Ina Park used to think she’d write a popular science book when she retired. Then in January of 2015, a traumatic event, her oldest son being hit by a car, caused her to think harder about how she prioritizes her time. While he is now healthy, she decided not to postpone working on important goals. Shortly afterward, Park also saw the call for the 2017-18 cohort of the AAAS Leshner Leadership Institute for Public Engagement with Science, which was focused on infectious disease – her general area of expertise. Now that Park has pitched her book, acquired an agent and a contract, and learned more about writing a book for public consumption, she sees many potential benefits to tackling this project now while her career is in full swing: it may open other doors for her, and she’s come to think that early or mid-career scientists can also be uniquely inspiring to people.

Jerry Glover is helping to build more resilient food and agricultural systems. One of the ways he does this is by supporting women in deciding for themselves what is best for their families and their farms (Glover explained this approach backstage at the 2017 Food Tank DC Summit). As a Senior Sustainable Agricultural Systems Advisor with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Glover seeks to change the perception that the only goal of agriculture is increasing production: agricultural impacts on the environment, economics and social networks must also be taken into account.

BOSTON – The oral health of ethnic minorities and lower-income groups is much worse than that of the general population, but leveraging social networks and other innovative healthcare delivery channels may help close this troubling gap.

Researchers have developed a way to model the behavioral patterns of online supporters of the Islamic State and use it to predict conditions that may spur real-world attacks. The model shows that when groups of ISIS supporters increase in number and size on the internet, conditions for an attack are more likely.