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

Dr. Bryan G. Fry is an Associate Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Queensland in Australia. Bryan studies the evolution of venomous animals over time. His research also examines how we can use venomous substances as physiological probes, to learn about disease states, and in the development of potential therapeutic agents. When he's not working in the lab, you can...

Dr. Samantha Maragh is Leader of the Genome Editing Program and Co-Leader of the Biomarker and Genomic Sciences Group at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). She also represents the U.S. as a technical expert on nucleic acid measurements for the International Standards Organization (ISO) Technical Committee on Biotechnology (ISO TC 276). Scientists at NIST work to develo...

Dr. Erin Conwell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Coordinator for the PhD program in Visual and Cognitive Neuroscience at North Dakota State University. Erin studies how children aged 6 and younger learn about the structure of their native language. She is conducting studies to determine how they understand what we say to them and how they produce words, sentences, and...

Dr. Carmel Majidi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. There, he also holds courtesy appointments in the Robotics Institute and in Civil and Environmental Engineering. In Carmel's soft machines lab, they are engineering new types of materials that can be used to make machines and robots soft, flexible, and more lifelike. The goal is f...

Dr. Fiona "Boo" Maisels is a Conservation Scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and an Honorary Professor of Biological and Environmental Sciences in the African Forest Ecology Group at the University of Stirling in Scotland. Boo's research has focused on understanding the natural world and the interactions between plants, animals, people, and landscapes. In her work as a conserva...

Dr. Douglas Futuyma is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook University. He also holds an appointment as a Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History. Throughout his career, Douglas has been fascinated by evolution and how species adapt to their environments. Much of his research has examined the ways in which insects that eat plants...

Dr. Jo Dunkley is a Professor of Physics and Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University and author of the book Our Universe: An Astronomer's Guide. Jo is a cosmologist, and her job is to study the universe. She conducts research to try to approximate how space behaves as a whole. This includes looking into space and taking measurements to determine how the universe began, what it's made of, ho...

Dr. John Aitchison is President and Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research, the largest independent, non-profit organization in the U.S. that is focused solely on infectious disease research. In addition, John serves as an affiliate or adjunct Professor at the University of Washington, the University of British Columbia, the University of Alberta, and the Institute for Systems Biol...

Dr. Robert S. Langer is the David H. Koch Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Being one of the eight Institute Professors is the highest honor that can be awarded to a faculty member at MIT. Much of Bob's research is at the interface between materials and medicine. His lab has created nanoparticles and drug delivery systems, engineered tissues and organs for thi...

Dr. Marcie O'Malley is the Stanley C. Moore Professor of Mechanical Engineering, as well as a Professor of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University. Marcie is also an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Departments of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Baylor College of Medicine and at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston. In addition, she is Dir...

Dr. Ryan Martin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at Case Western Reserve University. As an Evolutionary Ecologist, Ryan is interested in animal diversity and design. Animals seem to be well adapted to their environment, and Ryan works to understand how diversity, adaptation, and design occur through the action of natural selection. He investigates how the presence of predator...

Dr. Kim Waddell is an Assistant Professor in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine as well as a faculty member with the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics, a Senior Fellow in the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, and Research and Innovation Manager in the Penn Medicine Nudge Unit at the University of Penns...

Dr. Francisca Ikuenobe is a Professor of Geology and Geophysics at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. In her research, Franca studies rocks to understand the clues they can reveal about the living things, environments, and climates of the past. Franca is particularly interested in the microfossils of pollen, spores, and phytoplankton that are preserved in rock. She uses these to he...

Dr. John Majercak is Head of Antibody Discovery at Lampire Biological Laboratories, a life science company at the forefront of innovation and discovery. At Lampire Biological Laboratories, John works primarily with antibodies, a type of blood protein. He generates new antibodies and provides existing antibodies to companies and academic institutions for use in research, development of antibody the...

Dr. Adam Gazzaley is a Professor of Neurology, Physiology and Psychiatry and the Founding Director of the Neuroscience Imaging Center at the University of California, San Francisco. Adam is also Co-Founder and Chief Science Advisor of Akili Interactive Labs, a company that is developing therapeutic video games. Much of the research in Adam's lab focuses on aging and how aspects of cognition, like...

Dr. Lin Tian is a Scientific Director at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience and Clinical Professor at the University of California, Davis. The main goal of Lin's lab is to develop, leverage, and also share novel optical and molecular tools that can help us to characterize neural signaling and find new treatment targets for neuropsychiatric disorders. In addition to her scientific an...

Dr. Maureen Murphy is a Professor and Program Leader in the Molecular and Cellular Oncogenesis Program of the Wistar Institute Cancer Center in Philadelphia. She is also the Associate Vice president for Faculty Affairs and Associate Director For Education and Career Development there. Maureen's research is aimed at understanding and developing cures for cancer. Specifically, they focus on the p53...

Dr. Carlos Portela is the Brit and Alex d'Arbeloff Career Development Professor in Mechanical Engineering at MIT. Carlos's research involves designing, making, and testing new types of materials that have unconventional properties. To do this, they rearrange the components of existing materials in three dimensions at the micro or nano scale to create new architected materials. The new materials ma...

Dr. Joel Fodrie is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Marine Sciences and Department of Marine Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Joel studies estuaries which are habitats where freshwater from rivers and streams mixes with the salt water of the ocean. He acts as a sort of detective to investigate how things like salt marshes, sea grasses, and oyster reefs keep th...

Dr. Taylor Hutchison is an astrophysicist and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Taylor uses large telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope to study the most distant galaxies that we can detect in the universe. Her goal is to answer questions like what kinds of stars are inside these galaxies, how massive the galaxies are, and what elements are present. When she's...

Dr. Ken Dawson-Scully is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Florida Atlantic University. Ken uses the fruit fly as a model to understand how animals have adapted to different kinds of changes in the environment and how they can cope with it. He uses neurophysiology and behavioral genetics approaches to study the impacts of different kinds of stresses, including high...

Dr. Stacey Harmer is a Professor of Plant Biology in the College of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Davis. Stacey studies different biological rhythms and the circadian clocks within organisms that create and maintain those rhythms. Circadian clocks can be found in various organisms, from bacteria to people. In particular, Stacey is interested in understanding why plants have...

Dr. Alan R. Saltiel is Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology, Maryam Ahmadian Endowed Chair in Metabolic Health, Director of the Institute for Diabetes and Metabolic Health at UC, San Diego, and Director of the UCSD/UCLA Diabetes Research Center. Alan studies how cells that are involved in metabolism decide to take up and store energy, burn energy, or release energy for other cells...

Dr. Erica Golemis is a Professor, Deputy Chief Science Officer, Co-Leader of the Molecular Therapeutics Program, and Director of the High Throughput Facility at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. In addition, Erica is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University School of Medicine, and the Temple University Lewis Katz School of Medicine. For most of her...

Dr. David Fitzpatrick is Chief Executive Officer, Scientific Director, and Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience. The brain is important for so many aspects of our daily experiences, including what we perceive, what we think about, how we move, the decisions we make, and more. However, we still know relatively little about how the brain works and how it develop...