A deaf young man is being hailed as an inspirational innovator after he created one hundred new sign language terms for scientific words.

Liam Mcmulkin, who was born deaf, was the first person in his family to go to college when he enrolled at the University of Dundee to study life sciences back in 2015. As the only deaf student at the university, Liam was worried that he would have a difficult time keeping up with all of his college courses. While British Sign Language (BSL) has some translations for scientific vocabulary words, they don’t have very many for college-level science communications. This left Liam incredibly frustrated, since the further he got in his studies, the more his translator would need to spell out more complex scientific words.

“Watching the interpreters for a one-hour lecture is very tiring,” Liam explained. “There are a lot of new words and scientific words are often very long, like ‘deoxyribonucleotide’ and ‘deoxyribonucleoside’.

“Sometimes the interpreter would be finger spelling for ages and I was having to watch it,” he continued. “We would make up new signs which meant it was easier next time, but it also meant I had to learn new signs which was very tiring.”

That’s why Liam decided to create as many BSL words for scientific terms as he could. Since then, he has invented over 100 sign language terms for scientific words, making life a whole lot easier for deaf scientists everywhere.

“Liam’s effort towards creating new signs is crucial to the future of the life sciences,” said Dr. Marios Stavridis, Principal Investigator at the School of Life Sciences and supervisor of Mcmulkin’s project. “During his two years of study, he has already developed signs for biology specialist terms ‘on the fly’ and it will be so rewarding to see these terms used in BSL.”

“If you imagine having to finger spell highly technical terms whilst sitting in a lecture or having a quick conversation with a colleague, you can appreciate how taxing and difficult it has been for Liam,” he added. “With these signs, Liam and other deaf students will be able to access science on a whole other level.”

Liam is now preparing to begin studying for his master’s degree in September, and his goal is to become a researcher. He also plans to continue to do anything he can to help other deaf scientists like himself.