Back to blogging

Well…it’s certainly been a while. Fresh off a much-needed vacation, I’m hoping to resume writing here semi-regularly at least. I think I needed the time off. Work has been good, but busy. And suddenly faced with that wonderful thing known as “free time,” something I’d only dreamt about in grad school, I suddenly had way […]

Wellcome Image Awards 2012

The Wellcome Image Awards 2012 winners are here, stunning as always. I think my favorite is the  image of caffeine crystals shown above (by Annie Cavanagh and David McCarthy). The Arabidopsis seedling, mothfly and bacterial biofilm look really cool as well, but they’re all worth checking out–here is the winners’ gallery. [Wellcome Image Awards 2012 | […]

PNAS Science Sessions Podcasts

One of my tasks at PNAS has been to work on the Science Sessions podcasts. These are interviews with researchers about their work, and are a lot of fun to work on. I’ve done some interviews, and have edited a whole lot more conducted by the other members of the Media team. You can check […]

Science Notes 2011– features, podcasts, slideshows and videos

The 2011 edition of the UCSC Science Communication program’s Science Notes magazine came out a little while back, here is the link It has feature stories from my classmates and me, along with accompanying videos, podcasts, slideshows, and gorgeous illustrations by the science illustration students from our sister program. Here’s my story about family-forming lizards, […]

Starting a new job as a Science Writer!

I will be starting a new job as a Science Writer for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) from August 1! Very excited to actually get a full-time job as a science writer, and the work sounds like it’ll be fun. It’s been a busy few months–I drove cross-country from Santa Cruz […]

Lizard Multimedia

This quarter I worked on a lot of multimedia projects, all focused on the same researchers I wrote my feature on. They’ll all be up on ScienceNotes 2011 soon, but in the meanwhile I thought I would put them up here. First up, a revised version of my Slideshow, about Alison Davis’s work on lizards […]

Researchers find lizards that form families – A slideshow

A short slideshow created for class, created in SoundSlide. It’s based on my feature article on lizard researchers at UC Santa Cruz who found that Desert Night Lizards live in families, unusual behavior for a reptile. It also talks about how they’re studying the effects of global warming on these lizards. I created it first […]

Off The Grid

Over spring break, a few weeks back, I went to Mexico with a bunch of friends. More importantly, I spent several days without checking email or browsing the web. And I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised to find that I really didn’t miss my lack of connectivity. At least for the few days […]

One last scientific publication, for old time’s sake

Nearly two years after I graduated, some of the last work I did as a graduate student testing antibiotic derivatives on Toxoplasma to see if they might eventually lead to anti-malarials, has finally resulted in a Journal of Medicinal Chemistry paper on which I’m a middle author. I think this is probably the last publication […]

Dead Prose 2: How Zinsser Improves a Videogame review

The internet isn’t exactly known for providing a consistently high quality of writing. And I don’t think most people have particularly high literary expectations of video game reviews. So I was surprised to see a badly-written video game review elicit strong responses from readers, and prompt a discussion on the craft of writing that references […]