Nesya Sloane is a PhD student at the University of Colorado Boulder, studying the chemistry of solid-state lithium ion batteries. As a chemist who is not specifically focused on environmental or green chemistry, Nesya brings a unique perspective, with research motivated by sustainability and a drive to better understand how scientific research is always connected to larger social, economic, and political discussions.
For her outreach project, Nesya dreamt up a creative and innovative event called “Research Rides: A science-themed alleycat bike race event”. An alleycat race is a checkpoint based bike race, popular in urban spaces, during which participants are given a list of checkpoints at the beginning, which can be completed in any order, forcing bikers to rely on both riding speed, teamwork, on the spot planning and knowledge of the terrain to get around. Nesya designed a race in her neck of the woods around the Boulder Colorado area, but with a theme and a spin. Her research rides race will feature various stops based on some of the science going on in the area, more specifically research into batteries. Checkpoints were built around various types of electric vehicles, including cars, bikes, scooters, research buildings and more. At each checkpoint, there is a trivia question related to batteries, which teams must answer before moving to the next checkpoint.
This event combines biking, competitive racing, battery research themed trivia, and a social event following the race during which the winners will be announced, the answers to the trivia questions will be given, and short talks and presentations on battery science, electric vehicles and more will be given to raise awareness for this important type of science. These plans are being worked up into practice and hopefully the event will take place sometime this Spring!
