Working Scientist

Experiments fail and careers plans can go awry, forcing us to pivot in a different direction. Organizations also make mistakes. But failure, at both an individual and institutional level, can be a useful teacher. In the first episode of a six-part podcast series about failure in ...  Show more

Theoretical physicist Stephon Alexander was 12 years old when his father bought him a saxophone at a garage sale near their home in the Bronx, New York. Soon after he heard Ornette Coleman, a pioneer of free jazz, on the radio. “There was this saxophone playing that was completel ...  Show more

Frances Brodsky believes that writing her three mystery novels set in the world of bench science has improved her scientific writing. “I love making up titles for my books and chapters,” she says. “One of the best ways to train someone in the lab to focus on their project is for ...  Show more

Brandon Brown “fell into farming” after tiring of city life during the COVID-19 pandemic and now tends more than 150 fruit trees alongside his research into HIV and public health ethics at the University of California, Riverside School of Medicine. “I had to look at farming the s ...  Show more