Socializing with Scientists presents the untold stories of immunologists, neuroscientists, environmental chemists, and more, recounting how their early life built their current life, and sharing what they do now to make the world a better place. And how do they define success, anyway? Listen to find out the surprising secrets of curious people.
https://socializingwithscientists.com/
Our music is called "Discussion," and was composed by Folk Acoustic.
Host and science writer Rachael Moeller Gorman has written hundreds of articles for magazines like Smithsonian, The Scientist, Men's Health and EatingWell, and has won several awards for her work, including four James Beard Foundation Journalism awards.
Major Allison Brager, PhD, is a neurobiologist working to keep soldiers safe by understanding their sleep, because not getting enough can cause "a cognitive lapse that is the difference between life and death." Her many research papers focus on circadian rhythm, jet lag, stress, sleep deprivation, caffeine and napping. She has a very active Instagram account. You can follow her @docjockzzz on Instagram.
Brad Nelson, PhD, is a Professor of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at ETH Zurich. He just published research in which he and his team navigated tiny robots to a precise spot in a large animal, where the robot released a drug. The idea is to send these drug delivery vehicles to a blood clot or a tumor, precisely targeting disease without the harmful side effects that happen when drugs course through the entire body. He hopes his microrobots will be able to deliver payloads of medicine to people within the next three years.
Bradley Smith, PhD, teaches and researches at Central Queensland University in Australia, and spends much of his time thinking, learning, and talking about dingoes. Bradley just wrote a scientific paper with a student in which they study how the show builds resilience in children who watch its 150 episodes.
Case van Genuchten, PhD, works for the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) and just published research showing that arsenic from drinking water waste can be changed into a valuable commodity. He has studied how to remove arsenic from drinking water for years, but now, in this new paper in Science Advances, he has figured out how to turn arsenic waste into metallic arsenic, a raw material important for digital infrastructure and clean energy systems. Decrees in the EU and US over the past few years have declared metallic arsenic a Critical Raw Material, making his research even more important.
Cassia Low Manting, PhD, is a neuroscientist at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, studying how the brain pays attention to music, and if it differs depending on whether the person has received musical training. Her new research paper was just published in Science Advances.
Cédric Girard-Buttoz is an evolutionary biologist who studies primates and other animals. His new research investigates how chimpanzees assemble various sounds into multiple meanings.
Charlotte Stagg, MBChB, PhD is a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford. She studies motor function in humans, and was part of a team that created a helmet that sends ultrasound pulses into very specific parts of the brain. She plans to study whether the helmet can non-invasively treat people with neurological, and even psychiatric, disorders.
Desirée Plata, PhD, is an environmental chemist at MIT.
Dr. Fadi Lakkis is a physician scientist specializing in kidney transplantation at Stanford University.
Heather Mefford, MD, PhD, is a human geneticist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. She studies the genetic underpinnings of epilepsy and neurodevelopmental diseases.
Dr. Jan Gogarten is a wildlife disease ecologist at HelmHoltz Institute for One Health in Greifswald, Germany.
Find him and his institutes on Bluesky:
@jangogarten.bsky.social
@helmholtzhzi.bsky.social
@helmholtz-hioh.bsky.social
Photo by Wally Pruß
Dr. Katherine Amato is a biological anthropologist at Norwestern University. She studies gut microbiota, human evolution, primate ecology, and nutrition and energetics.
Lauren Osborne, MD, is a reproductive psychiatrist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City. She wants to understand why mood disorders occur in women during and after pregnancy and has dedicated her career to improving perinatal and postnatal mental health.
Photo by Will Kirk, Johns Hopkins
Dr. Louis Bont is a world-renowned respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) researcher and pediatrician who heads the Department of Pediatrics at Wilhelmina Children's Hospital at University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands, and co-leads the non-profit ReSViNET, a foundation which seeks to make RSV less harmful all over the world.
X: @BontLouis
UMC Utrecht: https://research.umcutrecht.nl/researchers/bont/
Melissa Harrison, PhD, is a molecular biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and she studies how human cells turn particular genes on and off, developing from a single cell into a full-grown person. She uses the fruit fly as an easy, inexpensive model. Her latest research with UW colleague Peter Lewis, PhD, uncovered a protein that plays a role in a pediatric cancer called diffuse midline glioma.
Paleoecologist Michela Mariani, PhD, is an associate professor at the University of Nottingham in the UK. She's originally from Milan, Italy, and her research takes her to Australia, where she examines cores of mud full of ancient pollen pulled from beneath Tasmanian lakes. Her latest paper in Science determined that indigenous people removed the shrub layer from their forests, which prevented devastating wildfires from destroying their lands.
X: @MarianiMichaela
Bluesky: @michela-mariani.bsky.social
Samuel Dicken, PhD, is a research fellow at University College London, studying the foods people eat and how they affect their health and weight. In a new study published in Nature Medicine, he gave 55 people either an ultraprocessed or a minimally processed diet and watched how their bodies reacted.
Dr. Scott Krayenhoff is an urban climatologist at the University of Guelph in Canada. His recent paper in the PNAS looks at mitigation solutions for various outcomes in urban heat islands.
Scott MacIvor, PhD, is an urban ecologist at the University of Toronto.
Dr. Shannon Curry is a planetary and astrophysical scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She directs the MAVEN mission at NASA, and recently published new research showing one way Mars' atmosphere may have disappeared.
Soumya Acharya, MD, PhD, is the graduate program director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design.
Lidya Yurdum is a graduate student in social psychology at the University of Amsterdam. She recently published a study on babies and song in Child Development.