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Just Keeping Swimming

When a senior male scientist claimed the data from sawfish she’d tagged, Jasmin Graham –an early career shark researcher in Florida– felt powerless. It was not one individual’s behavior but the failure of the larger scientific community to take appropriate action was frustrating. Dejected, Graham...

The mRNA Nobelist

One day in 1997, University of Pennsylvania molecular biologist Katalin (Kati) Karikó met a new hire at the photocopier who would change the trajectory of her research forever. At 42, the scientist had made little headway with her big idea that mRNA—the ephemeral molecule that...

Science at Sundance 2023

Illustration by Islenia Mil for Science This year I had a chance two science-related films screened at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah — two vastly different films, but both struck a chord. Poacher A gunshot pierces the skull of an adult male elephant, a tusker,...

Queen of Carbon

Dr. Mildred S. Dresselhaus, of Lincoln Laboratory, who has achieved prominence as a solid-state physicist has been appointed Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Visiting Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, read a small news item in the Boston Globe on 8 October, 1967. The appointment was...

Girl, Decoded

As she sat in a taxi headed to Cairo International Airport in September 2001, Rana el Kaliouby remembers thinking, “Am I really going through with this?” A married woman and hijab-wearing Muslim, she would be on her own for the next 3 years, pursuing her...

Can postdocs be job creators instead of job seekers?

As Ronan McGovern was finishing up his Ph.D., he was eager to commercialize the energy-efficient seawater desalination process he had developed. He had already done some legwork to find a market and had found an interesting lead—but he had also hit some roadblocks. Like most...