How Bacterial Battles Paved the Way for CRISPR Gene Editing In the microscopic world, a relentless battle has been raging for millennia, one that has inadvertently given rise to one of the most significant scientific breakthroughs of our time: CRISPR gene editing technology. This discovery, stemming from the age-old war between bacteria and viruses, reshaped… Continue reading Unseen Conflict:
Category: Women in STEM
Jennifer Doudna:
Rewriting the Code of Life with CRISPR-Cas9 Few discoveries in modern science have generated as much excitement and promise as CRISPR-Cas9, a revolutionary gene-editing system. Standing for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, CRISPR is a powerful tool that allows scientists to make precise changes to DNA, revolutionizing the field of biology. UC Berkeley biochemist… Continue reading Jennifer Doudna:
Nancy Grace Roman:
Gazing Beyond the Stars Last week’s post referred to the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope and a reader asked, “Who is Nancy Grace Roman?” NASA astronomer Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, a tireless champion of the Hubble Space Telescope, became the first woman to serve as Chief of Astronomy at NASA. Her pioneering work laid the groundwork… Continue reading Nancy Grace Roman:
Nanotechnology
Big Things from Small Particles Nanotechnology is a branch of science and technology focused on the study and application of tiny particles and structures. This interdisciplinary field combines many areas of study, such as physics, chemistry, biology, materials science, engineering, and computer science. One example of nanotechnology at work is Tethys, the device developed by… Continue reading Nanotechnology
How She Did It
Anika Chebrolu’s Research Process Almost 7 million people around the world have died from the coronavirus since the beginning of this pandemic and just over 1 million in the United States as of this posting. You can see updates on the CNN link above. Anika Chebrolu, a Texas high school student, stands out among scientists… Continue reading How She Did It
Anika Chebrolu and Her COVID Research
Wondering Why do so many people die of viruses each year? wondered then-fourteen-year-old Anika Chebrulo. While recovering in bed from her own severe case of flu in 2019, the 8th grader from Frisco, Texas decided to learn more. Her question led to the discovery of a possible therapy for COVID-19. Learning and Entry Once recovered,… Continue reading Anika Chebrolu and Her COVID Research
Inside the Box
Gitanjali Rao’s Epione Gitanjali Rao, an award-winning inventor, was 13 years old when a family friend became addicted to her prescription opioid drugs. She learned that over 20 million Americans over the age of 12 suffer from some form of addiction to prescription drugs. Also, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse, over 130… Continue reading Inside the Box
Fighting Opioid Addiction
Gitanjali Rao Invents a Medical Diagnostic Tool “One of our family friends became addicted to prescription opioids after a car accident,” says Gitanjali Rao, an award-winning inventor. The friend’s doctor had prescribed opioid painkillers to ease her suffering. As happens all too often, Gitanjali discovered, the friend mistakenly took too much of her prescription and… Continue reading Fighting Opioid Addiction
Yvonne Clark
Rediscovering Women and People of Color in Science Yvonne Clark’s path to working on the Saturn Five rockets that took astronauts to the moon started with burned toast and her desire to fly planes. Y.Y., as she like to be called, had a longer road to that rocket project than most of her NASA colleagues.… Continue reading Yvonne Clark
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
Geobiologist Dr. Hope Jahren wrote Lab Girl as a story of her life in science. The core of her book chronicles her life as a young woman growing up to be a scientist. “In my memory of those dark winter nights [in rural Minnesota] … as my father [who taught physics and earth sciences at… Continue reading Lab Girl by Hope Jahren