Selected writing

News, features & essays

Nature

A photo of a stack of medium sized white cardboard boxes labeled "Addgene". A person is holding one up to the camera.

Twenty years of Addgene

How to keep the lights on: the mission to make more photostable fluorophores

An illustration of green fluorescent protein with its characteristic β-barrel. Credit: Sci-Comm Studios/Science Photo Library

US TikTok ban: how the looming restriction is affecting scientists on the app

Superstar porous materials get salty thanks to computer simulations

Why chemists can’t quit palladium

Why is it so hard to investigate the rare side effects of COVID vaccines?

Black scientist network celebrates successes — but calls for more support

Mammoth’s epic travels preserved in tusk

Audubon

A Bird By Any Other Name

This story was a finalist in the commentary category of the 2023 NASW Science in Society Journalism Awards

A New Book From the Feminist Bird Club Offers a Fresh Framework for Birders

For These Arkansas Farmers, Bird Habitat Is a Cash Crop

Science News

Here’s the chemistry behind marijuana’s skunky scent

This story received an honorable mention in the 2021 DC Science Writers Association Newsbrief Awards.

An Arctic hare traveled at least 388 kilometers in a record-breaking journey

Salty sweat helps one desert plant stay hydrated

Catapult

Organic Chemistry Taught Me to Fully Inhabit My Mixed Identities

As featured on NPR’s Short Wave

Chemical & Engineering News

What are chemical signs of life beyond Earth?

What exascale computing could mean for chemistry

Ainissa Ramirez discusses how society and technology interact

Suzie Sheehy on how curiosity-driven research can change the world

Historian Catherine M. Jackson on the origins of organic synthesis

This new molecule owes its chirality to oxygen alone

Ultrablack skin camouflages deep sea fish

Computers are learning how to analyze chemists’ spectra and micrographs

Soft corals are the first animals found to make complex terpenes

Scientists uncover the mysterious origins of purple plaster in a Spanish palace

Other Stories In Print

Asteroid impact may have turned ants into fungus farmers 66 million years ago

Science

A close-up photo of leaf cutter ants tending a fungus garden. There is a very large queen ant on the right with smaller ants on the left.

Protecting Arkansas’s rare — not just endangered — species is a group effort

Arkansas Times

Why Arkansas’s best duck hunting woods are drowning

Arkansas Nonprofit News Network

A radio edition also aired on Little Rock Public Radio

Mallard ducks flying

The decline of hunting in California

The Mercury News

The birds, the bees, and spiraling family trees

UC Santa Cruz Science Notes

Guest Appearances

Organic Chemistry Helped Me Embrace My Identities

NPR Short Wave

Q&A with Science Communicator Ariana Remmel

Job Talk

You’ve Got What It Takes to Become a Master Naturalist

Audubon

A Celebration Of The 2023 Christmas Bird Count

Science Friday

All images are sourced from the linked articles unless otherwise stated.