Career Profiles

Some people say that Norman Borlaug has saved more lives than anyone else in history has.  Borlaug's not so sure.  "I don't know how you'd measure that," he says.  What is certain is that his agricultural innovations--especially the high-yield wheats he developed--have saved...

Each morning when I unlock the doors to the teaching labs, I can never fully anticipate what opportunities or challenges I will face that day. I am an Instructional Assistant, a blend of teacher and laboratory technician, in the Biotechnology Laboratory Technician Program at Madison Area...

I've always been a hands-on-person and loved math in high school. So, it's not surprising that I eventually ended up in the science and math field. After finishing high school, I joined the Air Force. After leaving the Air Force I began working for a local manufacturing company and trained as...

As a child in elementary school, I was fond of examining flowers and insects. By sixth grade I had a spider collection and managed to breed black widows without killing myself. I recall being very frustrated at not being able to find many books to tell me more about my interests. My...

The mice in Jeffrey Friedman's laboratory aren't your ordinary rodents.  They're superfat, three times larger and five times fattier than other mice.  And it's a good thing they're big, because Friedman's career rests upon their shoulders.

Sunny became interested in marine science when she was in middle school in China. "We lived on a harbor and I loved the beauty of the animals and the blue colors of the sea water," Sunny muses. She planned to major in marine environmental science in college.

I grew up in a working-class family, taking summer jobs in a restaurant, a laundry factory, and doing house painting while in high school. From these jobs, I quickly learned that I did not want to spend my life doing such repetitive labor. Throughout my early schooling, I always had a...

As a child in China, Bruce's favorite book was Ten Thousand Questions, and he enjoyed taking clocks and toys apart to discover their inner workings.  Such curiosity led him to major in Biology at Harvard University and pursue a PhD degree in Genetics at MIT.

As a teenager in England, David planned to concentrate in art courses, but he "fell" into science.  He studied microbiology at the University College in London and decided to pursue a career in science.  He earned a PhD in immunology and did postgraduate research at the Imperial Cancer...

Every morning John McAlister tucks his tie into his shirt, puts his computer in his backpack, and rides his motorcycle to work.  He started riding motorcycles as a graduate student when it was the only transportation he could afford.  Now he takes one on cross country camping and...

Karen Nelson grew up in Jamaica, surrounded by pets and nature.  Her love of animals drew her to science.  "Back then, I thought going into science meant either becoming a vet or a doctor," Karen recalls.  She went to the University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago and...

Back in the time of Babylon (2800 BC), inscriptions in clay cylinders made reference to soap made from fats and ashes. Today's detergents have come a long way; they incorporate technological breakthroughs from fields such as chemistry, biotechnology, and engineering to provide consumers with...

When Jose Ribeiro sees a mosquito land on his arm, his first instinct isn't to slap it out of existence but to think about how it--and its blood-sucking brethren--deserves a Nobel Prize.  What amazes Ribeiro about mosquitoes, sand flies, and other insects that feed on blood is the way they'...

Some people will do anything to avoid writing resumes and sitting through job interviews.  To Christophe Schilling, it seemed easier to start his own company.  That's what the newly minted PhD did in 2000, when he co-founded San Diego-based Genomatica along with one of his professors...

Raised in small-town Connecticut by parents obsessed with gardening, Stomp explains, "As a kid, I would go on walks with my mom and she would identify plants by their Latin names.  I knew the Latin name of a flower but not that it was a daisy."

Today Stomp is not only a hard-core...

Doris Taylor's research may provide a long-awaited cure for a common type of heart disease called congestive heart failure.  This heart failure often follows a heart attack, which scientists call acute myocardial infarction.  Myocardial refers to the muscle ("myo") of the...

Venter is best-known for his work on the genetic blueprint known as the genome.  As president of Celera Genomics, Venter raced government researchers to map the genes in human beings.  The two groups finished simultaneously, proclaiming victory in 2000.

Neptune is the name of the Roman god of the sea. I am originally from a small town on the New Jersey coast, named Neptune, so it may not be surprising that I eventually ended up working with marine organisms. I attended the University of Vermont to study biology and stayed there for graduate...