Editor
Jennifer Rohn
Jenny runs a cell biology lab at University College London and is a part-time novelist and science communicator. A lapsed American, Jenny appears occasionally on TV, radio, documentaries, podcasts, live panels and in print as a science/lit/art/culture pundit, tweets as @jennyrohn and blogs about the scientific lifestyle at Mind the Gap on Occam’s Typewriter. She is the author of three novels about scientists: Experimental Heart, The Honest Look, and Cat Zero. Her writing has appeared in places such as the BBC News, The Guardian, Nature and The Times. Learn more at her personal website.
Staff
Richard P. Grant
Richard is our Deputy Editor. A British molecular cell biologist and structural biochemist, he now specializes in strategic content at a pharma comms agency in London. He writes fiction under the pseudonym ‘rpg’ and tweets as @rpg7twit. In addition to helping to steer LabLit’s editorial direction, he helps edit fiction and poetry. He blogs at Confessions of a (Former) Lab Rat on Occam’s Typewriter.
Åsa Karlström
A native Swede, Åsa is working as a project coordinator at a private research institute in Memphis, Tennessee. With a background in bacteriology and influenza as a post-doc that led her to work in an FDA-regulated environment, she has (almost) left bench work and now works with translational research projects, getting people to work together efficiently. She also enjoys running in nature, reading and cooking. In addition to being responsible for keeping the Lab Lit List up to date, Åsa occasionally writes pseudonymously for the site.
H. Dominic Stiles
Dom is our chief ‘lab lit sniffer’, spending many happy hours in second bookstores looking for forgotten examples in science in fiction. Dom has had a colorful career as a chorister, a stonemason, and as a student of the Norwegian language and archaeology. He has an MA in Medieval and West Norse Studies from University College London. Being too eclectic to ever do a PhD, he fell into working in UCL Libraries, and now writes a blog for the Ear Institute and Action on Hearing Loss Libraries. He has been been deeply interested in natural history and the environment since he was a child, and while not a scientist, he considers himself to be ‘scientific’ in outlook.
Regular Contributors
Pippa Goldschmidt
Pippa writes short stories, poetry and non-fiction about science. She’s a writer in residence at the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum, based at the University of Edinburgh. She used to be an astronomer, and has an MLitt in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow. She’s been writing a novel about a female astronomer for longer than she cares to think about.
João Ramalho-Santos
João is an Associate Professor at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, and a Researcher in Reproductive Biology at the Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology. His first novel, in Portuguese, is Portland, Portugal (Afrontamento, 2007), and he writes frequent short fiction for LabLit. He is also quite interested in graphic novels (comics, bande dessinée, manga), and has co-authored a few books in or about the format. In that vein, he is a co-owner of the bookstore Dr Kartoon.
Rebecca Nesbit
Rebecca’s most recent book, Is that Fish in your Tomato?, explores the science and politics of genetically modified foods. She studied butterfly migration for her PhD, then trained honeybees to detect explosives. Her projects since have ranged from a citizen science study on flying ants to accompanying Nobel Laureates on visits to universities around the world. Most of her fiction features science and scientists, and her first lablit novel was released in 2014. She tweets as @RebeccaNesbit.
Anne Burke
Anne is a medical scientist working in immunology in a teaching hospital in Dublin. When not chasing antibodies, she enjoys science fiction and hillwalking. Currently completing an MSc in science communication in Dublin City University, she likes talking about science even more than doing science.
Kirk Smith
Kirk taught cognitive psychology, statistics and scientific writing to both undergraduate and graduate students at Bowling Green State University in Ohio for more than 20 years. When he retired and moved to Bellingham, Washington, he began writing a story about an extraordinary graduate student. It eventually became his first novel. He’s now at work on a novel about her life as a fanatically dedicated young brain scientist.
Julia Richards
Julia received her Ph.D. in biological chemistry in 2010 studying temporal and spatial control of gene expression. After a brief postdoc in the genetics department, she is currently working at a pharmaceutical company. Check out her blog.