Before the Abstract

Terry Majewski: An Unlikely Social Scientist by Before the Abstract

Tim Taylor: The Right Lunch Box by Before the Abstract

Sandra López Varela: An Unexpected Life by Before the Abstract

From coming of age in a fascist dictatorship to leaving home for the first time to pursue a PhD in archaeology in the United States, Nuno shares his story of how he came to have the best of two very different worlds.

Stories about Math: Piper Harron by Before the Abstract

A surprising collaboration comes out of Daniele's dinner with 'one of the greatest names in the history of quantum physics.'

A mathematician's career is inspired by her family legacy.

Seth shares a story about the time he opened an "Ask a Mathematician" booth at Burning Man.

Ken Ono has a Eureka moment while working on one of Ramanujan's unpublished manuscripts.

Coming of age in 1970s Chile, an ecologist reflects on the social and environmental issues caused by the political climate, plus recounts how a near death experience impacted the course of his research.

A late night pizza delivery to the lab inspires an Advanced Grant proposal in a surprising way.

One researcher's youth in Zambia shapes her research on gender based violence and ultimately inspires her auto-ethnography. *Disclaimer: Contains explicit language.*

Fueled by her passion for the environment and by way of a career in food styling, one researcher shares her unique journey to becoming an ecologist.

A marine ecologist remembers a surprising and formative experience she had on a dive as an early career researcher.

Karin tells a humorous but tragic story about the reality of postgrad life.

Skeptical scientists Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen Macknick take a trip to a psychic fair to find out if the psychics can really read the details of their past lives.

As a child, editor Andrea Gawrylewski has a heart-stopping experience in the rainforest that inspires her to study earth science.

Perfectionist neuroscientist, Brian Levine, learns how to deal with uncertainty when his patients, who suffer from brain injuries, challenge his expectations.

As an adult, scientist Scott Barry Kaufman confronts the school psychologist who once told him he was doomed by a low IQ and inspired his work to redefine intelligence.

Jean Zarate is torn between neuroscience and music careers until a tragic event brings both into perspective.

A global cities consultant has an inspiring trip to Pune, India thanks to a charismatic local leader.

Ruth develops an unlikely friendship in the Peruvian Amazon studying the social and environmental effects of the Interoceanic Road.

Ethan Hollander grapples with a morally harrowing question after interviewing a Nazi war criminal.

Elisa Schaum describes her experience as the only scientist in a family of eclectic artists.

A professor and new father juggles building a syllabus for a new online class with starting a family.

As the only black woman on a two-month voyage, Dawn Wright tries to find her place aboard scientific drill vessel JOIDES Resolution.

A surgeon shares her struggle to keep emotional distance from her work versus the desire to express herself through creative writing.

A criminologist receives a letter from a convicted murderer.

A law professor reflects on a case he took early on as a public defender that would forever shape his career in mental disability law.

What begins as a research project quickly becomes a life-altering lesson in the truth behind stereotypes, the importance of empathy, and the unparalleled power of human connection.

A military surgeon must perform surgery in the middle of a sandstorm in Iraq.

After witnessing too many haunting incidents of preventable fatalities, one surgeon sets out to change the social environment that allows gun violence to jeopardize the lives of its citizens.

One evening of Diwali 45 years ago in Mumbai, India inspires global cancer staging in a way one physician could never have imagined.

Dr. A. Leslie Morrow shares what keeps her going in her research on alcoholism: misguided reviewer comments, a promising new development in gene therapy, and the miraculous life of her cousin, Lance.

Dr. Moran Cerf shares a humorous anecdote about the time his team's new publication picked up rapid-fire media coverage...for entirely the wrong reason.

Dr. Jerry Franklin is gifted with a revelation about nature's legacies during his years of work on Mount St. Helens.

Becoming a mother challenges one professor to rethink personal and professional boundaries in her classroom.

Dr. Ian Anderson must relearn what it means to project manage when he takes a job in the U.S. and moves from the South of France to a very different Southern environment.

Dr. Janet Silbernagel's personal and professional worlds collide in China, where cranes begin to stretch her perception of connections across landscapes.

French neurobiologist Etienne Hirsch recollects his use of Claude Bernard's scientific methodology from boyhood to adulthood in his journey to alleviate Parkinson’s Disease symptoms.

Dr. Virginia Dale realizes that the value of a question lies equally in the asking as well as the answering, while on a trip to the rainforest to conduct ecological models on land-use change.

After being diagnosed with a brain tumor, Dr. Michael Feuerstein learns that surviving and thriving post-cancer requires more than medical treatments.

Dr. Chiara Mingarelli describes her personal journey—and roadblocks encountered—to the “center of the universe.” Dr. Chiara Mingarelli is an Italo-Canadian gravitational-wave astrophysicist, currently based at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she holds a Marie Curie Fellowship. Mingarelli received her Ph.D from the University of Birmingham, UK, in 2014, where she worked with Prof. Alberto Vecchio. Her core research is focused on using Pulsar Timing Arrays to detect low-frequency gravitational waves, with forays into electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational-wave events, such as fast radio bursts. Mingarelli’s thesis was published in the Springer Thesis Series (2015), and is the recipient of numerous grants from the Royal Astronomical Society and the UK Institute of Physics for both research and outreach. She recently appeared on Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls, “Talk Nerdy” with Cara Santa Maria, and maintains a strong social media presence where she advocates for “Science, Coffee, and Girl Power”.

Jonaki Bhattacharyya details the wisdom gained on her journey alongside the man in the black hat.

Landscape architect Jack Ahern travels to The Netherlands to get his Phd but comes home with a new lens on how to view his surroundings.

Dr. Margot Kushel describes her emphatic efforts to help a homeless patient whose needs outweigh a hospital’s offerings. Margot Kushel, MD is a Professor of Medicine at UCSF in the Division of General Internal Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital. Margot’s research interests include the health and health care utilization patterns of homeless adults and other vulnerable populations. She is Principal Investigator of an NIA funded study that is following a cohort of 350 older homeless adults in Oakland CA to assess how life events have impacted their homelessness, their health status (including geriatric conditions) and their use of the health care system. In the near future, Margot plans to expand this research to include studying symptomatology and views about advanced directives, and on examining novel ways of finding stable housing for older homeless adults. Margot is also conducting evaluations of new efforts to provide permanent supportive housing to individuals experiencing chronic homelessness and studies of how pain is managed for individuals with substance use disorders who receive care in safety net settings. At UCSF, Margot is the co-Director of the UCSF Primary Care Research Fellowship and is involved in numerous training activities geared towards training the next generation of implementation scientists who focus on improving care in the safety net. She maintains an active clinical practice as a general internist at the SFGH General Medical Clinic and attends on the inpatient medicine service at SFGH. When not at work (or driving back and forth across the Bay Bridge), Margot can be found reading, swimming, or laughing with her husband and their 13 year old twins. You can follow her on twitter at @mkushel.

Dr. Aerin Jacob recalls the three most valuable conservation lessons she ever learned...from a man with a machine gun.

Dr. Katherine Chretien, Hospitalist Division Leader at a Veteran’s hospital, describes her emotional journey when her husband is deployed for a year in Afghanistan.

Dr. Pasachoff explains his journey from being the shortest math major in Harvard history to a 50+ illustrious career in solar astronomy. Jay Pasachoff, Chair of the International Astronomical Union’s Working Group on Eclipses, is Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy at Williams College and a Visitor in Planetary Science at Caltech. He has viewed 60 solar eclipses, and is an expert on both their use for scientific observations and their use for public education. Pasachoff is past president of the International Astronomical Union’s Commission on Education and Development and Chair of the Historical Astronomy Division of the American Astronomical Society. He received the Education Prize of the American Astronomical Society and, last year, the Janssen Prize of the Société Astronomique de France. Pasachoff is the author or co-author of The Cosmos: Astronomy in the New Millennium, the Peterson Field Guide to the Stars and Planets, and Nearest Star: The Surprising Science of Our Sun as well as, on a more technical level, The Solar Corona.

Prof. Jeffrey Shaman thinks he has discovered something big...but no one will look at his paper. Jeffrey Shaman is an infectious disease modeler at the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University. His background is in climate, atmospheric science and hydrology, as well as biology. He studies the environmental determinants of infectious disease transmission, in particular, how atmospheric conditions impact the survival, transmission and seasonality of pathogens and how hydrologic variability affects mosquito ecology and mosquito-borne disease transmission. More broadly he is interested in how meteorology affects human health. Much of his work is computational, employing combined model-inference systems to forecast infectious disease outbreaks at a range of time scales. Shaman also studies a number of climate phenomena, including Rossby wave dynamics, atmospheric jet waveguides, the coupled South Asian monsoon-ENSO system, extratropical precipitation, and tropical cyclogenesis.

Dr. Martin Shapiro recalls interactions with four very different doctors with one thing in common – all led to dramatic implications for his career and family. Martin F. Shapiro, MD, PhD, is Professor of Medicine and Health Services and Management and Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research at UCLA. Dr. Shapiro’s scholarship has focused on assuring that medical care is applied equitably and appropriately to the population. He was the Principal Investigator of the HIV Cost and Services Utilization Study (HCSUS), in which he led a national team at over twenty institutions in evaluating such issues as diffusion of antiretroviral therapy, access, costs, outcomes of care, health status, mental illness, and disparities in and barriers to receipt of care in the first nationally representative study of health care for persons with HIV. He established UCLA’s Primary Care Research Fellowship, and is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians, and is a past President of the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM).