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“This is super awkward,” someone muttered as 20 scientists milled around a room, gazing into someone’s eyes before moving on and locking eyes with someone else.

A few people laughed at the remark, but something important was happening. The exercise was part of a workshop to teach the scientists how to talk about their work to a general audience.

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It’s not rocket science — it’s improv.

Improv theatre isn’t a conventional activity for a scientific conference, but that’s what kicked off a symposium on advanced biofuels Wednesday morning. The conference, which ends on Friday, is hosted by BioFuelNet Canada, a Canadian network of biofuels scientists.

The workshop was designed to bridge the communication gap between biofuels scientists and the general public. The network’s scientific director, Donald Smith, said that when people from the network went out onto the street to ask passersby what advanced biofuels are, only one person knew — and that person was an engineer.