Origin Story: How Did STEM Find You?

Hear Microsoft Senior Researcher and biostatistician, Lorin Crawford, discuss the future of interdisciplinary work in science in this clip of Origin Story.  Checkout the full episode on Anchor or Spotify.  

Listen to Physicist Sylvester James Gates Jr. discuss the first time he encountered the Schrödinger equation in this clip of Origin Story.  Checkout the full episode on Anchor or Spotify.  

Evolutionary geneticist, C. Brandon Ogbunu, discusses boxing as a complex system of live computation in this clip of Origin Story.  Checkout the full episode on Anchor or Spotify.  

Are chips for everything from washing machines to cars becoming too small?  In this clip of Origin Story, Professor and Physicist Nadya Mason touches on the problem of the disappearing chip.  Checkout the full episode on Anchor or Spotify.  

Nadya Mason is the Rosalyn S. Yalow Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and founding Director of the Illinois Materials Research Science and Engineering Center. She is an experimental physicist who works at the intersection of complex materials, superconductivity, and nanotechnology. She is particularly recognized for her work elucidating the electronic properties of low-dimensional correlated materials, such as hybrid superconducting devices containing metal, graphene, or topological insulators. Mason received her bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard University, her doctorate in physics from Stanford University, and engaged in postdoctoral research as a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows. She has been a general Councilor of the American Physical Society (APS), a Chair of the APS Committee on Minorities, and works to both improve science communication and increase diversity in the physical sciences. Her TED talk on “How to spark your curiosity, scientifically” has over 450,000 views. Mason is a recipient of numerous awards, including the APS Maria Goeppert Mayer Award and the APS Bouchet Award, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

Elizabeth Wayne is a TED Fellow and Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering. Her research is at the interface of immunology and biomaterials engineering, designing nanoparticles and diagnostic tools that can modulate macrophage phenotype. Currently, she is applying these concepts to investigate air-pollution, lung regeneration, atherosclerosis, pre-eclampsia, and cancer.  Dr. Wayne received her bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Pennsylvania where she was a Ronald E. McNair Scholar and Moelis Access Science Scholar.  She continued her education at Cornell University, where her research on the role of immune cells in cancer progression and their potential as drug delivery carriers was supported by funding from the National Cancer Institute Physical Sciences in Oncology Network and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Afterwards, she completed a National Cancer Institute Cancer Nanotechnology Training Program Postdoctoral Fellow in the Eshelman School of Pharmacy at UNC-Chapel Hill. Dr. Wayne is a science communicator who uses her platform to discuss the future of immunoengineering and issues related to underrepresented minorities in science.  In 2017, she gave a TED Talk on immunoengineering which currently has been viewed over 1.5 million times. She was featured in the Super Cool Scientists: A Women in Science Coloring Book. She is also the co-host of the show PhDivas, a podcast that tells the stories of women in leadership and higher education. Dr. Wayne has been interviewed and written for various platforms including PBS News Hour Brief but Spectacular Series, Aspen Ideas Health Festival, Nature Careers, Nature Medicine, Bust Magazine, The Atlantic, and the LA Times.

Check out these promo clips from our next episode with chemical and biomedical engineer, Elizabeth Wayne.  Full episode coming soon!

Lorin Crawford is a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, MA. He also maintains a faculty position in the School of Public Health at Brown University with an affiliation in the Center for Computational Molecular Biology. The central aim of his research program is to develop novel and efficient algorithms that address complex problems in quantitative genetics, cancer pharmacology, molecular genomics, and geometric morphometrics (i.e., radiomics and cancer imaging).  Prior to joining Microsoft, he received his PhD from the Department of Statistical Science at Duke University where he was co-advised by Sayan Mukherjee and Kris C. Wood. As a Duke Dean’s Graduate Fellow and NSF Graduate Research Fellow he completed his PhD dissertation entitled: “Bayesian Kernel Models for Statistical Genetics and Cancer Genomics.” He also received his Bachelors of Science degree in Mathematics from Clark Atlanta University.

C. Brandon Ogbunu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University. He's a evolutionary geneticist whose research interest focuses on complex interactions between genes and the environment. In addition, Brandon writes for various venues at the intersection between science, data and culture. His writing has appeared in Wired Magazine, Deadspin, The Conversation, Greater Good Magazine and Boxing.com.

Sylvester James Gates Jr., known as S. James Gates Jr. or Jim Gates, is an American theoretical physicist who works on supersymmetry, supergravity, and superstring theory. He retired from the physics department at the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences in 2017, and he is now the Brown Theoretical Physics Center Director, the Ford Foundation Professor of Physics, Affiliate Professor of Mathematics, and Watson Institute for International Studies & Public Affairs Faculty Fellow at Brown University. He was a University of Maryland Regents Professor and served on former President Barack Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.