Left to right: Robert Cooper, Alex Eyman, Melissa SlawsonROBERT COOPER PHOTO BY ERIK JEPSEN; COURTESY OF ALEX EYMAN; COURTESY OF MELISSA SLAWSONLawyer Melissa Slawson first heard about the March for Science after receiving an invitation to join the Facebook group for the satellite event in Tucson, Arizona, where her sister lives. She was surprised to find no such group for San Diego.
Entrepreneur Alex Eyman was too. Both Slawson and Eyman ended up creating Facebook groups to spearhead local march planning. “I was only able to attain 500, 600 people in the same time that Melissa was able to attain 6,000 people,” said Eyman. So they teamed up.
Along with Robert Cooper, a quantitative biology postdoc at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), Slawson and Eyman are now planning an April 22 March for Science in San Diego.
The Scientist: What do you do, and how did you become involved?
Melissa Slawson: I’m an attorney by trade, and not in any particularly scientific field. . . . My involvement is—other than a passion for the issue from a nonscientific perspective—that I started a Facebook group that ...
