SuperScientists

What scientists can do is amazing and vitally important both economically and to address the challenges the world faces, but ask young people to name a scientist or share what they think is interesting about science and you'll often be left without an answer. In private schools or in developed countries with a large number of STEM professionals, you may well receive detailed answers, but in South Africa and much of the world the approach to STEM education leads to young people disconnected from the world of science seeing it as something that others do. 

There are numerous reasons why this is the case, but in part it's how we communicate science to young people. Science educators don't make the connection to science that is happening today, the people that do science and how incredible science is. We don't tap into the fact that young people's lives are very much defined by their connections to people and characters. They have many heroes in entertainment, sports, TV, movies, etc. but in teaching we haven't tapped into the stories and personalities of people as much as we could. When young people don't connect or see outdated ideas of scientists they don't see science as a path for them and science is poorer for it. 

Research using the "draw a scientist" approach in South Africa supports this with the typical scientist being a middle age man wearing glasses. Part of this relates to the disparity of who young people see as scientists. The gender and racial gap in science is significant with Black scientists in South Africa publishing 18% of academic publications in despite being 80% of the population (2014 data, this number is likely low as Black scientists are growing significantly, but they are under-represented particularly in leadership). In Africa more broadly women make up only 30% of researchers according to a 2018 UNESCO study. Representation matters in the role models that young people see for career choices, particularly for careers that are seen as more difficult. It's part of the reason that efforts such as the AAAS If/Then Ambassadors programme promoting women scientists and other programmes that bring more attention to under-represented scientists to help  science, the public, and young people see science differently.  

To help young people see science and scientists differently, we've developed SuperScientists- drawing living scientists and science champions as superheroes and creating a variety of media with these images. We have drawn 53 scientists to date from a variety of fields (climate science, marine science, virology, palaeontology, astronomy and others) and countries (6 in total all in Africa though we are planning an expansion to the USA). Our goal is to represent the demographics of South African in the scientists that we feature and more than 70% are women. The characters are drawn in a modern-comic style with elements of their scientific research incorporated into their costumes. Using this character art and derivates of it, we have made trading cards (they include a game and a variety of information about the scientist and augmented reality), calendars, an activity book, web profiles, posters, colouring pages, and we are currently working on a comic book featuring five Black palaeoscientists. 

In 2021 we distributed 15,000+ calendars, activity books, and trading cards through a network of non-profits, schools, libraries, and STEM education organisations. Our characters are being used in a traveling exhibit at a children's museum in Johannesburg and a mobile STEM education organisation is using SuperScientists on their outreach vehicle which will reach thousands of young people. They have also been used to help directly address gender inequity in science, through a partnership with a research organisation in South Africa we created a number of SuperScientists and used them in an online gender equity campaign to explore the reasons for gender inequity in science and possible solutions. 

We are big believers of getting young people to hold something in their hand, and so our technology is primarily paper, however we have incorporated augmented reality into some of our materials and think that there is great potential to expand on this for example, providing a poster to a classroom and then serving different video interviews and media as a way of making it current and exciting. We have also experimented with Instagram filters and video creation, and a WhatsApp channel but do not currently have funds to for these. We have however translated many of materials into isiZulu the most common home language in South Africa and would like to create audio profiles of these to lower barriers to access. Students in France have translated many of our profiles into French. These and most of our materials are free to download and print and we have received requests for our materials from schools in the USA, and Europe.

While this project started as trading cards, we've developed it into a platform for science engagement, inspiration and education that has great potential. 

Our audience is primary school and early secondary school learners (8-14 years old) with an emphasis on learners in low-income communities - who are disproportionately Black and people of colour. However our materials are enjoyed by older learners and adults and we think that it is important for young people of all incomes and racial groups to see and celebrate scientists drawn this way. In addition universities and scientists themselves find SuperScientists to be an effective science communication tool. 

South Africa, while designated an upper-middle income country, it the highest income inequality in the world and has an official unemployment rate of 35% 

From our experience in working in low-income schools, primary-schools often include rather welcoming classrooms with educational and learner created materials displayed. Class size however is quite large with classes of 45-50 very common if not larger. Secondary schools in low-income communities lack resources and classroom materials. The emphasis on national matric test results at schools limits creative teaching. 

The background of unemployment, poverty, resource limitations and more makes teaching difficult but many learners are incredibly creative and keen to learn. Through our extracurricular CodeMakers programmes that taught coding and hands on STEM activities, we found that by raising the bar and providing creative freedom to learners, they pushed themselves to do things they never would have imagined. As part of these programmes we provided them with materials about scientists and technologists in SA, however those static materials didn't impress them. But once we made them into SuperScientists, they were immediately more compelling and learners wanted to learn about them because of how they looked and that we had elevated them to these positions. 

Now when we go to schools to deliver materials or programmes, we see young people giddy to get  SuperScientists cards, or immediately turn around to share what they have with their neighbor. One of the people we've profiled has received a phone call from someone in tears saying that when they were growing up they only thought White men could be scientists and now with these materials they can show their children that a Black woman can be too. A girl has used a SuperScientists card in the middle of her project about how she wanted to become an oceanographer and then her mother arranged to meet said oceanographer in a different city. Role models and representation really matters and unfortunately for many young people in South Africa and more broadly, they still don't see scientists and other professionals that look like them and have stories they can relate to. Our SuperScientist cards are the first step and the broader platform of materials will help them learn about these people and their science and appreciate science and scientists differently. 

We hope SuperScientists will help them see the power and importance of science, help them identify with scientists that look like them changing their perception of who can and should be a scientist, and we expect some future scientists to note that SuperScientists materials are what led them to the careers they are in. 

One of the interesting things about SuperScientists is how it is almost a movement as well as a specific organisation making things happen.  More to that in a bit, first to the core team. We are myself, Justin Yarrow, a PhD scientist by training and Clyde Beech an accomplished comic artist and our primary artist. We also employ freelance artists, translators and writers. Though I was trained as a scientist I was more interested in the spread of ideas and solutions and  subsequently worked in HIV clinics to help develop process improvements with nurses. I then worked in public health culminating in the development and implementation of health programmes at a national scale before then starting CodeMakers where I worked with learners and teachers in low-income schools over five years but also accomplished projects that had mass appeal and impact - the translation of the coding education language Scratch into isiZulu and the development of video interviews with scientists that were seen by thousands.    

What I bring to the organisation is experience of working with low-income learners and the ability to talk with scientists. Not speaking isiZulu I miss a lot, but I have some understanding of what they like, where they come from, what resources they have and don't, how they see science and scientists and how many of them are looking for role models to help them chart their path. I sit between the learners, the scientists and the artists to translate between them and have an eye to develop materials and programmes that can scale across the country or internationally.  We have always considered this project to be at the least Pan-African and as we are starting to create SuperScientists in the USA and already receive a lot of web traffic from the USA it shows the power of the idea globally. 

Clyde is an accomplished character and comic artist, the previous art director of the nationally recognised comic Supa Strikas and part of the team behind the award winning comic Kwezi which is now being developed into an animated series. He knows the type of art and stories that capture young people's interest and as he grew up and lives in a Coloured community knows how we need to engage young people.    

Our a strategic advisory board includes two scientists in South Africa that we have featured as SuperScientists that are also involved in science outreach, training, and have children themselves, and one of them grew up in the type of communities we serve. The board also includes a Kenyan communications expert and strategist who we are working with to expand SuperScientists into East Africa. 

Our NPO's board includes a maths professor, an accountant, a international education consult, a former UNDP employee and M&E speciallist, and a palaeontology PhD student who is one of our SuperScientists.  Three of these people also grew up in low-income communities in South Africa and guide us to ensure that we are meeting the needs of those communities. Their input is part of the reason why we have focused on paper materials as the reality for a lot of South Africans, even into late secondary school, is that they don't have access to phones and other digital media.  

As to the idea that it is almost a movement, many of the scientists that we have featured are ambassadors for the programme and in the words of one of the scientists, we are tapping into the way that they have seen themselves, the very rare Black woman scientist in a field dominated by others. Our art and materials are spontaneously shared by them and we have had multiple organisations approach us to either create additional SuperScientists or use our art in their programmes - one of which we mention elsewhere in the application includes our art on the back of science outreach vehicles.   

There are a number of topic areas that we could benefit from being a Solve awardee and I really like the ethos that MIT engenders and the sort of people that it attracts - creative, smart and passionate. I've been involved in a couple of different MIT associated initiatives - Design that Matters and Scratch - and went to graduate school in Boston and loved the atmosphere at MIT.   

In addition to the network of people that we would meet, which may very well be the most important and long lasting aspect, there are areas that we would like to advantage of. These include: technological expertise -  particularly those technologies that work in low-resources settings or that could be employed for particular out reach exhibitions that could make our materials more immersive eg. AR and app development; product development and launch - SuperScientists is in many ways a product company with different products, comics, videos, cards, AR, learning materials, etc. and we would greatly benefit from expertise and advice with this aspect; strategic advice - there are many different directions that SuperScientists can take in terms of depth, breadth and reach to help young people learn about science and scientists. This is fundamental challenge of where we are at with this project, really an inflection point for going from being a local success to something with greater reach. As such we've chosen the business model choice below as it encompasses strategy and includes many of the other areas, public relations, human capital, finances, and product distribution that we could also benefit from. 

There are four things that make what we are doing innovative 1) our art depicts scientists as exciting modern-comic characters, it's aspirational for people of all ages and flips the script on the idea of scientists as lab coat wearing Einsteins 2) our use of trading cards means that for a low cost young people can get a wide range of exposure to a variety of careers and people, they can hold them in their hands and put them up in their homes (as we have seen) 3) SuperScientists is a platform through which we can make comics, campaigns, reuse the art for activity books and build out media whether it's augmented reality (seen in the video profile) or Tik Tok videos etc. 4) the people we profile are living and carry on making discoveries, receiving grants, and doing things that young people can learn about. 

1 year 

- 20,000 young people have received SuperScientists materials through direct or indirect engagement with SuperScientists. 

- 20,000 young people can, through engagement with our materials, be able to name a living scientist or know that our materials could tell them more about scientists 

- if provided with before and after tests of their opinions on science, scientists, and their interest in learning more about science, we would see marked change after their engagement with our materials.

5 year - 8years after the start of SuperScientists with thousands of young South Africans already receiving our materials in the first three years and continued growth of the programme

- Some thousands of university students who can identify SuperScientists as materials that they saw in their schooling that positively affected how they see science 

- Some hundreds of university students that identify SuperScientists as one of the sparks that got them interested in the science studies that they are currently engaged in. 

Formal evaluation is high on the priority list for our project and we would very much like to partner with an academic education researcher to do so.  Until we do this the measures that we have include 

1. The race and gender of the people that we profile we want young people to see themselves in the breadth of materials we create

2. Number of materials distributed to learners in underserved communities, broken down by race and gender 

3. Number of partner organisations that use our materials

4. Number of schools that have requested our materials and the comments as to why they want them 

5. Responses from educators, non-profit organisations, parents and learners - anecdotal at this point 

6. Organisations that approach us to use our materials in their own outreach or communications - shows the value and demand for them

7. Social media engagement - secondary to our main work but still an important component 

Young people live in a world of social interactions and characters, their friends, family, the media that they consume. It's what children's toys, books, cartoons, educational products, even breakfast cereals rely on. Bring personality, a meaningful connection, something that makes it desirable to almost anything and young people will embrace it. Our art hooks them with something that they are familiar with - superheroes and with its look - then couple that with the types of scientists that we are profiling - living scientists, scientists drawn in a way that they've never seen, scientists that look like them - and we give them role models that meet or even exceeed their aspirations but are grounded in reality.  From there and with the mix of different characters that a classroom would receive, the game play associated with the cards, and the supplementary materials that they can access on the web, we are changing the image of what a scientist looks like both the gender and race and connecting them to the power of what scientists can do. What used to be a career that others do can now be seen as one that they could.  As we grow and bring in more story telling - comics describing how the scientists got to where they are or with first comic which will be include palaeoscience concepts as well as an origin story for SuperScientists - we expect this component and the emotional tie to these scientists and their journeys will be stronger.

SuperScientists is leveraging the idea of superheroes, amazing people with amazing abilities. That is our core technology,  if you will, one that is worth billions through the characters and media that have been created by Marvel, DC and others. Our characters, though are real people, and how we execute on the idea is through the technology of trading cards with built in games, paper activity books, story telling through comics, the web, and augmented reality that takes our paper products and links them to rich media. We have in the past developed a WhatsApp channel to serve our media but found it prohibitive at the time. We think an app or a better execution of a WhatsApp chanel would be fabulous, but we also recognise that the young people we serve often don't have access.  Paper, though costly to print and distribute is tangible, becomes something that a learner can post on their wall and can, through additional technologies, be a medium to link out to rich media. 

The demographics of our organisation are as follows 

-Staff - 1 White man, 1 Coloured man (primary artist freelancer but integral to projects)

- Strategic advisory board - 1 Black (Coloured) woman, 1 Black man, 1 Mixed race woman 

- NPO board - 2 Black men, 1 Black (Coloured) woman, 2 White women, 1 White man 

We would like to increase the number of Black women that are part of our boards and ideally would love to get our organisation to a point where we could hire a Black CEO. We asked the Coloured woman on our strategic advisory board if she would like to join our NPO board but her schedule made that impossible.  

We primarily grant funded, receiving grants to create, print and distribute materials to non-profit organisations, schools, libraries, and programmes that already have a relationship with young people and so can make use our materials to supplement their activities or introduce young people to SuperScientists. To innovate and develop new work we use core funding to make new characters or new media and this has sometimes led to new funding after a university sees the value in what we are creating. We do think that there is a commercial side of our project that could provide more sustainable funding, and we have sold our activity books and calendars and cards at one store, however we don't have the capacity for the relationship building to take it beyond that at the moment. 

As noted above we believe that there is a commercial side of what we are creating that could provide additional funding.  This is through the sale of our activity book, our comic, colouring books and through derivatives of our SuperScientists art, and app development. Part of the reason that we are expanding to the USA is to work in a larger market and one that values STEM education more and we can see a variety of digital products that will help us expand here and created revenue.  At the same time we are committed to our work in Africa and believe that a more target approach to work with universities to develop materials around the scientists they employ will be beneficial to them and their science communication efforts while also building our work.  We are also developing a proposal for a travelling exhibit that would go to science centres, libraries, and schools that will attract additional funding and help us reach our educational objectives. 

I'm not sure what I can share here but will note that in the last year we have received $65,000 through 5 grants, 4 funders and commercial sales (a very small amount but encouraging) and donations. In addition to this funding we have received quite a lot of media attention - Business Insider, Science (AAAS journal), South African television and newspapers which in kind would be worth many thousands.