Escape room outreach and playing the publication game

Escape the lab

Searching for a group activity to do with your lab mates at ACS Fall 2024 in Denver? Why not try out an escape room based on actual chemistry research from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)?

UIUC’s Molecule Maker Lab Institute (MMLI) is a research center focused on developing artificial intelligence and automation platforms for designing new materials. The institute also does a lot of community outreach. And one of their newest outreach tools is an escape room.

UIUC informatics and theater students designed and built the room as part of an escape room design class, MMLI education postdoctoral scholar James Planey tells Newscripts. The students spent the fall 2023 semester working with MMLI faculty and staff to develop the puzzles and set pieces for an engaging educational experience. The official public debut of the escape room was in April 2024 at an engineering open house at UIUC.

All the puzzles revolve around searching for clues to recover the last known results from an AI-powered organic solar cell research lab that has been mysteriously vacated. If players get stuck, they can get hints from the lab’s AI assistant TEDD, voiced by the human operating the escape room.

One of the puzzles uses a modified version of some molecular design software that the institute developed and actual data from research going on in UIUC labs. But Planey says the point is less about getting into the nitty-gritty details about how to optimize molecules’ properties than about demonstrating the importance of experimentation and collaboration and how AI tools can help scientists solve problems.

“It’s not going to teach the chemistry folks new chemistry, but . . . this is how we’re engaging and sharing and exposing people to what we do,” Planey says. Now the project is on the move again; the escape room will be set up in room 703 of the Colorado Convention Center during the upcoming American Chemical Society fall conference. ACS publishes C&EN but is not involved in editorial decisions.

A game of publish or perish

Or if you prefer your lab social functions with a side of sabotage and satire, you might be interested in The Publish or Perish Game—the only party game about academic publishing!

The game is the brainchild of PhD social scientist and entrepreneur Max Hui Bai. The core mechanics are simple: players compete to claim manuscript cards by playing the appropriate combinations of research cards and action cards. Each manuscript has a cheeky title and abstract—and more importantly, a citation point value. The person with the highest point total at the end of the game wins.

Bai tells Newscripts that he designed the game to be understandable and engaging for the general public, but the satirical elements will have a special meaning to anyone who’s spent enough time in academia.

Players must applaud and congratulate their peers on every publication (or else they suffer a penalty)—even as they all openly try to sabotage each other by bestowing research mishaps, audits, and budget cuts on their competitors. Trash talk is extremely encouraged, and there’s even a bonus given at the end of the game to the snarkiest commenter.

Some of the action cards force players to answer a trivia question or lose cards from their hands. Bai says he’s not a big trivia buff, but he wanted a mechanism that would reward players for their esoteric knowledge—and provide additional fodder for lighthearted mockery.

This Newscripster got her hands on a “preprint” version of the game with the “Revenge of Reviewer 2” expansion card pack and tested it out with the help of some friends and coworkers. The general consensus was that it was the most fun any of us has ever had reliving our grad school trauma—though the gameplay took longer than the 30–60 min described in the instructions. That also tracks fairly well with how academia often works.

Bai says he’s nearly done workshopping the game and will be launching a Kickstarter campaign this fall to secure the funds he needs to release it.

Please send comments and suggestions to newscripts@acs.org.