Astrophysicist Josh Dillon is finishing his PhD at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge in an emerging field of cosmology. He is also co-creator of the bawdy card game 'Cards Against Humanity', which this year produced an add-on deck of 30 science-based cards, profits from which will fund a scholarship for women in science.

What does your PhD research involve?

Credit: Molly Dillon

I am working in a field called 21-centimetre cosmology. We're trying to get a baby picture of the Universe. We want to measure the characteristics of the Universe from the time when its first galaxies were forming, about a billion years ago. To do this, we use telescope arrays to detect 21-cm radio waves that were emitted by hydrogen atoms, which were abundant between galaxies then. The challenge is that if the signal exists, it's very faint and is obscured by much more powerful signals from galaxies.

Does this field require new telescopes?

Yes. I've worked on the proposal for a telescope array called HERA (the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array), a huge hexagonal grid of dishes to be built in the Karoo desert of South Africa. We've been using the Murchison Widefield Array in Western Australia. HERA will be bigger by a factor of about 20, and therefore much more sensitive. These types of array need to be in radio-quiet, remote places; we are monitoring frequencies of 100–200 megahertz, so we want to mitigate interference from FM radio stations that transmit at around 100 megahertz.

Is it scary to work in an unproven field?

Yes and no. I'm pretty optimistic about the field. It has enormous potential. In the 2010 decadal survey of astronomy and astrophysics conducted by the US National Academy of Sciences (go.nature.com/i3vlqj), HERA was one of the highest-ranked projects for ground-based astronomy. It's risky and may not work out as well as we would like. Our biggest challenge is that we may not be able to detect those radio emissions — but all scientific endeavours have risk, and I'm convinced that 21-cm cosmology is worth the risk given the scientific potential. I'm headed this autumn to the University of California, Berkeley, for a postdoc and will work with the team I've been competing against to find the signal.

How does Cards Against Humanity fit in?

It's a fun and worthwhile side project outside my astrophysics pursuits. It started when seven of my high-school friends and I played a card game that we made up at a New Year's Eve party. It is a politically incorrect party game in which players compete to make the funniest combination of cards. In 2010, we launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the first print run.

How will the scholarship work?

We formed a board of 40 female scientists to judge a competition to find a candidate who is not only a promising researcher but can also communicate effectively to the public about what she does. We plan to host videos or blog posts to showcase what the winner is doing.

What has the response been like?

Overwhelmingly positive. To date, we've raised more than US$374,000, so we'll be able to fund at least one or two women. Hopefully, we'll be able to fund more in years to come, depending on how much we raise and the outlay per student. Funding just one scholarship doesn't move the needle that much, but that's only part of why we're doing this. The whole point is to raise the visibility of women in science.

What prompted you to create the scholarship?

Cards Against Humanity has backed other charities, including Wikipedia, Donors Choose, which funds teachers who are eager to do a classroom project, and the Sunlight Foundation, which promotes transparency in politics. When we decided to do a science-focused add-on deck, we knew that we would give the sales proceeds to a charity. We decided that a scholarship for women pursuing an advanced science degree was really appealing. As a company that makes a bawdy party game with a broad social-media reach, we can do one thing — we can help to change the perception of who can be a scientist.