Science + Writing = Career
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Yale University - The Anlyan Center, N107 Auditorium
Join Science Alliance to explore how to turn your science skills into a successful writing career. Our panel has put away the labcoat for the pen and include an editor, a consultant and a freelancer.
Presentations
Joshua Kolling-Perin, PhD
Manager of Editorial and QA Services
Campbell Alliance
Kolling-Perin has spent over a decade as a writer and editor in the health care field. He began his career covering state-level health policy as a reporter for State Health Notes, a Washington D.C.-based newsletter. He went on to edit several daily online publications, first as Senior Editor of American Health Line and then as Editor in Chief of the Kaiser Family Foundation's reports on health policy, HIV/AIDS, and reproductive health. He is currently the Manager of Editorial Services and Quality Assurance for Campbell Alliance, a management consulting firm specializing in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. Kolling-Perin earned a Ph.D. in English from Yale in 2003.
Lara Szewczak, PhD
Associate Editor
Chemistry & Biology and Structure
Cell Press
After graduating from Yale University in 1991 with a degree in Chemistry (BS), Szewczak entered the graduate progam in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She completed her Ph.D. with Thomas Cech studying catalytic RNA. Her research characterized the properties and reactivity of synthetic dinucleotide substrates and provided evidence for a catalytic metal ion on the group I ribozyme active site. Following her PhD, Szewczak returned to Yale to pursue post-doctoral research with Joan Steitz and Scott Strobel, investigating the assembly of small nucleolar ribonuclear protein particles (snoRNPs) involved in a very early stage of ribosome biogenesis. Using nucleotide analogs, she demonstrated that snoRNP assembly in Xenopus oocytes requires recognition of specific RNA functional groups; subsequently, she measured the energetic contributions of those positions to the RNA-protein complex in vitro. In April 2005, Szewczak joined Cell Press and became the Associate Editor of two journals: Chemistry & Biology and Structure. In October 2006, she also began working as a member of the Cell editorial team.
Patricia Kahn, PhD
Freelancer
Kahn is a science writer who works with academic and nonprofit organizations in producing publications, grants, scientific plans, and meeting reports. She is also editor or coeditor of three books, two on AIDS vaccines and one on oncogenes.
Kahn began as a laboratory scientist, earning a PhD in genetics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and then doing research at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg. As the lure of writing became stronger she left the lab and became a European correspondent for Science magazine, reporting on topics ranging from genome research to Germany's science and education systems. After returning to the United States in 1998, she spent several years editing publications at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative in New York before turning freelance in 2003.
Over the past eight years Kahn has run a variety of writing courses and workshops for scientists. She now teaches a required workshop for PhD students at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.