Freelance Science Writer
A small sampling of feature articles I’ve written. Not always updated regularly! Check my Facebook page for a more complete listing of recent pieces.
Born from the Bay Area’s multiculturalism, UCSF Benioff Oakland interpreters answer hundreds of calls a day to interpret more than 200 languages for patients, families and health care providers. Read at UCSF.edu
GW Magazine / Spring 2022 / The most polluted neighborhoods in the United States are also the most disadvantaged. Research at GW aims to shine a light on this inequity—and effect policy change.
GW Magazine / Winter 2021 / More than 4 million people live in the Arctic, where climate change is progressing faster than on the rest of the planet. Researchers across GW are working to help sustain their cities, infrastructures and cultures.
UCLA Engineering / September 4, 2019 / If you crack open any of the electronic devices you use on a daily basis— your phone, smartwatch, tablet, TV, instant pot or microwave— you’ll see a landscape reminiscent of a miniscule city map. Computer chips, each dotted with microscopic transistors, are arranged like buildings on the green …
GW Magazine / Fall 2019 / As 3D printing comes of age, researchers turn to 4D printing, and the possibility of building replacement organs from patients’ own stem cells.
National Science & Technology Medals Foundation / August 2019 It was more than three decades ago, but chemist Geraldine Richmond still remembers it clearly: the first time she felt like her research had really failed. As a young researcher fresh out of graduate school, Richmond was setting up her own laser lab. She had spent days on end …
National Science & Technology Medals Foundation / July 2019 In her lab at the University of Illinois, Berenbaum has spent the last four decades studying the evolutionary arms race between plants and insects. She’s probed how insects often manage to evade plants’ defenses, and her work has helped scientists learn about the effects of pesticides …
UCLA Engineering / April 2019 Today, most of the devices we use are, literally, stiff. Your e-reader likely can’t fold in half to slip into a pocket. Rock solid airplane wings don’t morph in shape mid-flight to adjust to gusts of wind. Your cell phone screen isn’t self-healing. And robots don’t give soft gentle hugs. …
National Parks Magazine / Winter 2017 It’s a windy May morning on the Texas coast, and dancing sand nips my ankles as I cross an expanse of beach. I’m at Padre Island National Seashore to learn about rare Kemp’s ridley sea turtles, and as I walk to the park headquarters, I can’t help but study …
FUTURA / Dec 2017 Around a billion years ago, a cell captured a nearby bacterium, enveloping it completely. Once inside, the bacterium became a survival advantage, helping the cell to generate energy from oxygen. The cell divided, and within it the bacterium divided as well, and that happened again and again, and a whole host …