In general I am always interested in trying something new, and talking to new people about my research, so if you’ve got some idea about an event that would be interesting, or if you work at a school and want someone to talk about evolution (particularly with regard to mating practices) then drop me a line. During my brief time in scientific research I have been involved in public engagement in various ways:

I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here - I took part in the 2011 run of this fantastic programme that helps school and scientists engage. I was in the Evolution zone with four other scientists. We had to answer various questions, such as “do faeces and urine count as part of your body?”, “can animals be gay?”, “can you evolve to evolve faster?”, and “is your real surname Tazzyman?” (the answers being maybe, yes, maybe, and yes). We also had to take part in frenetic webchat sessions with schools, generally featuring some of the scientists and a whole class of kids firing off odd and surreal questions all at once. It was great fun. There was also a competitive element to it, with scientists accruing votes off the kids like a reality TV show, and the one with the least votes being booted off on each of the last four days of the two-week event. And guess what? I won! Probably largely due to my amusing surname, but still...

Bright Club - This is UCL’s innovative science/comedy event. Generally happening once a month in a room in a pub in Clerkenwell, London, it takes scientists (generally from UCL) and gets them to do short stand-up comedy gigs about their research. It’s brilliant. My gig took place on June 21st 2011, and lasted just under 10 minutes. People laughed. If you are prepared for bad language and some adult content, you can listen to it. In addition to this, Bright Club also does weekly podcasts. To hear the one I did (again, some explicit content, so be warned) go to the Bright Club website: mine is the podcast from the 27th June 2011.

Trying and trying and trying - I took part in this interesting art/music/science project, which was fun and different. The track about my work, if you’ve not worked it out, is “The sex life of yeast”. The lyrics are scientifically accurate, as well as containing a lot of double entendres: it therefore represents my life strikingly well.

UCL Widening Participation Unit - I did a few lectures for this organisation, talking to kids about sex and evolution, and answering such questions as “so is that why men like women with big boobs then?” (“well if you look across the world what is considered attractive varies enormously from culture to culture” was roughly my response). I’ve also done lectures at secondary schools independently.

Computer Science for Fun - I have written three pieces for this excellent website aimed at secondary school kids: on Boolean algebra and web searches, on the Prisoner’s Dilemma, and on the Simulation Hypothesis.