STEM Connector

A summer fellowship at theLSI prepares Michigan under grads for the next leg of their STEM journey. This piece was written for UMich’s 2022 magazine. Read the full thing here! Jacquelyn Roberts knows firsthand the power of authentic research opportunities for young scientists. “It only takes a single experience to start building your research career,”…

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Lost Connection: what we lose when we’re plugged in

Recently, I was asked to write a piece describing the “beauty of the Metaverse,” the augmented world through virtual reality. It’s arguably the next chapter of the internet and promises a new way to socialize and communicate with people around the world in a unique digital sphere. It’s made to be boundless, persistent, and immersive….

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The Cancer Microbiome

In 2016, a group of scientists publishing in PLOS Biology estimated that our bodies contain not the commonly accepted 10 human cells for every one microorganism, but something closer to a 1-to-1 ratio — with these tiny counterparts collectively weighing 4 or 5 pounds. This “other half” of us plays a vital role in human…

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A Different Perspective on the Light of Reason

Recently, a science-technology-engineering-math-medicine (STEAMM) project that I’ve been working on was published! EquilibriUM is a print magazine being distributed across the University of Michigan campus, but can also be found online. While I helped edit and put the project together, I also wrote a piece about how two modern philosophers, Descartes and Spinoza, conceived of…

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Structure of the Pandemic

Note: This piece was published as a Commentary in the journal Structure! You can find it (paywalled) here, but I’m allowed to share the submitted version open access on my blog! Hope you enjoy, it’s one of my favorite things I’ve written to date. During global pandemics, the spread of information needs to be faster…

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Gentlemen and Scholars: How science is for everyone

When you think of a scientist, it’s probably someone in a white coat working in a laboratory, chemical bottles labeled on shelves, and computers displaying complex graphs and figures. Perhaps you might think of a biologist or a geologist out in the field collecting samples to bring back to a similar lab to analyze. There’s…

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Not so marginal annotations

How sharing notes could be best practices in open peer review When I was in middle school, I remember checking out a book from the YA section, opening the cover eager to start reading it to find something truly horrifying: the word “HI” etched onto the title page in bright pink gel ink. The whole…

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