Raising the profile of Science and the Big Questions (SABQ) research and researchers

Despite the fact that academic institutions and philanthropic organizations are generously funding truly compelling research into life’s most important questions, ’Science and the Big Questions’ suffers from a lack of branding and name recognition. Similarly, SABQ researchers and the results of their work are far less accessible than they ought to be. It doesn’t have to be this way. The Internet offers a powerful tool for communication and dissemination of information. Those who take advantage of the medium successfully convey their message quickly and efficiently. Those who do not are inevitably left behind. Our project will raise the profile of SABQ research and researchers among academics, the media, and the general public. We will achieve this by building up to 100 personalized websites promoting SABQ scholars and their work, and creating a robust, interactive 'hub' website that generates original SABQ-related content and indexes SABQ-related resources. We will ensure that all of these sites are cutting edge, easily maintained, and optimized for search engines. The personalized sites will be customized for each researcher, highlighting the Big Questions the scholar explores. They will be offered free of charge, with editorial assistance, over the life of the grant but will exist far beyond. They will be state of the art and require no technical expertise to keep them updated. The hub, updated with original content daily, will be a destination site featuring SABQ-related news, blogs, commentary, Q&As. This expanded web presence will have a lasting impact on the public at large. Search engines will more frequently return SABQ-related scholars high on the first results page, the media will more easily find credible SABQ-related resource and info, and the intellectually curious webuser will find multiple paths leading to our content-rich hub where they will join a community participating in the kind of civil, informed, productive dialogue Sir John envisioned.