American soldiers in Iraq, credit: Soldiers Media Center, U.S. Army Soldiers Media Center, U.S. Army "I can give these kids a task to do in my lab, and I know they won’t quit and that they will go all the way to try to execute that task." --Kit Parker After 12 months on patrol in Iraq for the U.S. Marines, Sgt. Josue "Josh" Goss returned home in June to pursue another mission: graduate studies in...
Dean Pearson Dean Pearson "I was acutely aware of how poor we were. But I was just as aware of how nourishing and nurturing for me it was to get out in nature. It was very nonjudgmental and very honest." --Dean Pearson Biological communities are enormously complex. Every species, native or alien, vies for limited space and resources. If one species runs amok, unexpected things can happen. When sp...
Award winner (Comstock) (Comstock) "My best advice is to not change your question to fit your current skill set, but rather change your skill set to meet the demands of a good question." --Joy Ward There's no shortage of advice on the best way to establish an independent research career; just ask any experienced scientist and you'll likely get an earful. But how much of that advice should you tak...
Cecilia Aragon Cecilia Aragon "I remember my major adviser telling me I shouldn't leave because my thesis work was very good. But I had so little self-confidence that I thought he was just being nice." --Cecilia Aragon Cecilia Aragon is on a mission to help scientists organize and manage the tottering piles of data they gather for their research. "This is a fundamental problem that we're facing a...
Kristala Jones Prather (Donna Coveney/MIT) Kristala Jones Prather (Photo: Donna Coveney/MIT) "I really enjoyed my time at Merck, but when I came to MIT, I had an empty lab and nothing but some ideas jotted down in a notebook." --Kristala Jones Prather During her stint in the Bioprocess Research and Development department at Merck, Kristala Jones Prather developed ways to produce drugs using biolo...
