About

Dr. JF Salazar

…has been a director of communications for a data science-focused institute, a senior research scientist, a writer, and a science teacher. She worked for academic and government institutions such as the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Chicago, and the Field Museum. In senior roles, she helped define and coordinate thought leadership strategies with funding agencies, drive large proposal efforts, shape public relations strategies, and establish outreach programs. With experience in both scientific and public communications, she understands how to align efforts across an institution to produce an impact. Early in her career, she was a board-certified instructor of secondary biology, chemistry, and biotechnology, and taught and studied curriculum design.

Dr. Salazar earned a Ph.D. in biological sciences (ecology and evolution) from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a B.S. in communication with an emphasis in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

Skills and Talents

Anticipating and solving a broad range of problems, translating complex science into audience-appropriate messages, working with data, facilitating collaboration, effectively using discipline-specific standards, researching and fact-checking, coordinating with subject matter experts, conducting literature reviews, understanding the big picture and strategy, adapting to what works best for the group, and owning projects fully from assignment to completion.

Numerous MS Office and Adobe applications including those used for technical documentation, art, websites, and collaboration; document editing in Overleaf or LaTeX; some programming and markup languages; repository and versioning systems; basics of website construction and editing using WordPress, Drupal, ConcreteCMS and others; reference management using several popular tools; developing and applying documentation standards; able to learn new things quickly and independently.