T.Y. Branch's research addresses descriptive and normative questions about how different types of values manifest in science communication, collaborating with epistemologists, philosophers of science, science communication scholars and practitioners.
In addition to Branch’s academic pursuits, she has worked regularly in science communication since her undergraduate studies in biochemistry. After her bachelor's, she completed a graduate diploma in science communication. During her graduate diploma she learned effective techniques in rhetoric, written, visual and oral communication; however, she specializes in science communication through exhibit design. Branch-Smith has worked as a curatorial researcher at the Canadian Science and Technology Museum (Ottawa), programming assistant at the ROM (Toronto) and as an exhibit designer at Science North (Sudbury).
Branch also has an interest in science policy development. Recently, she worked with Dr. Heather Douglas (Waterloo chair in Science and Society) as a research assistant to help create the Science-Policy Interface: International Comparisons workshop that brought together science policy scholars and practitioners to examine science policy issues across Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.