Melinda likes to think she lives in the cozy center of a Venn diagram where science and creativity overlap. She received a PhD in neuroscience from the University of Arizona and spent time as a postdoctoral researcher at UCLA. Her research examined the effect of estrogens on neural circuitry of the hypothalamus (the tiny but amazing part of the brain where reproduction, thermoregulation, body weight, and circadian rhythm are all governed!). Concerned with growing mistrust of science and lack of scientific content publicly available, she packed up and left academia for a career in communications. Now a science writer at a pediatric research institution, Melinda finds daily joy in telling the stories of groundbreaking science. She feels lucky to cover a wide range of topics, from discoveries of novel intracellular signaling cascades to software that allows medical physicists to optimize radiation therapy for cancer. Her firm belief that science is for everyone fuels her to write stories that are exciting but factual. In between work and raising two daughters, she writes science-inspired fiction and poetry.

Watch their presentation on the SciComm YouTube channel.