This week, we present two stories of scientists under professional and academic pressure, both in the field and in the lab.

Part 1: In China, ornithologist Sam Snow and his colleague gather as much data about a species of bird as possible -- but it comes at a cost.

Part 2: Biologist Megan Hatlen worries that she’ll never make a breakthrough in her research.

Sam Snow is an evolutionary biologist and ornithologist, currently a Ph.D. candidate at Yale University. He looks at birds to explore the evolutionary consequences of mate choice for sexual ornamentation, mate-system evolution, and social behavior. His research seeks to understand how females evolve new traits that overcome sexual coercion, reshaping mating systems and male social behavior. In search of answers, he creates theoretical computer models of behavioral evolution and attempts to test these theories by documenting the behavior of birds in the wild.

Megan Hatlen is a biologist at Blueprint Medicines, a fantastic biotech located in Cambridge, MA.  Recently transplanted from NYC, she earned her PhD from Cornell University and performed research in oncology at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center prior to making the Boston/Cambridge life-science pilgrimage.  Though nearly a decade has been spent on the East Coast, the West Coast will always have her heart.  Megan is a California native; she was raised in Bakersfield and earned her bachelors in Bioengineering at the University of California – San Diego.  When not running experiments, Megan can be found with her wife, Jess, holding their chubby Pomeranian back as he strives to attack anything and everything on the Minuteman Bikeway.

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