A 1975 photograph captured the historic handshake between American astronaut Thomas Stafford and Soviet cosmonaut Alexey Leonov after their spacecrafts joined together in orbit.

This friendly gesture, shared at a time of Cold War tension, is a prime example of the power of science diplomacy, says Enrique Lin Shiao, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania.

“We traditionally think of science diplomacy as when science is used as a vehicle to continue or maintain relations between countries when those countries may otherwise have conflicts,” says Lin Shiao. “In this case, they were able to connect in space as scientists when politicians couldn’t have done that on land.”

To help members of the Penn community with science backgrounds grow their expertise in this realm, Lin Shiao, currently a student in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine in the Biomedical Graduate group, launched the Penn Science Diplomacy Group in 2015. The organization has hosted guest speakers, arranged training workshops and helped send members to North Korea, Lithuania, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, to gather and share knowledge. Their biggest event to date, “Penn Science Policy and Diplomacy Symposium,” organized in conjunction with the Penn Science Policy Group, was held in Penn’s Houston Hall on April 24.

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Lin Shiao credits his peripatetic background in sparking an interest in connecting science with international relations and international development. Born and raised in Costa Rica to Taiwanese immigrants, he attended college in Germany, then pursued research in England and Scotland before arriving in the United States for his graduate work.

He had never heard of science diplomacy, however, until he was contacted by the Costa Rican ambassador to the U.S., Román Macaya Hayes, who had read about Lin Shiao’s scientific pursuits in a Costa Rican newspaper. A scientist himself, Macaya Hayes has a Ph.D. in biochemistry, in addition to an M.B.A. from Penn’s Wharton School. He discussed with Lin Shiao the ways that science, and scientists, can play a role in international relations and pointed him toward some resources to learn more. Inspired, Lin Shiao started investigating on his own, following the Twitter hashtag #sciencediplomacy and developing contacts at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or AAAS, an organization that has become a major collaborator.

Lin Shiao learned that science diplomacy can entail a number of activities, depending on one’s perspective.

​​​​​​​“Diplomacy for science is when we have politicians and diplomats discussing how they can move scientific collaborations forward, or how they might regulate science,” he says. “Science in diplomacy is when you have scientists advising policymakers.”

“Science for diplomacy,” is what is more traditionally thought of as science diplomacy, with examples such as the International Space Station and initiatives such as the Sesame Particle Accelerator, a project that has brought together a number of Middle Eastern countries, some of which don’t even formally recognize one another, to work toward a common goal of advancing science.

Lin Shiao wasn’t sure how widespread an interest in science diplomacy might be, but, when he put out a call for the first meeting on his graduate-group listserve, more than 40 students showed up. The group has maintained a busy schedule of events since its launch. Guest speakers have included Macaya Hayes, representatives from international development organizations such as Partners in Health and CRDF Global and faculty and students from Penn and elsewhere who are engaged in global scientific outreach.

An annual highlight for the group has been the AAAS conference on science diplomacy. The most recent was held last month in Washington, D.C.; Carl June, Penn Medicine's Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy, gave the concluding plenary and the group shared presentations, networked and visited the U.S. Department of State and the Philippines Embassy.

Though the group began with graduate students, it has quickly expanded its reach. Ryan Mayers, a senior at Penn studying neurobiology from Gorham, New Hampshire, was well acquainted with science diplomacy before even coming to college.

“In 2013 I attended a national youth science camp and got to go to a panel at AAAS on non-research careers in the sciences,” says Mayers. “They were talking about collaborations where the U.S. sends scientists to Rwanda to work on water, health and transportation infrastructure. That sounded really cool to me.”

When his friend Sharon Kim, a fellow senior and a biological basis of behavior major, mentioned that she had learned of a science diplomacy group on campus, the two attended a meeting. Both have since assumed leadership positions in the group.

Kim’s interest in science diplomacy also started in high school.

“As a Korean-American growing up in Los Angeles, I had a heart for the people of North Korea,” says Kim. “I wanted to contribute in some way, and I felt like medicine and science was a way to engage them.”

Through the Korean-American Medical Association, she ended up connecting with neurosurgeon Kee Park, a Paul Farmer Global Surgery Scholar at Harvard Medical School. She has worked with him ever since on medical and science exchange projects that have allowed her to travel to and work in North Korea. There, she’s shared some of the research she has conducted at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia on a pediatric cancer called neuroblastoma and has engaged in other research projects and outreach efforts. She plans to return in May and will then spend the summer learning Korean in South Korea with support from the State Department’s Critical Languages Scholarship program.

“I want to be engaged with North Korea as long as I can,” she says. “I’m hopeful that these exchanges will not only improve international relations but will improve the health of North Koreans as well.”

Mayers, meanwhile, has been working with engineers at Penn on water-filtration systems to improve environmental health in the Aral Sea region, an area that has suffered from severely contaminated water sources.

Another member of the group, Aaron Tatad, a student in the master of public health program at Penn, joined the group after becoming interested in some out-of-the-box ways he could apply his degree. This past spring break, he traveled to Lithuania to conduct research and share information about a suicide-prevention program.

“I talked to key stakeholders, including the archbishop and members of Parliament, to get a good feel for the situation on the ground,” says Tatad. “It was eye-opening to see and talk to them about their perspectives about how it can be managed.”

The April symposium featured a keynote address by Macaya Hayes and talks by other experts in science diplomacy, including Cathy Campbell of CRDF Global, Michael Halpern of the Union of Concerned Sciences and Penn alumnus Benjamin Schmitt, an IEEE Department of State Science and Technology Policy Fellow.

Looking to the future, Lin Shiao says the group is excited about the possibilities afforded by the new Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. Along with expanding partnerships with Costa Rica, the group is working with an organization in the Philippines that encourages young people to get involved in science and technology, using techniques developed and implemented in schools in West Philadelphia. They’re continuing their work in Latin America examining how nutritional policies affect health outcomes and embarking on a systematic review of policies around infectious diseases, such as dengue, zika and chikungunya. And they’re investigating ways to ramp up Cuba-U.S. scientific relations.

“I think now more than ever it’s important to maintain open communication channels through scientists, if we’re losing more traditional diplomatic channels,” says Lin Shiao. “We need people who are still invested in this idea that scientific diplomacy and globalization are not bad things to be in Washington, D.C., and still be doing this work.”