Meet the people behind Scientell: Simon Torok

By Jing-Lei Boschen

Scientell was named during a children’s bedtime routine, and it is exactly the kind of origin story you would expect from a company built on curiosity and collaboration. The co-founder Simon Torok has spent 30 years in science communication building Scientell through decades of friendship, shared values and a career that reflects his genuine love of making science matter to people.

A climate scientist who wanted to communicate

Simon began his career with a PhD in climate change science in the early 90s, when the field was just starting to gain public attention. But during this period, he noticed that his attention was being captured somewhere else. Any time a communication opportunity came up – a spot on a science radio show or editing the meteorological society newsletter – he found himself looking forward to it more than researching at his desk.

‘Whenever I was doing communication activities, my heart would really be in it,’ Simon explained.

He also saw a problem in his research field itself. Climate change was becoming an urgent public issue and the communication around it wasn’t keeping up. He had noticed there was a real need for a role that bridged the gap between scientists and everyone else. Rather than leaping straight into such a role, Simon chose a deliberate stepping stone: a graduate diploma in science communication at the Australian National University. It gave him both the skills and the foundation to move from academic research into science communication.

The founding friendship: where it all took shape

The story of Scientell begins at a conference in New Zealand in 1994.

Simon was a PhD student who had already decided he wanted to move into science communication. Paul Holper was working at CSIRO in exactly the kind of role Simon was hoping to find. He got to know Paul that week and asked him lots of questions about how he could get a job in communication at CSIRO. Paul was generous with his advice, and a connection was formed that would shape the next 30 years.

A couple of years later, Simon joined CSIRO himself. His first role was communication manager for CSIRO Environmental Mechanics, which studied the interaction between the atmosphere, soil and water at the boundaries where those environmental spheres meet. From there, Simon moved into one of the most enjoyable roles of his career: editor of Double Helix, CSIRO’s science magazine for young people. With around 30,000 subscribers, competitions and a steady stream of letters from readers, it was so much fun that they launched a new magazine for younger kids called Scientriffic. For a period, he was editing both simultaneously.

Simon left CSIRO for a role as communication manager for a newly established research organisation in England. The move was exciting, not just because it was to the other side of the world, but because the job hadn’t existed before.

‘It was exciting to go to a job overseas, to be part of a brand-new research organisation and have a job that no one had done before, so I could sort of carve it out and define it.’

It was also where he noticed a striking difference in how climate change was being discussed. In Europe, the science was largely accepted, and the conversation was about what to do next. While back in Australia in the early 2000s, people were still debating whether the problem was real.

When Simon returned to Australia, Paul had moved on from his CSIRO role – the very role Simon had admired at that New Zealand conference a decade earlier. Simon applied and got Paul’s old position. ‘It was sort of a nice circle of life there,’ Simon mused.

By then, the 2 had started writing books together. They co-authored 20 titles in total, produced by publishers including ABC Books, Pan MacMillan and Oxford University Press. They wrote books in their spare time, fitting their collaboration around day jobs, family, and social life. Many of these books were written for children and several were translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean and Hungarian.

Writing for young people taught Simon a lot about good science communication. He found that writing for kids was not so different from writing for any non-expert audience. The key was still to illustrate ideas using non-technical language and make science relevant to their lives.

‘Kids are smart. If they love reading about science, we shouldn’t be patronising towards them,’ he said.

The same principle, he argued, is important for any science communication activity: it’s not about dumbing information down but rather conveying it with clarity and accessible language.

It was in those shared books that a real foundation took shape, not just a way of working together, but a friendship and eventually an idea that would become Scientell. The formal launch of Scientell was in 2015, when changes at CSIRO created the right conditions for both of them to leave and establish themselves as independent consultants. What began as 2 people working together quickly grew to 3 other employees (including Alysha, Cintya, and new Director Sonia), as well as a dozen subcontractors, and a pipeline of projects spanning government agencies, research institutions and the private sector.

The name for Scientell arrived unexpectedly during a bedtime routine.

After weeks of brainstorming, they had found every promising option either trademarked or already registered as a domain name. Simon found the answer while putting his daughter to bed the night before her first primary school show and tell. ‘Because I had show and tell on my mind, I thought, “oh that’s kind of what we’re doing”. Scientell is like show and tell for science,’ he explained. The next morning, he suggested it to Paul, tested it on friends and family, and everyone seemed to think it summed up what they were doing.

Simon was quick to add that good science communication is about showing, not telling. ‘It’s not meant to be that one-way communication. It’s meant to be a discussion and an illustration using stories, a showing of science.’

But Science-show didn’t work as a company name!

Paul sadly died a year and a half ago. But his contribution, advice and ideas now quietly shape how Simon thinks about the business they built together.

‘I want to ensure that Scientell is successful, that there is a legacy. Now that Paul has gone, Scientell lives on as a legacy of what Paul started with me a decade ago,’ Simon said.

Walking the talk

One of the most distinctive things about Scientell is Simon and the Scientell team’s deliberate and structured attention to values. Once a month, staff hold a meeting specifically to reflect on whether they’re living up to what they believe in.

‘We make sure that once a month we have a meeting to discuss whether we’re walking the talk. It’s an opportunity to pause and reflect on our values. To see if there are any times where something’s come up where it was a bit unclear whether we’re sticking to our values and whether we need to challenge ourselves about anything.’

In practice, this shapes which projects Scientell takes on. Work that involves greenwashing or companies that harm the planet don’t align with Scientell’s values.

The team also holds a fortnightly walking meeting – 30 minutes with a strict no-work talk rule. For a team spread across different states, Simon sees these as crucial for connection. ‘We don’t get to have the water cooler conversations,’ he explained. So instead, the team walks while chatting for half an hour about what they’re up to and currently interested in, doing quizzes, or recommending films and books.

For Simon, non-work conversations might be about his 3 kids and their family jam sessions (he plays what he describes as ‘really bad guitar’ alongside his children’s considerably better piano and guitar). He also enjoys skiing with his kids every year.

Thirty years and 3 key changes

Simon has watched the field of science communication evolve substantially over the past 3 decades and he identifies 3 distinct shifts.

The first is strategy. When he started out, communication often meant a media release or other one-way communication product at the end of a project – to tick a box. Underpinning that approach was what’s known as the deficit model: the assumption that if you simply deliver enough information to a non-expert audience in one direction, understanding and behavioural change will follow. But in science communication, that model just doesn’t work. As Simon describes it:

‘You need to think about how the audience is receiving that information, their values, what sort of preconceived ideas they come to that information with, and ensuring that there’s participation, feedback and ways to ensure that the communication is 2-way. It’s part of a conversation, not just a one-way delivery of information.’

The evolution since then has been towards understanding that science communication is not just about a conveyance of facts, but about how the communication takes place. Simon argues it’s even better when communication becomes participatory, with science communicators and the target audience involved from early in a project.

‘I think communicators can help influence even the direction of the science, if they’re involved early enough.’

Central to this shift is the distinction between simplifying and clarifying.

‘What we need to do in science communication is not dumb things down and not simplify, but rather clarify, and just ensure that we’re talking about science in a way that is using plain English, and is clear, using relevant examples.’

The second shift is specific to the field of climate change science. Early climate communication was almost entirely about explaining the science to communicate that the problem was real – presenting the evidence, explaining the models and countering scepticism. That has changed, Simon argues. ‘People know that the climate is changing, now we need to know about how to adapt to those changes and how to reduce the problem.’

The third shift in science communication is one that everyone is currently navigating: artificial intelligence. Simon’s view is measured. He acknowledges that AI, in a basic sense, can do what science communicators do – translate complicated information into accessible language. But science communication has evolved to be much more than that. ‘It’s much more about identifying the strategy and how to communicate, thinking about a framework for why we’re communicating and who we’re communicating with,’ he explains.

Storytelling remains something AI can approximate but not replicate.

‘There’s still very much a human element in storytelling that science communicators as humans can still contribute.’

His practical conclusion for navigating this change: use AI as a tool, not a replacement, and use it carefully.

Simon’s top science communication tip

When asked for his top advice for science communicators, Simon’s answer is not what you might expect from someone with 30 years of writing and speaking experience.

‘When you say science communication, or even just communication, you tend to think that it’s about talking or being the one delivering the information. But it’s really important to realise that a big part, at least half of communication, is about listening,’ Simon said.

Listening is what makes communication genuinely flow 2-ways. The whole argument against the deficit model is that science communication shouldn’t flow in one direction. You can’t have a real conversation, understand your audience’s values, or create meaningful feedback pathways if you’re focused only on what you want to say. One-way communication might feel efficient, but it rarely sticks. People don’t change their minds, or behaviour, because information is delivered at them. They do it when they feel heard, when the communication feels relevant to their lives and when there is a genuine exchange.

His second tip is to keep a curious mindset.

‘Make sure you’re open to hearing not just what you expect to hear. Be curious and part of that conversation to learn things,’ he said.

Curiosity, he argues, is something science communicators need to actively cultivate. Not just curiosity about science itself, but about the people you are communicating with, the questions they are asking, and the concerns they bring to the conversation that you might not have anticipated. It means working across different disciplines, and resisting the temptation to stay only in familiar territory.

It is a philosophy that has run quietly through everything Simon has built. A scientist who followed his heart to communicating, a co-founder who named his company during a bedtime routine, and an author who co-wrote 20 books for curious young readers.

It traces back further than Scientell, the belief that good science communication, whether for a child or a politician, starts in the same place – being willing to listen.