Alex presents her game, "Body Pod", during our session at Science Online '10.

Science Online is surely an experience my classmates and I will always remember. It was a fun, enriching experience that I’m sure is one of the highlights of my 2010.  Against all odds, the tangible feelings of nervousness and inadequacy from the terrifying plane to hotel bus ride melted away as we made our way through Sigma Xi.

Not exactly looking forward to a weekend of boring lectures and concepts you need a PhD to comprehend, my 14 year-old mind rebelled against Science Online. But, much to my surprise- Ms. Baker and Dr. Ward were right. Despite my obvious lack of a college diploma, I somehow understood what was going on. And seconds after the beginning of Carl Zimmer’s presentation on journalism in science (which eventually turned into a session on ‘duck sex’), I realized I could do more than learn to understand science and technology- I could learn to love it, too.

Nothing can beat the rush when you realize “I get it!” and that you’re excited about science. And ever since I returned, all I want to do is get everyone else excited about science. My main goal: to remind people that science isn’t all memorization and structure. Science is a way to change the world- whether it’s through blogging and video games, or journalism and duck sex jokes. All I can hope for is that Science Online will continue to grow along with an appreciation for science among students.

After introducing myself and explaining what a high school student was doing at the conference, I had the opportunity to learn about his experiences as a journalist, scientist, and a celebrity of sorts. Shortly after, the conference attendees congregated to listen to what quickly became a riveting keynote speech. I was extremely fascinated by what Mr. Specter had to say and, at some points, befuddled with the viewpoints that some groups of people that he mentioned had regarding vaccinations and genetically modified foods. The fact that several scientists in the audience openly denounced the ideology of Mr. Specter made the speech that much more enthralling. Although I was ultimately in concordance with what Mr. Specter was saying, it was quite interesting to hear the story from someone else’s point of view. After the conference, I maintained interactions with Mr. Specter by sending him a follow-up email. I was very glad to see that he responded with alacrity and was glad to hear my outlook on his speech and participation in the conference.

(L to R) Michael Specter talks with Jack, Ammar, and Mike.

The one presentation at the conference which truly stood out to me was “Art and Science: Visual Metaphors- Glendon Mellow and Felice Frankel”. Traditionally, I have not been someone who is terribly interested in art. However, after seeing how digital imagery, photo manipulation, and science can all blend into one, I become truly fascinated in the presentation. Although I was extremely intrigued in how Glendon Mellow was able to take several religious ideologies and merge them with scientific principles in artwork, I gravitated more toward Felice Frankel’s presentation. I believe this can be attributed to the fact that I have a personal inclination toward photography and photo manipulation rather than traditional artwork. The way that Ms. Frankel was able to take a simple image and have it portray science on such an in-depth level was amazing. For example, I was especially impressed in how she portrayed quantum mechanics in her photo of the ‘Quantum Apple’ with no shadow. This supported the idea that in quantum mechanics, everything is not as we actually see it. For this reason, amongst others, my impression of Ms. Frankel was not only that she was an excellent photographer, but that she was a remarkable thinker as well. Her photos were truly worth a thousand words. 

In conclusion, I would like to thank both Staten Island Academy and the Science Online conference leaders for presenting me with the opportunity to attend the conference this year. My experiences at the conference were amazing and I formed memories and ideologies which I will carry with me for many years to come.

One project that just immediately connected with me was the FoldIt project. It seemed awesome to know that by playing a game you are creating real possible proteins that may be useful for all sorts of scientific discoveries and advancements.

At the second citizen’s science presentation I went to, I was introduced to ChemSpider and Spectral Game. Too bad the content on these two sites were a few levels above my education, but knowing that there exists multiple opportunities for anyone to participate in science is incredible.  The internet really is a great tool for scientists.

Still, the most interesting experience for me at the conference was being able to present my flash project in front of what seemed to me to be a pretty big audience. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I was able to talk to people like Beth Beck.

Students and Ms. Baker pose together after winning the Google Sidewiki Challenge!

On January 15, eight students from Staten Island Academy traveled to Research Triangle Park in North Carolina for the 4th Annual Science Online Conference.  Four freshman – Mike S, Jack, Alex, and Carl – joined four juniors – Melina, Salina, Brooke, and Ammar – to spend the weekend with scientists, journalists, educators, and web developers from all over the world.

In addition to meeting amazing people, the students attended specific sessions on a wide variety of topics and they will be publishing posts about each of those sessions on this blog in a few days.

On Sunday, the students presented at their own session titled, “Blogging the Future: The Use of Online Media in the Next Generation of Scientists”.

Here are some video segments from our session:

• Jack’s Games
• Carl and Alex’s Educational Video Games
• Mike’s Blogs
• Ammar’s Dynamic Websites
• Brooke and Melina’s iPhone Apps
• Salina’s Web Survey

Session attendees have blogged really nice responses to our presentation:

• Beth Beck
• TGAW
•  ideonexus
• i.e. science

Check out this video for “Sights and Sounds” from the Conference.  The very end is our favorite part for obvious reasons.

During the conference, we interviewed some conference participants:

• Salina interviews Beth Beck from NASA
• Mike interviews Marine Biologist David Shiffman
• Melina interviews artist Glendon Mellow
• Melina interviews Ammar, Brooke, and Salina

Lastly, here is a video collage of our entire experience at the conference:

Glendon Mellow is an extremely talented artist who uses fossils and microbes for inspiration.  His work is genuinely unique and has been acknowledged and presented in several magazines and on a number of book covers. Once planning on being paleontologist, Glendon decided that rather than taking a conventional route, he would take his knowledge and apply it to something he was passionate about - painting.

(“Darwin Took Steps” by Glendon Mellow, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License)

1. Have you attended any previous Science Online conferences? What are your reasons for attending this one?

Last year, I emailed one of the conference organizers, Bora Zivkovic and asked if I could attend. I wasn’t sure if I could, since I am not a card-carrying scientist. He said I certainly could, and could I perhaps help lead a session about art and science? In the end, fantastically excited, I led the Art & Science session, and co-led a session about improving blog images with Tatjana Jovanovic-Grove. Bora has asked if I would come back, and this year I will be co-leading a follow-up to Art and Science with visionary image-maker Felice Frankel, in which we will discuss the importance of different kinds of visual metaphors, and also do a short session about painting with a digital tablet.

Going to an “un”-conference like this really gets me thinking about new ways to make artistic connections with research, online and off. Last year, I asked how many people have an artist of some kind regularly visiting their lab, and there are more than I thought. I think the benefits work for both the artist and researchers. Some of this came from my worry (which I still haven’t let go of entirely, but it’s fading) that science-art is derivative and parasitic on science, and takes more than it gives. The overwhelming response in the room had me reassess that. So far, in numerous discussions with scientists and journalists, I have only come across a couple of examples of art leading the direction of research. So that’s rare. One of the examples was from The Open Source Paleontologist regarding how in illustrations of triceratops, they are sometimes depicted butting heads and locking horns. Andrew Farke set out to see if they could even physically do that – it was just assumed they could. The results are pretty interesting. Not only could they physically interlock, the bone is also denser where the impact sites are. I wonder if there could be more instances of art sparking new ideas like that.

This year, I’ve already had a lively discussion with Felice Frankel about our session – she suggested I think of the word “image” instead of art, since “art” notes the artist and their ego. By thinking about images, it opens up the world of metaphor to more than allegory. I like to give categories to those who find them helpful, and so far I’m thinking about Science Metaphors from metaphorical data sets (like graphs) to images that are symbolic and illustrative (like stuff I do) to scientifically-derived images that are removed from their direct usefulness as data, like some of Felice’s work. There’s possibly a fourth category about images that lead people astray, either intentionally or unintentionally.

2. When did you first think to incorporate science into your artwork?

Science has always fascinated me. I thought I would be a paleontologist until high school science classes bored me out of it – I went to a good school, but without placing blame, let’s just say a month of memorizing the diagram of the ATP–>ADP diagram -without being required to understand it- steered me away at the time. Sometimes I wish I had stuck with it. When I began university for Fine Arts, trilobites, tardigrades and other microbes and fossils began creeping into my work. I really consciously made a decision about it because of two things. The first, was reading Richard Dawkins’ River Out of Eden. It blew me away, how much could be figured out, how things about life that I thought were mysteries weren’t anymore. The second was when I had an art show, and a friend who was studying zoology recognized a tardigrade (water-bear) in one of my paintings, and seemed really happy about it. She understood the painting in a way no one else in the room did. I liked that. I wanted to keep making art for that audience.

3. What inspires you to make certain pieces? Where do you draw your inspiration from?

Mainly paleontology and the microbial zoo. I also have tremendous respect for the scientists and science-communicators, so I’ve been playing with some portrait imagery lately. Inspiration abounds, but it’s only part of being a painter. I’m not one of those painters who just plays around having fun with paint. When I get a new image my head, I feel a strong compulsion to get it down quickly, and getting it right is often an agony for me. Most of my work goes through what I call the Ugly Phase where I have painted an initial layer of oil, but have to wait for it to dry before proceeding. That wait is often filled with a lot of self-doubt. For me, contentment comes when I feel the image is done, not usually during the process.

4. Would you say that your profession is a relatively rare one? Are there many other artists that portray science in the way that you do?

Ha! You’ve done your research, haven’t you? You’re certainly correct. I do find myself in a very small niche in the art world. My art is usually influenced by Scientific Illustration, the European Symbolist painters of the 1890’s, Concept Art from movies and video games and my university degree in contemporary Fine Art. I am not as exacting as a scientific illustrator needs to be, I like playing with visual metaphors like a Symbolist, I love sketching and concept generating, and occasionally I delve into mixed media pieces in a fine artsy way.

There are some artists who do what I do, and compared to ten years ago, scientific concepts are much more in vogue now in the fine art world. There are more all the time, which is what we need – scientific inquiry is such an integral part of our lives, yet still so many people reject knowledge and fun in science as an outsider thing.

If you’d like to see some more artists I admire, there’s a short list at ScienceOnline ‘09 – it was meant to clarify and instruct, but that list is in part a hit parade of people I think do excellent work.

5. What piece of yours are you most proud of creating?

That’s a difficult question. In my mind’s eye, I have these images, and sometimes my paintings fall short of that. I am my own worst critic and have to stand back and squint, so to speak, to avoid seeing the flaws. I heard the writer-comedian Stephen Fry once say the audience decides your favourites for you. In that sense, Darwin Took Steps has turned out really well – I used it originally to practice speed painting, and did the whole oil painting in three hours. Now it’s been on two book covers, a magazine, and in a museum exhibit for the Darwin year.

Custom blog banner commissions are something I never would have dreamed I’d be doing five years ago. Each collaboration has been so much fun, and I hope to do more.

I think my favourite right now is my current blog banner – I’ve changed it each blogiversary in March, and this one is going to be hard to say good-by to. I like the pencil, oil paint, and digital elements I put into the piece all together. It feels complete and very “me”.

Thank you for looking over my questions and I hope to see you at the conference next month.

Make sure you say hi! I’m the former goth-punk with the winged trilobite tattoo on his arm.

Thanks Melina!

Glendon Mellow
The Flying Trilobite: http://glendonmellow.blogspot.com
Art in Awe of Science

2010 Calendar now available!

Print Gallery: http://flyingtrilobite.redbubble.com/
DeviantArt: http://theflyingtrilobite.deviantart.com/gallery
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/flyingtrilobite
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Flying-Trilobite/12564141562
Twitter: http://twitter.com/flyingtrilobite
FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/flyingtrilobite
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/glendonmellow/

by Brandon

I had the opportunity to attend a session at Science Online ‘09 titled “Race in Science”. It was not what I expected, but was nonetheless extremely interesting. The goal behind one of its central ideas was to change the average image in a person’s mind as to what a scientist looks like.  In other words, Danielle Lee and AcmeGirl, the discussion moderators were basically stating how if you were to ask a child to draw a scientist, most would draw a “white” male. I put white in parenthesis due to our previous discussion in class about the nonexistence of race and how there is no gene for it.

So, in essence, the goal of this session was to find viable solutions in regards to changing the average perception of what a scientist looks like in person’s minds starting in childhood. It is important that we do not subvert or discredit the significant accomplishments of scientist who come from various ethnic backgrounds.

“Perhaps, we can update text books and include recent accomplishments of a more diverse array of scientist and their contributions to the industry”, said one of the participants.

How do you think we can change the common view of what a Scientist looks like?  Why do you think people commonly see a Scientist as an “Einstein looking white male?”  Who should the blame be attributed to? (I.e. parents, teachers, school systems, etc.).

Science Online ‘09 – Saturday 10:15am, A Blog Around the Clock

What Your Future Students Think, Duke University Center for Instructional Technology

Science Online ‘09: Learning science with social media, Nobel Intent

Science Online ‘09 – Miss Baker and Her Students, Deep Sea News

Science Online – Middle/High School Perspective, Ideonexus

Science Online ‘09 Explores the Evolution of Science on the Web, BioTechniques

SBC09: Blogging for High School Science Classes, Lab Cat

Science Online ‘09 Saturday Summary, Confessions of a Science Librarian

One Response to “Blog Posts About Our Science Online ‘09 Presentation”

1. Ryan Somma Says:
   

   January 24th, 2009 at 12:01 pm

   Thanks again for hosting such an informative session.

   One of the students, when discussing Twitter as a tool for holding class discussions, mentioned that it was a little frustrating having to refresh the page to see new tweets. My friends and I use a Firefox Add-on called “Twitterfox” that acts like an Instant Messenger, popping up tweets as they occur and allowing you to respond through its interface. It runs in a little collapsible window at the bottom of your Firefox browser:

   https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5081

   Keep up the good work!

By Caitlin

Betül Kacar is currently a PhD student at Emory University.  She received her Bachelor’s degree in Istanbul, Turkey, where she was born and spent 20 years of her life, and received her graduate degree in Biomolecular Chemistry from Emory University.  She will be attending the Science Online ‘09 conference.

Why are you attending the conference?

I want to meet with people who blog on science. Simple as it is, when it comes to blogging, you realize that connection is very, very important. So, my primary reason is networking.

Have you ever attended the conference before?

No, this will be my first.

What will your topic be at the conference?

I am not doing any presentations. But I am interested in bringing life issues into science blogs so I will go for that.

What suggestions do you have for me to make the most of my experience at the conference?

Come prepared. I think it helps if you have an idea on who is who, which is something you can pull by people’s blogs very easily. And of course, meet as much as people as you can. Listen to talks and contribute fully. I am in the same shoe actually, we will see.

What is your favorite part about being a scientist?

Oh well… I am a very curious person. Science feeds my curiosity very well. You can ask as much questions as you can and there are so many different ways of answering the questions. Mysteries amaze me, finding a new thing fun. It is like discovering the world again, a world that you have been a part of but was never aware. I also feel very lucky of being a scientist in this era, nowadays people come into a realization that science is not a geeky thing. You can be social and fun and do science.

What are you looking forward to the most in this conference?

The same answer of Q1 and I am curious if these people can talk as well as they write (just kidding).

by Anna

David J Kroll is a professor and chair in the department of pharmaceutical sciences in the Biomanufacturing Research Institute and Technology Enterprise (BRITE) at North Carolina Central University. He has a Ph.D. in Pharmacology and Therapeutics and a B.S. in Toxicology. He is also a guest lecturer at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Having attended the Science Online conferences since they began, he is anxiously anticipating this year’s conference.

Specializing in research and discovery of new anticancer drugs, he is especially concerned with plant, bacterial, and fungal based drugs. On a regular basis, he contributes to both Terra Sigillata and Science-Based Medicine, two prominent scientific blogs.

Why are you attending the Science Online conference?

The short answer is that the gathering includes some of the most exciting and interesting people I have ever met in science or medicine. Each person has a beautiful story to tell and each one is passionate about sharing the intoxication of their love for science with anyone who will listen. I spend every day of being a professor with other professors and students who are focused on a very specific area of science, the discovery of new drugs, and the conference allows me to spread my wings and interact with a wide variety of people from other disciplines, other states, and even other countries. Many of these people are already friends and colleagues online and others are simply friends who I haven’t yet met. The ScienceOnline unconference format captures the energy and excitement of everything for which I went into science as a career.

The longer answer requires a bit of background: Even before I got involved in science and medical blogging, I had always been interested in communicating science information to the public. I had a few really good high school teachers and college professors who were fabulous at teaching us how big science and medical advances related to our lives. Their skills were to distill very complex information for general audiences. When I started as a University of Colorado School of Pharmacy professor in 1992, I strived to be the kind of teacher like those who originally got me interested in science and made it accessible to me. So, I used to try and start my classes with a little vignette about some recent story or scientific paper related even distantly to my lecture material, usually about new research on drugs that might come on the market or how basic science discoveries might lead to new drugs. The feedback I received from students was that these diversions kept them interested and engaged beyond the basic course material. I also used to give lectures to the general public on science issues, including our “Mini-Med School” that was founded by my teaching mentor and Denver Café Scientifique organizer, Professor JJ Cohen. What I found exciting was that I was lucky to get 25 people to show up at a talk on my basic research projects, but these university-sponsored programs for the public would bring in anywhere from 100 to 450 people!

When I moved to North Carolina and worked in a science job where I had little opportunity for lecturing, I started a blog to share with the general public these little stories about my field with anyone who would “listen.” The blog became modestly successful and was picked up by ScienceBlogs.com, yet it still retains a cozy feel of a small group of readers who care about drugs for cancer and other drugs that come from natural sources like plants, microbes, and sea creatures. I used to teach 130 or 140 students in each class so I felt that if I ever reached more than this number of people on the blog, it would be a success in my mind. While I am still a “small-time” blogger, my primary blog reaches about 350 people a day, or almost three times the number of people I’d teach in pharmacy school.

This led to me becoming very excited about this whole medium of the science blog and the community who both wrote and read these newfangled information sources. The people who I met in this community online were incredibly supportive when I started my blog and helped to drive others to read what I had to say. The camaraderie of bloggers online just simply made me want to meet these people in real life because I knew they’d be cool to hang with.

Have you ever attended this conference before? If so, do you have any suggestions to help me make the best of my experience?

I’ve attended this conference since it started. I am very lucky to live in an area of the world where there are some incredibly energetic visionaries and supporters of how online science communication can help everyone, from little kids to retired folks. Through some sort of bizarre cosmic convergence, an entirely UNscientific concept, I live within ten miles of Bora Zivkovic and Anton Zuiker, considered to be the co-founders of this event (together with Brian Russell and Professor Paul Jones.). Bora is a long-time advocate of online, open science communication and Anton is not just a journalist and online publishing guru, but he is also one of the most interesting people I have ever met in part because he is so interested in the stories that each person has to share about their life, profession, and passions. When I first met these guys at a blogger meetup at a local coffee shop, I was blown away by how titles and positions in the “real” world meant nothing while the ideas and projects everyone had to share were far more important. The creativity of all these people, and the relative absence of judgmental personalities that we often face in the scientific world, just seemed so refreshing and I knew I had found some kindred spirits.

When Anton and Bora proposed the first meeting, originally called the North Carolina Science Blogging Conference, I knew that I would meet some other amazing people from around the country and, as I found out later, around the world, who shared this almost child-like curiosity and buzzing enthusiasm for science that I had not encountered since high school and college.

What you should know is that all of you from Miss Baker’s class will be treated like celebrities. Everyone at the meeting, regardless of stature as a scientist, journalist, educator or prominence as a blogger, cares deeply about science education of the next generation. The fact that each of you are actively engaged in this project with such a forward-thinking teacher who wants you to actually come to the conference is something that will bring you a lot of attention from the attendees. As a result, you will be able to make contacts with an amazing array of interesting people who can be of help to you now and in the future in figuring out your own life path. Take some time beforehand to look up the URLs of the registrants and make a special note of who you want to specifically hunt out and meet – they’ll be impressed that you were inquisitive enough to learn about them in advance.

Oh, and just have fun! No questions or answers are right or wrong – this is a place for discourse, sharing, and learning, good food and good conversation. And I know that many of us old fogies are going to want to know how you folks are using the web as an extension of your learning and what your ideas are for this medium in the future. We’re looking to you for answers and ideas as much as you are asking question of us scientists through these interviews.

After reading your biography from UNC, it is evident that one of your areas of expertise is researching natural/herbal treatments for cancer. What expectations do you have for the future of natural remedies for both major and minor health problems?

My background in natural and herbal remedies comes from the fact I am a cancer researcher. It turns out that 60% of all cancer drugs used today come from some natural source: plants, bacteria and fungi, even marine organisms. In fact, 25% percent of all the drugs we use today come from “natural products”: even Neosporin ointment is comprised of three separate naturally-occurring antibiotics! However, we use these medicines as carefully controlled preparations, purified to provide a defined and reproducible dose.

In 1995, my pharmacy students were perplexed by all the herbal medicines and dietary supplements they were seeing in pharmacies where they were working part-time during school. They asked me to start teaching about these and that’s how I got interested in the good and bad about herbal medicines. This is a complicated and confusing field because herbal medicines are treated in the US as foods and not medicines. Unlike drugs, these remedies do not have to be proven effective or even safe.

However, I do feel that some of these remedies might have potential for health benefits, but only if studied in a defined and reproducible manner. In 1805, a German physician and pharmacist named Serturner first isolated the painkillers morphine and codeine from the opium poppy. He realized that depending on how and where this flower was grown or when it was harvested, the latex liquid from the mature plant would have varying amounts of these beneficial chemicals. So, he devised a way to extract out and purify the morphine and codeine so they could be used in a known quantity, both effectively and safely.

So I feel that herbal medicines have the potential to be of benefit in several diseases and disease prevention but only if we study the chemicals that are in each of these natural remedies and investigate scientifically whether they really work or what dose has to be used to make them work. Unfortunately, many products sold on the market do not even contain enough of potentially beneficial chemicals per dose and are pretty much a waste of money. But we continue to study plants, fungi, and bacteria for new cancer drugs. I am part of a big project funded by the US National Cancer Institute to identify potential new anticancer drugs from each of these sources. The team is led by my colleagues at Ohio State University and involves co-workers at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Research Triangle Institute (RTI) in North Carolina, and a colleague who runs a small company called Mycosynthetix where he has 55,000 cultures of filamentous fungi just waiting to be explored for new chemicals. (In fact, my colleagues at RTI discovered two major anticancer drugs back in the 1960s and 1970s, taxol and camptothecin.). The big drug company, Bristol Myers-Squibb, also tests some of the drugs the group discovers and would have the ability to bring one of these to patients if we are lucky.

What does a normal work day consist of for you?

Well, I hate to tell you that it’s not too glamorous – certainly not like the scientists on CSI! I’m about 20 years out from getting my Ph.D. so a lot of my day involves planning and strategizing with other scientists who actually do the work, writing proposals to get the money for our people to do their work, and working closely with students who want to work in biotechnology and the pharmaceutical sciences. I’m very lucky to work at North Carolina Central University in Durham. It is one of 16 constituent institutions of the University of North Carolina system and we are one of five historically-black colleges/universities (HBCUs) in the UNC system. We serve students from all walks of life and ethnicities, younger and older, and our primary goal is to give students educational opportunities they might not have otherwise had at larger, predominantly white institutions.

My workday starts at home, usually around 5:30 or 6:00 am when I get on the computer and check my e-mail for any academic issues that may have come up during the night. I have scientist colleagues around the world who might write me during their workday which, in Australia for example, is while I am sleeping. Many of the people I work with also think about science and students all hours of the day and night and with laptop computers and wireless connections, we often write to one another whenever we get ideas – the “workplace” is no longer just at work and creative people are always thinking and communicating.

I also scan all the medical and health news services for recent developments and check about 40 of my favorite blogs in science, medicine, and education for their take on recent science news or ideas I can incorporate into my lecture material. I then make coffee for my wife, take our beagle for a walk, and help get our 6-year-old daughter off to school.

I usually get to the university around 9:30 am and check in with all of our support staff for any issues that have come up for students or professors. I’m the chairman of a small research and teaching department and now have responsibility for more people than just my own laboratory group. I’ll sometimes have meetings with students who are working on their master’s degree thesis research, talk to faculty about research grant applications they are putting in, or helping our student advisors schedule tutoring or visits to our facility by middle and high-school students around North Carolina. I have a small laboratory and will go upstairs and talk to my lab director. I usually bump into students or professors and like to have short chats with everyone to see how they are doing and if I can be of any help with their problems.

At lunchtime I usually stay at the university and grab a couple of granola bars while checking on updates to science blogs and science news services – I usually use Google Reader for scanning new posts and news searches. If there’s something that catches my eye or I need to do more digging on issues in my own field, I’ll log-in to PubMed to look up original research papers on these topics.

The afternoons will find me either in a lecture of mine or someone else’s, a seminar by a visiting scientist, traveling across town to meet with research collaborators, catching up on recent publications in my field, a meeting on students or research issues, or dealing with paperwork on student issues or our research program. Of course, the “paperwork” is often online but I have to say that I never knew quite how much documentation and behind-the-scenes work goes on in a university until I became a department chair. In the classroom right now, I’m contributing bits and pieces to four classes at both the undergraduate and graduate level: Physiology & Pharmacology, Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing, Toxicology, and Immunology & Virology. Teaching in all of these areas keeps me on my toes and I’m always on the lookout for new course material, videos, animations, or anything else that fellow bloggers or online scientists might have to improve the learning experience for my students.

Since I am fortunate that my wife can pick up our daughter at school, I stay at the university until 5:30 or 6:30. Since I live only 6 miles from the university, I can always come back to lab if I really need to but I usually go home and have dinner, then work on the computer on other stuff from home. I always make it a point to be involved in reading with our daughter and talking with her about her day. Around her bedtime is usually when I fire up a blog post which I can then schedule to post sometime the next day while I’m at work to maximize the number of people who see it. After our daughter goes to sleep, I sometimes sit up with my wife with both of our laptops, me working on my lectures, papers, or reports, and she working on her medical and public health stuff. We have not yet gotten to the point of e-mailing or IMing with each other while sitting in the same room although I know other couples who do!

You are associated with multiple prominent science blogs. What are some advantages of having an extensive online network of people and resources, especially in the world of scientific research? Are there any disadvantages?

I can give you a very recent, specific example of the benefits of networking with bloggers from around the country and around the world. I recently had to pick up responsibility for eight lectures on virology. Now, I do know a little bit about viruses and have taught pharmacy, medical and nursing students about antiviral drugs, but I have never taught about the basic biology of viruses. Fortunately, several of my blog friends have. So, I just sent out a few e-mails and posts on a discussion forum – several people sent me their lecture notes, slides, suggestions for books and other online sources of information, etc. Now I’ve got great resources from Seattle and Boston, viral animations from Calgary, and a terrific repository of all things viral from Leicester, England. My students are now getting a far higher quality of more engaging virology lectures than had I tried to struggle by myself in preparing materials from my own vantage point.

Being part of the science blogging community has also brought me friendships with professional writers and journalists, many scientists from fields outside of mine who share similar ideas and values about scientific training, and even inquiries from the so-called mainstream media for background information or interviews. While I have a certain reputation as a scientist, the practice of blogging and the networking I have done over the last three years has brought me some degree of legitimacy in interacting with science and medical journalists. This more formal extension of my interests in sharing science and medicine with the public is almost becoming a true scholarly effort where I have begun to participate in grant programs for science education and the training of journalists.

As I mentioned above, my expanded sphere of scientific friends through blogging associations has been important for another major reason. I didn’t know until late in my graduate training that I was not the kind of person who liked to toil alone in the laboratory – I am a more social animal. Even being a professor requires a certain degree of single-mindedness. While I do what I need to in order to continue to succeed in my career and help others in their career development in my focused scientific discipline, I feel energized by interacting with my new friends who come to science from philosophy, ethics, and the creative arts, other scientists who work on model organisms, drug abuse, or other areas of cancer or public health. Some of these folks are younger or older than I; many others are like me, with a partner who is also a health professional trying to negotiate the world of trying have a meaningful family life. The diversity of the networks we have each developed have revealed that there are also many common threads to all fields. We try to be allies for one another and work to create a community of equality and justice that we then try to percolate back into our areas of the daily scientific world.

The only disadvantage I can think of is that there’s never enough time to interact with everyone you want or do everything you want to do. But then again, that’s not a problem of being associated with science bloggers – that’s a common complaint of anyone these days.

by Samantha H

Erica Tsai works at the Department of Biology at Duke University where she is a PhD candidate.  She studies Beechdrop (Epifagus virginiana) which is a parasitic plant and is especially interested in its relationship with the American Beech tree (Fagus grandifolia) which is its host.

Ms. Tsai created PhyloGeoViz which is a website application for phylogeography visualization.  Also, she is the planning committee chair for Women in Science and Engineering (W.I.S.E.) which is a group from Duke University that sponsors events that bring women (students and teachers) together to share ideas that can change how women are involved in science.  She will be attending the upcoming Science Online ‘09 conference.

Why are you attending this conference?

I’m generally interested in science communication, and I read a lot of blogs, so this is a natural fit. This year I’m also helping to organize the women’s networking event taking place the first night of the conference.

Have you ever attended this conference before? If so, do you have any suggestions to make the most of the experience?

This will be my first time at this conference, but I’m really looking forward to it! I think the key thing about conferences in general is to  not be afraid to talk to new people. Part of the conference experience is to meet people you might otherwise miss and to swap ideas.  It’s normal to feel shy, but I’d challenge you to get out of your comfort zone and introduce yourself to some new friends. Take a coffee break with someone you were just in a session with! Don’t be afraid to tag along with a new friend’s lunch plans! Ask questions and participate! It’s fine to retreat and hang out with your friends too, but make sure you interact with some people you don’t already know.

What are you looking foward to the most in this conference?

The human element is what’s always the most fun about conferences. Seeing who it is behind the writing. I’m looking forward to meeting the people behind the blogs I religiously follow.

I’m also looking forward to the lab visits the first day. I’m currently considering several career options, and it’ll be very helpful to see the types of working environments there are out there.

Are you going to present at the conference? If so, what will your topic be?

I won’t be presenting anything directly but I will be involved with the women’s networking event happening the Friday night of the conference.   I’m part of Duke’s Women in Science and Engineering graduate student group who is co-sponsoring this excellent event. The goal of the event is to bring women in scientific disciplines together to make connections for mentoring, professional collaborations, or social reasons. There will be an appetizer/cocktail hour where participants can mingle and network. And following that we’ll have a guest speaker, Rebecca Skloot, give a keynote address during dinner. Afterwards there will be more networking and local women’s groups will be around giving out information on their events and programs.

On your website, it says you are interested in the Epifagus virginiana. How did you become so interested in that particular plant?

My dissertation research centers on Epifagus. It’s a really cool parasitic plant. That’s right, plants can be parasites too! Epifagus is a plant that taps directly into the roots of beech trees and forms connections with the tree’s xylem and phloem. It gets all of its nutrition from the tree and does not rely on photosynthesis at all. In fact, it’s totally brown (not green at all), its chloroplasts are basically nonfunctional (its thylakoids are misshapen), and a lot of its genes for photosynthesis have evolved into nonfunctional pseudogenes or have been lost completely, so it couldn’t photosynthesize even if it wanted to.

In my project I’m looking at the migration patterns of this parasite and how they relate to those of its host tree. I’m trying to understand what controls a parasite’s colonization of new areas during changes in climate.

What is your favorite part of working in the Department of Biology at Duke University?

The atmosphere in the biology department is so collaborative and friendly that it makes it a great place to be a graduate student. Honestly, the people are great. Folks are always willing to bounce ideas back and forth with you, and they want you to succeed. It also helps to have so many people here interested in the same things I’m interested in: organisms, biogeography, ecology, and evolution.