People Behind the Science Podcast Stories from Scientists about Science, Life, Research, and Science Careers

Dr. Louis Schipper is a Professor in the School of Science at the University of Waikato. Research in Louis's group focuses on how we can work with the land to achieve the food and other things we need while minimizing negative environmental impacts. To do this he looks at microorganisms in the soil and the cycling of nutrients in soil. Louis likes to spend his free time with his family. He and his...

Dr. Verónica Di Stilio is a full Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington. As a plant evolutionary biologist, Verónica is interested in understanding how the diversity of plant life came to be. In particular, she studies the evolution of plant innovations, like fruits and flowers. She is working to identify how the gene networks for these innovations evolved as well a...

Dr. Bonney is a Professor and Director of the Research Division in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the University of Vermont. She studies the immune systems of pregnant women. Dr. Bonney is trying to understand why the female body doesn't reject the growing baby, even though it carries unfamiliar proteins from the father. Elizabeth is an enthusiastic gardener...

Dr. Angelique C. Johnson is Founder and CEO of the startup company MEMStim LLC which is dedicated to reducing the cost of cochlear implants to treat hearing loss. She is also an adjunct faculty member in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Louisville. Angelique develops microfabricated arrays of wires for use in cochlear implants that can restore hearing loss and speech recogn...

Dr. Cullen Buie is an Associate Professor and the Esther and Harold E. Egerton Career Development Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In Cullen's lab, they are working on a variety of projects that involve putting new nucleic acids or DNA into cells. For the most part, they use bacteria or other microbial cells and insert DNA that all...

Since recording this episode, Dr. Karmella Haynes has joined the faculty in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech School of Engineering and Emory University School of Medicine. At the time of recording, Karmella was an Assistant Professor in the Ira A. Fulton School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering at Arizona State University. She was also a senior...

Dr. Laurie Santos is a Professor of Psychology and Director of the Comparative Cognition Laboratory at Yale University. She studies the cognitive abilities, strategies, and decision-making processes we use to see if any non-human species share these, or whether they are uniquely human. In her free time, Lori enjoys nature through leisurely hikes. She is also fascinated by celebrity autobiographies...

Dr. Lewis Cantley is the Director of the Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medical College as well as the Stanton Clinical Cancer Program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. In addition, he is Co-Founder of Petra Pharma and Agios Pharmaceuticals. His research investigates signal transduction. He has spent most of his career trying to improve our understanding of cell signaling pathways at a mole...

Dr. Jon Butterworth is a Professor of Physics at University College London. He works on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva. They are smashing particles together at extremely high energies and measuring what happens. Collecting data on these particle collisions provides information about the smallest and most basic components of our universe. Outside of science, Jon has two kids, and he sp...

Dr. Maria Marco is an Associate Professor in The Department of Food Science & Technology at The University of California, Davis. Research in Maria's lab focuses on understanding the good bacteria in the food that we eat. People tend to only think of the bacteria that can make us sick, but there are a lot of useful microbes in foods like yogurt and sauerkraut. Maria tries to identify the bacteria t...

Dr. Sandra Encalada is the Arlene and Arnold Goldstein Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine and a Dorris Neuroscience Center Investigator at Scripps Research Institute in California. Sandra is a cell biologist whose research focuses on how proteins and other materials travel from the cell bodies of nerve cells all the way to the tips of the nerve cells. This process (called...

Dr. Russell Foster is Professor and Chair of Circadian Neuroscience, Supernumerary Fellow in Circadian Neuroscience, Head of the Department of Ophthalmology, a Nicholas Kurti Senior Fellow, Head of the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology and Head of The Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at Brasenose college at the University of Oxford. Research in Russell's lab focuses on how body clocks...

Dr. Spencer Barrett is the University Professor, Canada Research Chair, and Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto. He is an Evolutionary Biologist who specializes in ecological and evolutionary genetics, as well as plant reproductive biology. He also considers himself a plant explorer because he is able to go out to exotic places to find cool...

Dr. Jill Pruetz is a Professor of Anthropology at Iowa State University and a National Geographic Society Emerging Explorer. In addition, Jill is the founder of the non-profit organization NeighborApe that she founded in 2008. Jill is an anthropologist who studies chimpanzees as a model system to understand behaviors in species that are related to us that existed millions of years ago. Jill loves...

Dr. Sophia Hayes is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis. In the lab, Sophia studies the chemistry, physics, and engineering of materials we encounter in daily life like plastics and semiconductors. As a materials scientist, she is using a technique called nuclear magnetic resonance to learn more about these materials. Sophia's time away from...

Dr. Glenn Rall is a Professor at the Fox Chase Cancer Center. He is also the Leader of the Inflammation Working Group there and Co-Leader of the Immune Cell Development and Host Defense Program. In addition, Glenn is the Associate Chief Academic Officer and Director of the Postdoctoral Program. Glenn also serves as an Adjunct Professor in the Microbiology and Immunology departments at Temple Unive...

Dr. Stephanie Wear is a Senior Scientist and Strategy Advisor at The Nature Conservancy, as well as a Visiting Fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and a Visiting Scientist at Duke University Marine Lab. Stephanie's career has been dedicated to conservation, and her work has spanned a variety of threats to marine ecosystems, including...

Dr. Eric Green is the Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health. Eric works in the field of genomics. Everything from cars to houses has a blueprint of information that defines its creation and operation. The field of genomics studies DNA, the information molecule of living cells, to understand how living organisms are created and operate. While...

Dr. Mariana Wolfner is the Goldwin Smith Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics and a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow at Cornell University. Mariana studies reproduction, focusing on interactions between male and female molecules throughout the reproductive process and how these interactions evolved. Also, how does an egg switch from being a differentiated egg cell to a brand new organis...

Dr. Cassandra Quave holds a joint appointment as Associate Professor of Dermatology in the Emory University School of Medicine and Emory Center for the Study of Human Health. She is also Director/Curator of the Emory University Herbarium, CEO of CLQ Botanicals (a company providing consulting services on botanicals for personal care, skin health, and cosmetics), CEO and Chief Scientist of PhytoTEK...

Dr. Michael Dickinson is the Esther M. and Abe M. Zarem Professor of Bioengineering  at the California Institute of Technology. His work focuses on the biomechanics and the biophysics of life with a particular focus on how animals fly. He looks at these questions through a neuroscientific lens, trying to understand behavior and flight control. In addition to being an excellent scientist, Michael i...

Dr. Michael Archer is a Professor of Paleobiology in the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of New South Wales in Australia. Mike is a paleontologist who is fascinated with understanding the continuity of life over billions of years. He spends his free time watching Sci-Fi movies, including classics like Jurassic Park (one of his all-time favorites). Mike rece...

Dr. Nancy Mills was a Murchison Professor (2011-2014) at Trinity University. She works at a primarily undergraduate institution as an organic chemist. Typically organic chemists make things like drugs or polymers. When trying to make things, they really focus on making stable compounds. Nancy has actually created a rare unstable (anti-aromatic) compound that does not turn into a stable one. In add...

Dr. James Pipas is the Herbert W. and Grace Boyer Chair in Molecular Biology and Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. Jim's lab studies how viruses work, how they interact with us, and where they come from. They also use viruses as tools to understand how our own biology works. For example, they study viruses that cause cancer. Outside of science, Jim's passions includ...

Dr. Autumn-Lynn Harrison is Program Manager of the Migratory Connectivity Project and a Research Ecologist at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. She is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Duke University and an Affiliate Professor at George Mason University. Her research focuses on the migration of marine animals such as seabirds and seals. In order to help manage and conserve these animals...