We’re proud to present the first episode in our brand new Young Scientist Spotlight Series, or “The Spotlight” for short. Each month, we’ll feature an informal, lightly-edited interview with a graduate student, postdoc, staff researcher, or other early-career scientist. Through these conversations, we’ll be bringing you a fun, down-to-earth look at not only even more of the awesome science content you love, but also the people behind the science. In our first Spotlight, we spoke with Witney Chen, a graduate student studying Parkinson’s Disease at the University of California, San Francisco. We chatted about her research on brain stimulation in human patients, life in graduate school, how she became a scientist, and… dog poop.

This episode was produced by Ben Mansky. Music is “Borough,” from Blue Dot Sessions.