"Success awaits everyone out there, and it's for the taking," says Russell Stands-Over-Bull, president of Arrow Creek Resources in Billings, Montana. After searching for petroleum reserves throughout the Rocky Mountains, the North Sea, and Canada, Stands-Over-Bull has now come full-circle, back to the Crow Indian Reservation where he grew up, where he assists Native American tribes in assessing a...
Gina Wingood (Emory University) Gina Wingood (Photo: Emory University) The HIV epidemic was severe--and completely fascinating, Wingood says, so she switched from genetic counseling to public health. Traveling to California to find yourself is a '60s cliché. But for Gina Wingood, a professor at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta, Georgia, the trip to Berkeley, Californi...
The American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in San Francisco each December is the place to network, meet potential collaborators, catch up with friends and competitors, and immerse oneself in the latest research from some of the world's greatest earth and planetary science minds. For the uninitiated, it's an overwhelming experience: five jam-packed days of non-stop technical and poster sessions,...
Like many people who eventually unearth a passion for geology, Chris Andronicos's career began in a much different discipline: physics. It wasn't until his junior year at the University of New Mexico that he took a geology course, but he was hooked right away. "This is what I want to do," he thought. So, he changed majors and immersed himself in rocks and magma, mountains, and colliding continent...
Insubordination (credit: Comstock) (Comstock) "Boldness is the single most important thing in science, assuming you have basic talent and intellect and creativity." --Vilayanur Ramachandran Joan Roughgarden wanted to right what she saw as a long-standing wrong. Stephen Mojzsis wanted to find data that everyone assumed did not exist. Adam Riess wanted to answer some of our most fundamental questio...
A biochemist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute studies protein folding and disease--and welcomes minorities into his department and his research lab.
University of New Mexico Linguistics professor Melissa Axelrod partners with Native American communities to rescue and revitalize languages on the brink of extinction.
Since it's inception in 1950, the goal of the National Science Foundation (NSF) has been "to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; [and] to secure the national defense." The foundation seeks to accomplish these goals in a number of ways. In addition to directly supporting research in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), NSF'...
Terrill Tops and Dorkina Myrick (SSgt Michele G. Lacerda, AFIP) (Photo: SSgt Michele G. Lacerda, AFIP) "I had to use my charm to get her to pay attention to me." --Terrill Tops It can be a struggle to be a minority working in the sciences. It can be a struggle to be part of a dual-career (two-scientist) couple. When you combine these two well-known challenges, the difficulties are magnified. But,...
Dollar on dartboard (Credit: Comstock Business Impacts) (Comstock) “What many of us do is, we get the funds for the boring stuff and then do the exciting stuff on the side.”–Vilayanur Ramachandran The scientists interviewed for this series agree: It's hard to find funding to support risky science. But most of them have managed to find it anyway. Like many science trainees, structural biologist Ra...
In 1982, when Marcela Carena (pictured left) left her home in Buenos Aires to study physics at a prestigious institute 1000 miles to the south, her mother had a fit. "We owned a small ranch and she wanted me to study something useful -- agriculture or economics," says Carena. Even today, it's uncommon for Argentine youth to leave home, yet her intrepid decision has paid off with scientific advent...
