At my day job, I work on improving diagnostics for all kinds of diseases. These days that work is dominated by COVID-19. Some heroic members of my lab are still working on tests and test methods that might be helpful the next time this virus comes around.
About two years ago, I started writing a popular science book focused on medical devices and how they impact and intersect with women’s health. The work was slow, mainly because writing a book turns out to be hard.
To get my ass in gear and actually finish the book, last semester I hired three wonderful young women as research assistants. We had been meeting and chatting about this project weekly. Then COVID-19 hit us and now we are all working from home. A lot of our sci comm work has turned to the pandemic, and we decided that 280 character tweets don’t offer enough depth or permanency for the info we would like to share.
To keep this work going, Skylar, Sarita, and Lizy, and I have decided to share our (evidence based!) thoughts and some of our works in progress for the book here on the blog. You can learn a bit more about us here, but I can tell you, without exaggeration, these three women are the only reason this work can continue in this crazy time.
The scope of our writing project has expanded to include science and engineering explainers on more topics than just medical devices. I also guarantee that I will be injecting a lot of the personal into this blog. The first personal touches are the photographs. If they aren’t credited to someone else, they are my original art. -Cathie
Took this one with my Moment Macro lens at the 2017 Microfluidics GRC in Italy.
Find me on Twitter @DrKlapperich
