Scientist Profile: Emily Hatch

Name: Emily Hatch Hometown:  Glens Falls, NY Hobbies: Reading, traveling, having dinner with friends What do you study? I think about how structures in our cells are put together and how they are changed over time to do different jobs. For the last 5 years I’ve been focusing on the membrane that separates your DNA from the rest of […]

Scientist Profile: Aaron Sampson

Name: Aaron Sampson Hometown:  Norman, Oklahoma and Rice Lake, Wisconsin   Hobbies: Taekwondo, hiking   What do you study?  I work on developing new tools and techniques for analyzing human brain activity. Specifically, I look at recordings from the sleeping brain, and try to detect specific events, called sleep spindles, that occur during sleep. I have also worked on […]

Scientist Profile: Niall Moore

Name: Niall Moore Hometown:  Glasgow, Scotland, UK Lab: Gene Expression Laboratory of Sam Pfaff Lab website: http://pfaff.salk.edu/ Hobbies: I like reading comics, cycling and one day soon surfing! What do you study? Even very simple actions like walking or throwing a ball require the complex co-ordination of many muscles. A lot of this co-ordination is controlled by the spinal […]

Scientist Profile: Alyson Smith

Name: Alyson Smith Hometown:  I grew up in Torrance, California but now I live in San Diego. Hobbies: I enjoy hiking and going to the beach as well as reading a good book in a coffee shop. What do you study? I study the structure and function of the cytoskeleton in human red blood cells. The word cytoskeleton […]

Scientist Profile: Ramin Skibba

Name: Ramin Skibba Hometown:  Denver, Colorado.  I’m also half-Iranian, and my given name came from that side.  Before I came to southern California, I’ve also lived in Wisconsin, Indiana, Pennsylvania, southwest Germany, and Arizona. Hobbies:  reading, traveling, skiing, hiking, playing the violin, listening to music, swing dancing What do you study? I study galaxies and dark matter.  Our Milky […]

Scientist Profile: Jeniffer Hernandez

Name: Jeniffer Hernandez Hometown: All of southern California is my hometown because I have lived in LA, Orange County, San Bernardino and San Diego. Hobbies: I like to find fun activities to do with my daughter on the weekends, traveling and exploring. What do you study? I study how T cells in our bodies contribute to disease. T cells […]

SciChat Recap: Tracy Bedrosian, November 4th

Tracy Bedrosian talked about her work on transposons, or “jumping genes”, and how they generate variation within the tissues of an animal. She did an excellent job and fielded some really wide-ranging questions, from sharks and cancer to Turbo the snail. A transcript of the Q & A follows. Student: Do you remember what your first […]

Scientist Profile: Zachary Katz

Name: Zachary Katz Hometown: I’ve lived in Arizona, Florida, Virginia, New York City, and now San Diego. Hobbies: I spend time outside the lab running on trails, exploring the outdoors, collecting cool rocks, growing unique plants (especially those that eat insects), reading, writing poems, and lots of art (my favorite is pottery). What do you study?  I study […]

Kicking off SciChats 2.0

Avani Gadani was the overall winner of our first run of SciChats, capturing students’ interest with her description of how we see. Along with SciChats co-leader Abby Buchwalter, Avani visited Del Mar Hills Academy on the evening of October 22nd to talk science with interested students and parents. Avani reprised her talk about how things see, and talked a bit more […]

Scientist Profile: Tracy Bedrosian

Name: Tracy Bedrosian Hometown: Plymouth, Michigan Hobbies: horseback riding, hiking, eating breakfast for dinner, traveling, and trying new things What do you study?  Jumping genes! DNA is like a code that gives instructions for each cell to do its job. Jumping genes are small pieces of DNA that can copy and paste themselves into new places in the […]