Giovanni Petri to bridge Complex Systems research and public understanding through digital storytelling
The Museum of Science has selected Giovanni Petri, Professor at the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University in London and Director of the NPLab, for the 2026 Digital Science Communication Fellowship, an elite national program part of the Museum of Science’s Global Science Creator Network, dedicated to strengthening scientific communication and public understanding.
Professor Petri will be joining a group of 40+ fellows from across the United States in an inaugural fellowship that pairs scientific experts with influential digital creators, helping scientists like him better leverage social communications platforms to increase the visibility and impact of their work. Fellows will receive advanced training in digital storytelling, behavioral science, audience strategy, and civic-minded communication, and work closely with mentors from leading academic institutions, research laboratories, media organizations, and scientific agencies.
“Through our Science Communicator Fellowship, a key initiative of our Global Science Creator Network, we’re training scientists, researchers, and experts to communicate more effectively on digital platforms and connect with audiences interested in their work,” said Tim Ritchie, President of the Museum of Science, “By pairing them with experienced digital mentors, we’re meeting people where they already are and building trust in science through stories that inspire active hope.”
Through this collaboration, Professor Petri will tackle one of science's most pressing communication challenges: how to explain uncertainty and why changing predictions is not a sign of weakness of science, but one of its greatest strengths. Petri, whose research spans modeling neural and social systems to decoding whale communication in Project CETI, will create "The Edge of Prediction: Communicating Uncertainty in a Complex World"—a digital storytelling series designed to help audiences understand how science works at the edge of predictability.
"We lack a shared language for explaining why uncertainty is integral to science, not a sign of inconsistency," says Petri, whose work focuses on what makes complex systems—brains, societies, ecosystems—both powerful and resistant to simple predictions, studying higher-order interactions, information bottlenecks, and the fundamental trade-offs in network prediction.
"During the COVID-19 pandemic, adaptive modeling was framed as 'flip-flopping," Petri explains. "The same happens in climate and AI discussions: the evolving nature of models is seen as a flaw rather than a feature of robust science." His project proposal aims to change that narrative by creating a reproducible communication framework for visualizing uncertainty and confidence, giving audiences an accessible visual vocabulary for understanding probabilistic forecasts.
"In an era of AI hype, climate anxiety, and eroding institutional trust, science needs a new grammar for uncertainty," Petri concludes. "Rather than promising certainty, we can teach audiences how to think probabilistically—to appreciate that prediction is not prophecy, but an evolving dialogue between model, data, and reality."
The fellowship begins in January 2026 and concludes with an in-person capstone summit in Boston.
Learn more at https://www.mos.org/science-communication-fellowship
