43. Interview with science educator Dr Jarrod McKenna

This week we had a lot of fun chatting with, and learning from, Dr Jarrod McKenna. Jarrod is a reproductive biologist turned zookeeper turned science educator and has had quite a mixture of jobs. As a PhD student at Monash University, he investigated early pregnancy and assisted reproduction in the world’s only known menstruating rodent: The Egyptian Spiny Mouse. He then went on to work as a zookeeper at Zoos Victoria and as the Communications Officer at the National Youth Science Forum. These days he works as an Outreach Program Coordinator in the Faculty of Science at the University of Melbourne, working to engage early high school students in STEM. But science communication has always been at the heart of his work – whether he knew it or not – which led him down an incredibly rewarding track celebrating science and encouraging others to see how amazing and fun science can be.

You can follow Jarrod and learn more about his work here:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-jarrod-mckenna-942382128/

https://twitter.com/its_drmac

https://thesimplescience.com/

https://theconversation.com/meet-the-egyptian-spiny-mouse-this-menstruating-rodent-may-help-us-understand-human-pregnancy-157889

Transcript: https://go.unimelb.edu.au/b46s