I’m participating in Ada Lovelace Day, saluting women in technology and science. I thought about writing about a particular researcher, but I decided instead to single out the often anonymous heroines (and heroes) of science and technology, the teachers who inspire young minds to pursue science careers. Though their names aren’t remembered by Nobel or…
Though my writing life ranges from writing health stories for teens to writing about research topics and careers issues for scientists, the sources that I speak with for the former type of article generally don’t overlap with those for the latter. Until now. Last spring, I was working on an article about the common cold,…
Last Friday afternoon, I spoke on a panel about media careers for the “What Can You Be With A Ph.D.?” Symposium held at NYU Langone Medical Center. I talked to several students and postdocs after the program and wanted to pull together a list of resources related to careers in science writing. It was a…
My latest story for Science Careers is up– about women who took extended family breaks from their careers and came back to the laboratory. I was impressed with these women’s creativity in crafting career and family life in ways that worked for them. What surprised me a little when I was doing the interviews for…
It’s evolved into women in science month here at Webb of Science. On October 9, I saw Gioia De Cari‘s one woman show, “Truth Values: One Girl’s Romp through MIT’s Male Math Maze” at the CUNY Graduate Center. Larry Summers’ now infamous comments about women in science inspired her to turn her own experiences as…
On Monday, I mentioned that it was a good week for women in science. Well, it got even better today with the announcement of the chemistry prize. Ada Yonath of the Weizmann Institute of Science becomes the fourth woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry (sharing the prize with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan of the…
“So do you consider yourself a scientist or a writer?” An undergraduate student asked me that question last fall when I guest-lectured about communicating research for a social-scientist friend’s seminar course. I immediately said, “A writer, but I write about science.” But I do understand why he was confused. Even having done it, I wouldn’t…
When I was reporting my most recent article for Science Careers– about the financial end of setting up a new academic laboratory— I couldn’t help but think about the parallels to the day-to-day nuts and bolts of my own work. Though I never set up an independent laboratory, it’s clear to me that both freelance…
It’s an interesting week to talk about women in science. On Tuesday afternoon, I listened in on the end of a White House panel discussion about Title IX and its impact on women in both athletics and science and technology. Scientific American also reported on a new government study about the state of women in…
Fashion is not normally my beat. But I’m a science writer who writes careers articles, the most recent one about dressing for job interviews. So, today anyway, I’m a writer who gives fashion advice to scientists. Even though my workday fashion choices these days often remain within the home office, I do take pride in…