Socializing with Scientists

In college, Dianne didn't take any biology classes (she was a German studies major). But she was curious about almost everything, so in her first semester of graduate school, she tried an environmental microbiology class. She fell in love. Dianne Newmann is now a microbiologist at Caltech, studying bacteria and the antibiotic resistance they sometimes develop. She recently discovered that in regions of the world that have experienced a drought, the amount of antibiotic resistant bacteria increases in the soil, as well as in nearby hospitals. As our climate changes, droughts could become a more regular occurrence; antibiotic resistant bacteria could travel all around our interconnected world, she notes.As pharmaceutical companies put an end to their antibiotic development programs, Dianne says, "It's really important that governments step in and continue to support the development of basic research for new drugs, because sometimes the profit incentive sadly isn't there for big pharmaceutical companies. And yet this is going to be a huge public health crisis." WHO Global antibiotic resistance surveillance report 2025

Dylan was a kid who found comfort in math and fun in music, but ultimately he followed a path to science. He became a physicist and was inspired to study climate change by a speech that US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu gave, as well as his time working at a backcountry lodge in the Canadian Rockies.Dylan Jervis now works for GHGSat, a company that monitors greenhouse gas emissions, most notably methane, from space. His recent paper in Science used a constellation of high resolution satellites to estimate global methane emissions from individual sources.

Katie was a curious, hard-working kid, but it wasn't until her freshman year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that she found her calling. That year, she happened to be placed in two geography classes, and her career trajectory started falling into place. Katie McMahon is now a PhD student in human environment geography at UC Santa Barbara, and her recent work in Science Advances  shows that children who were exposed to high humid heat in utero were significantly more likely to have stunted growth years later, as compared to those who experienced only high heat. Her research looks at the "intersections of climate & environmental change, social vulnerability, human health, and food & water security," and her next project will investigate how heat affects the health of farm workers in the Salinas Valley in California. Listen to this episode to learn more about Katie's journey, as well as what's ahead for her!

To prepare for the moment his telescope landed on the moon, Brian read sports psychology books. "You're not going to read Kepler or Isaac Newton [to learn] about how to deal with high pressure situations," he said. It turned out he didn't actually need much help.Brian Walsh is a space physicist and professor at Boston University, and he and his team created a telescope that landed on the moon last year. The telescope LEXI hitched a ride on a spacecraft built by Firefly Aerospace, and studied the interaction between the solar wind and Earth's magnetic field.Solar wind and geomagnetic storms can meddle with, or even harm, human-made technologies like satellites, GPS, and the electrical grid; now, Brian wants to protect Earth from these space phenomena. His new research suggests that putting mass into certain regions of space could divert geomagnetic storms away from Earth. (Here's a preprint of his work.)Brian is on Bluesky and his research center is on Instagram.

Sarah Kugel grew up smashing pokeweed berries to make her own paint and assembling intricate habitats for garter snakes. She was a kid who loved nature, and, when she went to college, she majored in resource ecology.But Sarah always had an interest in business as well, and now she combines the two as the director of a nature center in Massachusetts. She considers the organization its own ecosystem, and works to serve the community while also ensuring the center has the resources it needs to function.The South Shore YMCA Nature Center: https://ssymcanaturecenter.org/

I'm thankful for all of you, and for the scientists who make this podcast possible! I hope you have a relaxing and peaceful Thanksgiving.If you'd like to email us with comments or suggestions, we'd love to hear them at  [email protected] .Find us on the Socializing with Scientists website, or follow us on Instagram or Bluesky.Thanks for listening!

Brad grew up in small town Illinois, playing outside all summer, building go-karts and tree houses in the woods. He went to the University of Illinois to study engineering and Carnegie Mellon for robotics. Later, he shrunk his focus: he began building tiny robots the size of a grain of sand.Now, Brad Nelson, PhD, is a Professor of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at ETH Zurich. He just published research in which he and his team navigated tiny robots  to a precise spot in a large animal, where the robot released a drug. The idea is to send these drug delivery vehicles to a blood clot or a tumor, precisely targeting disease without the harmful side effects that happen when drugs course through the entire body. He hopes his microrobots will be able to deliver payloads of medicine to people within the next three years.

Melissa was born into a family of scientists, but she always wanted to be a historian. As she grew up, however, she realized that science allowed her to satisfy her infinite curiosity and desire for discovery, and so she "went into the family business."Melissa Harrison, PhD, is now a molecular biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and she studies how human cells turn particular genes on and off,  developing from a single cell into a full-grown person. She uses the fruit fly as an easy, inexpensive model. Her latest research with UW colleague Peter Lewis, PhD, uncovered a protein that plays a role in a pediatric cancer called diffuse midline glioma. No one knows what this new knowledge will bring as researchers continue to study the protein, but, as Melissa says, "biotech companies can’t invest in this sort of foundational research….and so it really falls on the academic institutions to do that sort of foundation-building knowledge.” Her passion for knowledge combined with her resilience has helped her prevail when the science is difficult: "You know, you have to be a fighter in some ways, right? I'm really stubborn and I think that helps in science a little bit."

Case was a regular California kid: he skateboarded, he surfed, and he also liked math. He tried a few different majors in college, but finally found his calling: environmental engineering. He went to graduate school, and a lucky encounter during the first week changed his whole life.Case van Genuchten, PhD, now works for the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) and just published research showing that arsenic from drinking water waste can be changed into a valuable commodity. He has studied how to remove arsenic from drinking water for years, but now, in this new paper in Science Advances, he has figured out how to turn arsenic waste into metallic arsenic, a raw material important for digital infrastructure and clean energy systems. Decrees in the EU and US over the past few years have declared metallic arsenic a Critical Raw Material, making his research even more important.To see a beautiful video on Case's work, check out "King of Poison," from the Underground Channel.

Ever since she was a little girl, Cassia has loved playing the piano. Her mother made sure she had music lessons, and Cassia felt like she was fulfilling her mother's dream learning the instrument. But she also loved science and math, and after her undergrad years she found herself searching for a research field and a graduate program that inspired her. She happened to read a few studies linking neuroscience with music, and was hooked.Now, Cassia Low Manting, PhD, is a neuroscientist at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, studying how the brain pays attention to music, and if it differs depending on whether the person has received musical training. Her new research paper was just published in Science Advances.

Charlie grew up in England, surrounded by books. At age 11, she declared that she wanted to be a research scientist. When she was a teenager, however, she started gravitating towards helping people more directly and went to medical school at age 18. After graduating, though, she realized her heart wasn't in medicine, and a remembered lecture from years earlier on post-stroke brain recovery inspired her to follow her childhood dream of doing research. Charlotte Stagg, MBChB, PhD is now a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford. She studies motor function in humans, and was part of a team that created a helmet that sends ultrasound pulses into very specific parts of the brain. She plans to study whether the helmet can non-invasively treat people with neurological, and even psychiatric, disorders. 

Bradley grew up in suburban Australia, fascinated by the scientists in movies like Jurassic Park. He also eagerly read biographies and memoirs, and his love of animals and people soon grew into a successful career as a comparative psychologist.Bradley Smith, PhD, now teaches and researches at Central Queensland University in Australia, spending much of his time thinking, learning, and talking about dingoes. Dingoes are controversial creatures in Australia. Bradley explains why this is, how dingoes feature in aboriginal culture, where they came from, and why it all matters to the government. He also talks extensively about the world-wide phenomenon of the Australian kids' TV show, Bluey. Bradley just wrote a scientific paper with a student in which they study how the show builds resilience in children who watch its 150 episodes. 

As a child, Samuel enjoyed eating "potato smileys" and "turkey dinosaurs," even though most of his meals were homemade. As he grew up, he played sports and became interested in optimizing his nutrition to improve performance. But his first day on the job at a sports nutrition company convinced him to apply to graduate school to study nutrition, not sell it. Now, Samuel Dicken, PhD, is a research fellow at University College London, studying the foods people eat and how they affect their health and weight. In a new study published in Nature Medicine, he gave 55 people either an ultraprocessed or a minimally processed diet and watched how their bodies reacted. The results could someday change dietary guidelines.Find Samuel on LinkedIn, X, or Instagram.

Fadi Lakkis grew up in Lebanon during a time of political unrest, which led him to perpetually question the world around him. Once he became a nephrologist with a speciality in immunology and transplantation, this questioning pushed him to do better science, as well as approach research from unexpected angles.Now, Fadi Lakkis, MD, is a professor at Stanford University, and he's working to help better match donor's kidneys with the people who need them, as well as determine which immunosuppressive drugs work best in which patients. His new paper in Science Translational Medicine elaborates on this work. 

Allison grew up during a tumultuous time in a city bruised by crime. Playing sports helped secure a kid's reputation, so she focused on athletics, eventually becoming the first female pole-vaulter in the state of Ohio. Division I universities recruited her (she was also class valedictorian), and she settled into life at an Ivy League college. Then, she started studying sleep.Now, Major Allison Brager, PhD, is a neurobiologist working to keep soldiers safe by understanding their sleep, because not getting enough can cause "a cognitive lapse that is the difference between life and death." Her many research papers focus on circadian rhythm, jet lag, stress, sleep deprivation, caffeine and napping. We talk about gymnastics, pole vaulting, wearables, crime in her hometown, and taking brainwaves down a notch. She continues to be an avid athlete, which she documents on her very active Instagram account. You can follow her @docjockzzz on Instagram.Follow Socializing with Scientists on Instagram, Bluesky, and X. Or visit our webpage, socializingwithscientists.com.

We have several great episodes in the works! I can't wait to share them, starting in September. 

Raised in a bilingual household in Istanbul, Lidya had lots of questions. She was keenly interested in people, and, on top of that, wondered things like, does her personality change when she speaks a different language? This led to her pursuing psychology in college to study human behavior in many different contexts.Now in graduate school at the University of Amsterdam, Lidya Yurdum's fascination with language has led to an interest in music (language "is surprisingly close to music in many ways," she says), and she is currently focusing on babies: Lidya's work on whether a parent singing to their baby changes mood was just published in Child Development. Researchers gathered data on families by pinging parents' cell phones to ask them if they had sung to their child in the past few hours, and what kind of mood their baby was in.Lidya also uses citizen science approaches - game-ified online experiments - to investigate and reach a wide variety of people all over the world. 

As a child, Katie thrived in her suburban Chicago backyard, reading The Boxcar Children and leading her little brother on adventures. A second grade unit on Jane Goodall cemented her curiosity about primates, and two fantastic high school teachers excited her about biology. But it wasn't until college that she thought science could be a career.Now, Katherine Amato is a biological anthropologist at Northwestern University in Chicago. She studies how humans evolved, looking at their microbiome and the microbiome of primates, trying to figure out if bugs in our guts helped direct human evolution. She was also recently part of a team that published a fascinating research paper on the effect of juicing fruits and vegetables on the gut microbiome. (Spoiler: It isn't great for it.)Katie is a down-to-earth, curious person with two kids and a new puppy who wants to know how we can live to better support the ecosystem within our bodies, and how humans became what we are today.

Jenna was never really interested in school. She loved theater and the arts, but  academically, she struggled. She had dyslexia, and "always felt like I was failing...never thought I was very smart," she said.It wasn't until her sophomore year of college that things started to turn around:  she discovered an academic field that truly excited her. Jenna had always been observant - nosy, even - wondering why people behaved the way they behaved, but her undergraduate mentor, David Frederick, "literally changed everything for me. He was an amazing teacher, introduced me to psychological science, gave me opportunities, took a chance on me," she said.Jenna Alley, PhD, is now a developmental health psychologist and postdoctoral fellow at UCLA, and she just published a major study in the journal JAMA Psychiatry on the importance of childhood maternal warmth on social safety and adolescent physical and mental health. She is also studying health disparity, health equity, and social safety in LGBTQ+ youth. 

The first time she looked through a telescope, Shannon lost her breath. A self-proclaimed "science camp kid," she learned early that she wanted to do research, and that space would be her subject.Shannon Curry, Ph.D. is now the director of NASA's MAVEN mission, a spacecraft that has been orbiting Mars since 2014. She and her team at the University of Colorado, Boulder are trying to determine how Mars lost its atmosphere, in order to reveal why all the ancient lakes and rivers on Mars disappeared. Their new research provides the first direct observation of a phenomenon known as "sputtering."Besides studying Mars' atmosphere, though, MAVEN is also the only way the current Mars rovers can relay data back to Earth using an American spacecraft, and MAVEN is also the only way we can measure dangerous solar storms that could harm our astronauts and planet.But the funding for MAVEN is scheduled to be eliminated in the 2026 budget; if that happens, it will be the death of a spacecraft, and the life work of many scientists, including Shannon. 

When he was a child in Kitchener, Ontario, Scott MacIvor would go on urban walks with his mom. He had a bucket, and was allowed to bring home one piece of nature each day: a snake, or a bumblebee, a caterpillar. He loved examining them all.Now Scott is an urban ecologist at the University of Toronto, working to connect people with the nature that's hidden all over the places where humans live, especially cities. He uses drones, thermal imaging, and other cutting edge technologies to study urban ecosystems to see how they’re doing and how their biodiversity can be enhanced. He observes the bees pollinating the plants, he wants migratory birds to feel welcome in urban parks, he encourages humans to experience it all, no fences. In a sort-of Part 2 to our episode with another scientist named Scott, ("Scott Krayenhoff helps hot cities cool off," Episode 8), here we investigate cities and nature once again, but this time with beauty and biodiversity in mind.

When she was a kid in Iowa, Heather didn't know what she wanted to be when she grew up. She loved solving problems and adored science and math, and when she went to college, she majored in chemical engineering. Then she had an internship: it soon became clear to her that engineering was not the right career choice. So, after college, she moved to Seattle. Heather worked in a human genetics research lab for a year, and decided to apply to MD/PhD programs. She got in, the physician/researcher combo fitting her like a glove.Fast forward several years, and Heather Mefford, MD, PhD, is now a geneticist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. She studies neurodevelopmental disorders and epilepsy in kids, and has made huge strides in decoding which genes cause many of these diseases. She's using mini brain organoids made from a patient's own skin cells to understand, and someday treat, some of these diseases. Read her new research in Science Translational Medicine here.

The first eight episodes of Socializing with Scientists Season 1 have been a blast! Next Wednesday we'll publish another interview, but this week we're taking a little breather. I wanted to talk about what's coming up, to say thank you to the scientists who have spoken with me, and to tell the listeners who have been tuning in each week how much I appreciate you: There are so many other things you could be doing with your time, the fact that you're lending me your brains for an hour means so much!There are two hidden scientist gems from the first part of Season 1 I want to highlight: Desirée Plata, the MIT environmental chemist, was a joy to speak with, and if you haven't had a chance to listen to her episode, please do so as fast as you can. She is smart and engaging, and you'll learn so much while feeling happy doing it. Lauren Osborne is the New York City reproductive psychiatrist who studies the biological mechanisms underlying postpartum depression; she hopes to develop a blood test for it. She is a superwoman, getting into and going to medical school, and then beginning a prestigious career in research and medicine, while raising three kids. Listen to her episode if you want to feel inspired.Finally, if you like the podcast, please share it with your friends, or leave a little review. If you know someone who is curious, who likes science, or who is a teacher and has students looking for a career path, send them our way! The more people who can hear from these amazing scientists, the better.Thank you!Visit our website: https://socializingwithscientists.com/Contact us with questions or comments: [email protected] us on Bluesky and X: @socwithsciFollow us on Instagram: @socializingwithscientists

Scott has always been a deep thinker. Dinner table conversations on his family's homestead on Vancouver Island instilled in him a strong environmental ethic, and a love for math and science pushed him to excel in college.But when a professor posed the question, how much cooler would Toronto's summer climate be if half the rooftops were green and plant-based? his imagination took off, and he dove into the field of atmospheric science.Scott Krayenhoff is now an associate professor at the University of Guelph's School of Environmental Sciences and recently published a research paper in PNAS that recounts simple mitigations that cities could do to reduce heat stress (such as planting trees and adding solar panels to buildings); kids likely know this intimately by how hot their bare feet feel on blacktop versus grass. Listen to Scott talk about how he became a scientist, what keeps him motivated, and why he thinks we need to connect deeply with our hyperlocal environment.

Jan was born in Germany, but he grew up in the US: his parents moved after Chernobyl, because their lab Geiger counter showed high radiation levels despite being hundreds of miles from the reactor. His parents were scientists, but after high school, Jan wanted to forge his own path. He took random gigs - balcony welder, tree planter. During college, one of his professors suggested he try field research. Jan went to Panama to study electric river fish, and was hooked. "That was sort of my first experience of being a biologist for hire," he said.Now, Jan Gogarten is a wildlife disease ecologist at the Helmholtz Institute for One Health in Greifswald, Germany, and he works in the rainforest at Taï National Park in Ivory Coast and Kibale Forest National Park in Uganda, among other locations. He investigates viruses and bacteria that could be among the next pathogens to jump into humans and make us sick.This episode pairs well with last week's episode on Cédric Girard-Buttoz, who also studies in Taï National Park. Read Jan's research on environmental DNA (eDNA) here, and his work on how monitoring wildlife leads to infectious disease prevention here.Find him and his institutions on Bluesky @jangogarten.bsky.social‬, @helmholtzhzi.bsky.social‬, @helmholtz-hioh.bsky.social‬

When he was six years old, Cédric wanted to be Tarzan, following monkeys around the forest and studying their behavior.He has pretty much made his dream come true. Cédric Girard-Buttoz has researched lemurs in Madagascar, macaques in Indonesia, and chimpanzees at the Taï Chimpanzee Project in Taï National Park in Côte d'Ivoire, and he has also studied bonobos and great apes. He is an evolutionary biologist at ENES, the bioacoustics research lab at the University of Saint-Etienne, France. With then-graduate student Tatiana Bortolato and others, he published a fascinating new study showing how chimps combine their calls into messages with many more meanings than we ever thought possible. Hear him describe what it's like to live in a rainforest for months at a time (he has spent many hours folding leaves into fly traps), how it feels to finally return home, and what philosophical questions he is trying to answer.Find Cédric and his research institutions on Bluesky:@tozbu.bsky.social (Cédric Girard-Buttoz)@cnrsbiologie.bsky.social (Biological section of the French National Research Institut, CNRS)@mpicbs.bsky.social (Max Planck Institute for Cognitive and Brain Science)@taichimpproject.bsky.social (Taï Chimpanzee Project)@romanwittig.bsky.social (Taï field site manager, co-author on the study)

Soumya has always been a tinkerer and inventor. He cobbled together a homemade radio as a 5th grader in northern India, and soon after that he started an electronics club in his dad's garage. He later graduated from medical school, but couldn’t shake a love of technology, and so he decided to go to graduate school for engineering in the US. He now combines both loves as a biomedical engineer, inventing better medical devices for not only patients in the US, but also those in countries without regular access to the latest medical technology, or even consistent electricity and the internet. Soumya Acharya, MD, PhD, is the graduate program director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design. He has led teams to create such innovations as VectorCam, a device that works on cheap smartphones to easily identify mosquitos and better squash malaria, as well as inexpensive, simple neonatal monitoring devices that can detect severe health problems in newborns in countries where regular medical care is difficult to find.Visit our website: https://socializingwithscientists.com/Contact us with questions or comments: [email protected] us on Bluesky and X: @socwithsciFollow us on Instagram: @socializingwithscientists

When Desirée was little, she'd roam around her grandmother's neighborhood in Maine, "kind of eavesdropping on people," she said. She began to notice a troubling pattern: many of the neighbors, and some of her family members, were suffering from odd neurological conditions and cancers. Desirée began to think that something in the air or water must be causing these illnesses. Desirée Plata, PhD, is now an environmental chemist at MIT studying the fate of chemicals that have escaped into the environment. She's trying to improve the world by studying new technologies and materials that also don't harm the environment and human health. Desirée is also director of the MIT Methane Network, which works to reduce levels of the powerful greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, and her biggest contribution so far is a substance called copper zeolite that can suck methane from coal mines and dairy barns. She has formed a company called Moxair to sell the innovation.Follow her work at the MIT Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering on Instagram, X, Bluesky, LinkedInVisit our website: https://socializingwithscientists.com/Contact us with questions or comments: [email protected] us on Bluesky and X: @socwithsciFollow us on Instagram: @socializingwithscientists

Lauren Osborne grew up in New York City and rural Vermont; she was born into a family of actors and artists. After college, she worked in book publishing.But once she had kids, she started to develop a strong interest in medicine; after several years of focused work she became a reproductive psychiatrist at Weill Cornell Medicine. She recently conducted a fascinating study looking at the body and brain during postpartum depression, sussing out whether the condition can predicted during pregnancy with a blood test. Learn why she chose medicine later in life, how she carefully structured her days to spend time with her family while working through medical school, and why she is so dedicated to protecting the mental health of all women.Visit our website: https://socializingwithscientists.com/Contact us with questions or comments: [email protected] us on Bluesky and X: @socwithsciFollow us on Instagram: @socializingwithscientists

Louis had an uneventful childhood: Born and raised in Amsterdam, he was a normal kid who liked playing with friends and reading books. But his mother had a strong social justice bent, and she inspired Louis to live a life dedicated to helping others. Dr. Louis Bont is now a world-renowned respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) researcher and pediatrician who heads the Department of Pediatrics at Wilhelmina Children's Hospital at University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands. He helped found ReSViNET, a non-profit foundation trying to reduce the RSV burden on kids all over the world. Louis works outside his comfort zone 50 percent of the time, believes all people should have two jobs, and thinks a small dose of doubt is necessary to be a good doctor. He also fell asleep while reading bedtime stories to his kids and currently loves watching political dramas on Netflix.Despite working on some of the biggest RSV clinical trials, Louis tries to take a third world-first approach to his research. Hear him explain what this means, and what he's working on now, on the second episode of Socializing with Scientists.Follow his work at ReSViNET, the Respiratory Syncytial Virus Foundation, and on X. Visit our website: https://socializingwithscientists.com/Contact us with questions or comments: [email protected] us on Bluesky and X: @socwithsciFollow us on Instagram: @socializingwithscientists

As a child, Michela got lost in the mountains of Italy foraging for mushrooms. Adult Michela digs under deep Australian lakes searching for remnants of wildfire and ancient people, while raising her family in England. How does this feisty paleoecologist get it all done? Dr. Michela Mariani is an associate professor at the University of Nottingham in the UK, and she recently published a paper in the journal Science exploring how ancient people in Australia prevented devastating wildfires. It's called, "Shrub cover declined as Indigenous populations expanded across southeast Australia." In the first episode of Socializing with Scientists, hear how Michela finds peace in the lab, how she handles it when research proves her ideas wrong, and how her work could inform fire policy all over the world.Visit our website: https://socializingwithscientists.com/Contact us with questions or comments: [email protected] us on Bluesky and X: @socwithsciFollow us on Instagram: @socializingwithscientists