CV – Dispersal route – Outreach

Hometown:  Lyme, NH, USA

Non-Scientific Passions: Mountains, snow, finding new places, tasty food

I wish I had more time to: Ski, read books

Life-changing experiences: Ski racing full-time for two years as part of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project; spending two years traveling Europe and making friends with classmates from around the world in the Erasmus Mundus Master Programme in Evolution

Favorite Places to Ski: Dorchester, NH, USA; Sjusjøen, Norway; Melchsee Frutt, Switzerland

Favorite Places for hiking & trail running: White Mountains, NH, USA; Trondelag & Northern Scandinavia, Sweden & Norway; Graubünden & Engadin, Switzerland (see my Swiss hiking guide here); Rocky Mountains, USA

Blogging: I have a personal blog – please check it out! I sometimes write about science and academia; you can find a collection of those posts here. The rest of my blog is devoted to what I do in my personal time, and includes a lot of writing and photos from travel.

Writing: I have an optimistic/unrealistic dream that at some point, alongside doing research and teaching, I’d really like to write about science for the general public. After all, it was Jonathan Weiner’s book The Beak of the Finch (about Peter and Rosemary Grant) which spurred me to go back to school and get my masters degree. Communicating the fun, cool, and fascinating parts of our job as scientists is vitally important to establishing a general public that understands the value of science. It’s important to me that we share our results more widely than just in academic papers that reside between paywalls – even if they are free on our websites, the language and style is not always accessible.

I previously worked as the editor-at-large for the ski website FasterSkier.com. I focused on issues of sports governance, sports science and health, and doping, including leading major investigations. As part of the job I also got to travel to a few World Cup level competitions each year for onsite-race coverage; one highlight of my career with them was a trip to the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia! In some ways I miss writing on a regular basis and turning in multiple stories a week, sometimes with short turnaround times, because that habit makes writing easier. I’m less intimidated by a blank page because of my experience, and also think about how to structure science communication through storytelling. Here’s a sample of some of my writing.