This is episode is the full, unedited interview with Ed Boyden. If you haven’t listened to the fully produced episode yet, we strongly encourage you to do so before listening to this one. They’re shorter in length and much more refined.
EPISODE CREDITS
Guest Starring Ed Boyden, Associate Professor of Biological Engineering and Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT Media Lab and McGovern Institute & Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology
TED Talks by Ed Boyden:
 
Produced & Hosted by Adam Greenfield
Executive Produced by Patrick Yurick, Instructional Designer – MIT OGE
Executive Produced by Heather Konar, Communication Director – MIT OGE
Special thanks to the following editors who provided us invaluable feedback that aided in the development of this show:
Christopher O’Keeffe, Co-Founder of Podcation
Kristy Bennet, Manager – MIT Women’s League
Jennifer Cherone, Phd Candidate – MIT Burge Laboratory
Erik Tillman, Phd, Formerly of the Kim Lab & Currently A Fellow at Vida Ventures, LLC
The Great Communicators Podcast is a part of Gradcommx. Gradcommx, targeted at enhancing research communication, is the first offering of Gradx – a professional development project created for the graduate student population at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by the Office For Graduate Education.
MUSIC & SOUNDS
“Divider” by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under Attribution 4.0 International License (http://freemusicarchive.org)
EPISODE SCRIPT

Print The Script Here

ADAM GREENFIELD
Hello, Adam Greenfield here, host of The Great Communicators podcast series. What you’re about to hear is the full, unedited interview with one of the guests we spoke with. If you haven’t listened to the fully produced episode yet, I definitely encourage you to do so before listening to this one. They’re shorter in length and much more refined. You can find them all at gradx.mit.edu/podcasts.
The idea behind these longer, unedited conversation is to give you an opportunity to hear the entire talk, warts and all. This is not only a fun way to hear the full flow of the conversation but it also emphasizes the importance of the points made in the shorter, produced episodes, which again, can be found at gradx.mit.edu/podcasts.
Thanks for listening and enjoy the conversation.

Patrick Yurick:  Can you tell me your name, title, and what you do here at MIT?
Ed Boyden:  My name is Ed Boyden.  I am an associate professor here at MIT where I direct a neuro technology group, and I work with people across all different disciplines, science and engineering, on a quest to understand and repair the brain.
P:  Great.  I was kind of interested in, we were just talking, and I was interested because you do have to communicate with a lot of people.  So like, on a daily basis and at different levels. Can you describe the different ways that you have to think about communication?
E:  Sure.  So in my own research group, we have clinicians, roboticists, chemists, people who are trained in the humanities, people who have trained in mathematics, and everything in between.  I spent a lot of time trying to understand and frame problems so that they can be solved. This is a very difficult thing to do because looking at a problem a little bit the wrong way can mean the difference between somebody coming up with a sol...