From where does it STEM?

In this episode, I interviewed Dr. Crystal Schiller, a clinical psychologist specializing in women’s mental health. She studies how hormones trigger changes in mood over the course of the reproductive life span—during the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, postpartum, and the transition to menopause.

She is also passionate about teaching others about the impact of hormones on mood and tools that have been scientifically shown to help.

In this episode, I interviewed Dr. Ubadah Sabbagh & Dr. Daniel Gonzales. Ubadah is a Syrian neuroscientist and NIH K00 Fellow at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, and Daniel just started a faculty position at Vanderbilt University in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. They met over social media, are freakin' HILARIOUS, and I am so glad I got to put them together in a Zoom room!

In this episode, I co-hosted Dr. Eric Green, Director of the NHGRI with Parth and Chinmay, the co-hosts of Biocast. He is the third NHGRI director, having been appointed by NIH director Dr. Francis Collins in 2009. In this episode, we talked about mentorship, baseball, and what it's like to head an institute of the NIH.

In this episode, I co-hosted Dr. Karolin Luger with Chinmay and Parth, the co-hosts of a partner podcast with From where does it STEM? called Biocast. Biocast is a biology podcast made to serve as a resource for anyone interested in biology: whether it be about recent breakthroughs in research, common topics, or even just a general interest, they hope to encourage people to explore the world of biology and help them delve deeper into the wonderful science of life itself.I hosted Karolin in a previous episode back in 2021, and this is the first time I’ve done a follow-up with a previous guest! If you forgot, she is a scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder who solved the structure of the nucleosome using X-ray crystallography. More recently, she was awarded the 2023 World Laureates Association Prize in Life Sciences or Medicine.

In this episode, I interviewed Dr. Murry Burgess. When I interviewed Murry in 2023, she was a PhD candidate at North Carolina State University, and now she is a tenure-track Assistant Professor at Mississippi State University. She is an ornithology and urban ecology researcher, but she is also a huge advocate for field safety in the natural sciences as an aspect of accessibility and inclusion. In 2022, she co-founded a non-profit organization called Field Inclusive, which amplifies and supports marginalized and historically excluded field biologists. She is also a children’s book author with both self-published work and contracted pieces with Little, Brown Young Readers and Christy Ottaviano Books. She is the author for a nature book series featuring a 5-year old Black girl exploring the nature around her suburban home.  

In this episode, I interviewed Dr. Dimie Ogoina. Dr. Ogoina is a Nigerian Infectious Disease Physician-Scientist and Professor of Medicine at the Niger Delta University. He is also the chief medical director at its teaching hospital and the President of the Nigerian Infectious Diseases Society. He was named one of the 100 most influential people of 2023 by TIME magazine and was named Nature’s Top 10 in 2022. He sounded the alarm on a new presentation of Mpox (formerly known as monkeypox) and his research became critically important to developing better strategies to prevent and control outbreaks. 

In this episode, I had a conversation with Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin. Dr. Mohiuddin and his team transplanted the first gene-edited pig heart into a human. Currently, he is the Director of the Cardiac Xenotransplantation Program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. He received his MD from Dow Medical College in Pakistan and moved to the United States after completing his surgical training. 

In this episode, I had a conversation with Lisa McCorkell, a Long COVID Patient-Researcher and Advocate. She received a Masters in Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles. Currently, she is a co-founder, team lead, and researcher with the Patient-Led Research Collaborative. She regularly presents recommendations and the patient perspective to government agencies and has been awarded the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Distinguished Public Service Award and was named Nature’s 10 in 2022. My favorite fun fact about her is that she's a huge Noah Kahan fan!

Dr. Mike Levine is the Director of the Lewis Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University. Originally from Southern California, Mike sat down with me and Marielle Bond to talk about his scientific journey and how he ended up in New Jersey ("of all places!"). He was an absolute joy to talk to, and I was excited to get him on the show because of his passion for training the next generation of scientists and for inspiring fellow Dodger fans (like myself).

Dr. Diana Greene Foster is a Professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) program. She was just named a 2023 MacArthur Fellow and in 2022, was named by Nature as one of the top 10 scientists shaping science today. She was a leader in the Turnaway Study, a longitudinal prospective study of almost 1,000 women who received or were denied wanted abortions from 30 facilities across the US. She is now leading a Global Turnaway Study, documenting the experience of women and denied abortions in five other countries where it is legal: Bangladesh, Colombia, Nepal, South Africa, and Tunisia.