Gertrude Elion: Forging the path towards a cure for cancer

Jasmin Joseph-Chazan is a second-year PhD student in the Immunology department at Harvard University. You can find her on Twitter as @chazanjasmin. Isabella Fraschilla is a Ph.D. student in the Immunology Program at Harvard Medical School. She is studying how immune cells regulate commensal gut bacteria. Cover image by Arek Socha from Pixabay. This biography is part of our “Picture a Scientist” initiative. To learn … Continue reading Gertrude Elion: Forging the path towards a cure for cancer

Gertrude Elion: Forging the path towards a cure for cancer

by Isabella Fraschilla Despite never receiving a PhD, Gertrude Elion was awarded the 1988 Nobel Prize in Medicine. She shared this prize with Sir James Black and her mentor George Hitchings for revolutionizing pharmacology by rejecting the standard trial-and-error approach for rational drug design. Their critical work in understanding drug metabolism and physiological processes resulted in the rare Nobel Prize awarded to employees of a … Continue reading Gertrude Elion: Forging the path towards a cure for cancer

Lights. Camera. Action! How the Hawaiian bobtail squid brings a creative vision to its maritime world of small big screens

by Edward Chenfigures by Jovana Andrejevic On a sunny, nondescript Hawaiian day, a Vibrio fischeri bacterium arises the same as on most other nondescript days: homeless. It hurries along on a ride to work. No, not by car. Not onboard a trolley either. Yes! The great, dynamic Pacific Ocean current. Currency-free and open to all, it’s the road to opportunity and fortune for aquatic hard … Continue reading Lights. Camera. Action! How the Hawaiian bobtail squid brings a creative vision to its maritime world of small big screens

It’s Not All about Microbes: Genetics and susceptibility to infections

by Aleks Procherafigures by Shreya Mantri  The past year and a half have been a time of profound uncertainty. We all wish we could gaze into a COVID crystal ball and get answers to our burning questions. Some of us would want to know how long the pandemic will last. Others, however, especially those who have never received a positive result, would likely seek an … Continue reading It’s Not All about Microbes: Genetics and susceptibility to infections

James E. Bowman: Making history in science and society

Tian Lu is a graduate student in the Harvard Biological and Biomedical Sciences. He uses fluorescent microscopy to study spatial-multiomics. Xiaomeng Han is a graduate student in the Harvard Ph.D. Program in Neuroscience. She uses electron microscopy to study neuronal connectivity. Cover image, by H. Alexander Talbot via Wikimedia Commons, is licensed under CC BY 2.0  This biography is part of our “Picture a Scientist” … Continue reading James E. Bowman: Making history in science and society