of April 2010
March 1, 2025 at 8:51 PM
mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
it's bleak. Not sure if you're an AtLA fan, but it feels like this part of the finale
Aang's light is fading as the fire lord's energy is almost overtaking him
February 14, 2025 at 3:39 PM
mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
Wow, NSF award public search is completely down. I...have no words to express my full discontent, fear, and anger with these efforts to sabotage science in the US. I hope there will be repercussions, but I fear we are all going to feel them 🧪
www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/
a 404 not found error
February 14, 2025 at 3:23 AM
mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
Looking for some positive news on a Friday? An actually useful & remarkably successful application of AI to combat #misinformation. Chatting with a friendly omniscient bot seems to have a lasting positive impact on bringing folks back to reality!

www.nytimes.com/2024/09/12/h... @nytimes.com
After three exchanges, which lasted about eight minutes on average, participants rated how strongly they felt about their beliefs again. On average, their ratings dropped by about 20 percent; about a quarter of participants no longer believed the falsehood. The effect also spilled into their attitudes toward other poorly supported theories, making the participants slightly less conspiratorial in general.
January 31, 2025 at 3:42 PM
mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
👋 Fans of #bioacoustics, birdsong & #openaccess education!

We need help funding a FREE web app to bring sound analysis to any classroom! Developed by @galacticpolymath.com for grades 6-university 🔈🧪🦉🐋

Test BETA app👉 soundlab-gold.vercel.app
Email if you have funds 🙌 soundlab@galacticpolymath.com
January 24, 2025 at 2:17 AM
mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
today's an inside day
it's negative 13 degrees in Minneapolis air Lancelot from Monty python's holy Grail grimacing
January 19, 2025 at 2:26 PM
mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
new year's goals:
1. be more patient, starting with myself
2. achieve better work/life balance
3. get better at this👇
January 13, 2025 at 6:49 PM
mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
you really sent me down a rabbit hole today 😅 This non-distinction between capital i (I) & lower case L (l) drives me nuts. I find that Noto Sans offers the best solution & will soon make this our official brand font for my education studio @galacticpolymath.com! #accessibility #scicomm
Accessibility + readability: why Galactic Polymath Education Studio will be switching to Google Noto font. A visual of how Montserrat (the studio's current font) and most sans-serif fonts do not easily distinguish a capital I from a lower case l. Source Sans 3 font distinguishes a lower case l with a small serif. Noto Sans shows a capital I just like a serif font, and a little l as a straight line. This is the best solution.
January 5, 2025 at 8:46 PM
mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
OMG this drives me crazy! I just discovered that "museo sans" puts a little curl on the l. Imagine if all sans serif fonts distinguished all characters. What a concept 🤔🌈
imagen showing museo sans renders capital I, lower case l and 1 as very distinct. Also O and 0
January 5, 2025 at 4:35 PM
mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
let the wool times begin
0 degrees currently, -5 by 8am
December 12, 2024 at 12:01 AM
mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
Finally went to the OG Meow Wolf in Santa Fe yesterday. AMAZING! 🤯 Imagine my surprise when we went into a room & saw these figures on the wall 🤩. Who among @meowwolfworkers.bsky.social is into #bioacoustics?! Google Lens identified the fig. comes from this paper www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧪🔉🦉🪶
An entry describing an indigo bunting, with a picture of the bird, along with a sound waveform that shows loudness over time and below it a spectrogram showing frequency over time. The spectrogram shows swooping up and down notes (frequency modulation) for different syllables of varying lengths A set of spectrograms showing frequency over time patterns for bird song selections for 7 species of Australasian and Southeast Asian species.
November 28, 2024 at 5:03 PM
mattwilkins.galacticpolymath.com
Just made these beautiful, terrifying graphs in #Rstats for an upcoming #dataliteracy unit for @galacticpolymath.com.
If you've worked with grades 6-uni, what would your students say about these graphs? #SciEd #STEMed 🧪
A graph of CO2 concentration in ppm rising steadily from ~300 to 425 between 1957 and 2024 A graph of Antarctic Ice Mass relative to Apr 2002 going from 0 at 2002 to around -2500 Gigatonnes in 2024
November 25, 2024 at 10:23 PM