Harvard University, Microbiology & Immunology
Fellowship Sponsor: TBA
Fellowship Site: Smithsonian Magazine
@KatherineJWu
www.katherinejwu.com
I’m an aspiring scientist, writer, and science writer, not necessarily in that order. As a fourth-year PhD student at Harvard University, I study how bacteria deal with stress so that I can one day learn to do the same. Although I started out as an English major in college, I quickly fell in love with science communication and outreach and never looked back. For the past two years, I’ve led Science in the News, a graduate student organization dedicated to making cutting edge science accessible to the general public and training student scientists to better communicate their work. I am also the Curriculum Director of the Health Professions Recruitment and Exposure Program (HPREP), an outreach program that mentors underserved and minority high school students from the greater Boston area. Even though I’m technically a microbiologist, I love writing about all things science, whether or not they have nuclei – in particular, the fascinating ways in which reproduction and gender dynamics play out across the animal kingdom (ask me about hyenas!). In my spare time, I serve as a heat-generating pillow for my cats and continue my quest to find the authentic tacos east of the Mississippi.
Fellowship publications at Smithsonian Magazine
6/12/2018 Five Ways Real Science Would Make the New Jurassic World So Much Better
6/13/2018 Like Birds, Some Bats Warble to Woo Their Mates
6/15/2018 Eyes Wide Shut: What most people don’t know about sleep
6/21/2018 Operation Calamari: How the Smithsonian Got Its Giant Squids
6/22/2018 A Living Lump of Atoms: Looking at evolution through the lens of physics
6/22/2018 It's Pooches vs. Poachers in the Fight Against Wildlife Smugglers
6/26/2018 Why Bioluminescence Evolved to be Red Light, and Blue
6/28/2018 A Primer on the Zoo’s Possibly Pregnant Giant Panda
6/28/2018 Alternatives to Heterosexual Pairings, Brought to You By Non-Human Animals
6/28/2018 The Earliest Mammals Kept Their Cool With Descended Testicles
6/29/2018 A Mind of One’s Own: When it comes to brains, it’s surprisingly hard to figure out what counts as “normal”
7/02/2018 For His Patriotic Birthday, Five Facts About Calvin Coolidge
7/02/2018 The Century’s Longest Lunar Eclipse Will Shroud the Moon This Month
7/02/2018 The National Zoo’s Golden Lion Tamarins Delight Curators with the Delivery of Twins
7/03/2018 Five Real Life Wasp Superpowers Not in Ant-Man and the Wasp
7/05/2018 How Artificial Ovaries Could Expand Fertility Options For Chemo Patients
7/05/2018 Giant Panda Mei Xiang Will Not Give Birth
7/09/2018 How Humans Created the Ultimate Superpests
7/09/2018 How Tiny Trackers Could Help Humans Avoid Kissing Bugs’ Deadly Smooch
7/10/2018 Settling a Heated Debate—Do Zebra Stripes Keep These Animals Cool?
7/10/2018 New Artificial Insemination Technique Successfully Breeds Critically Endangered Scimitar-Horned Oryx
7/11/2018 A Never-Before-Seen Virus Has Been Detected in Myanmar’s Bats
7/16/2018 This is Your Brain on Fatherhood
7/17/2018 How Fruit Flies Stay Young at Heart
7/17/2018 Homecoming King: The Nation’s T. rex Returns to the Smithsonian
7/18/2018 Both Mice and Men Struggle to Abandon Their Best-Laid Plans
7/18/2018 Combing Through the Fishy Origins of Human Hair
7/20/2018 It's Not Without Caws That Crows Desecrate Their Dead
7/23/2018 New Research Suggests Dr. Seuss Modeled the Lorax on This Real-Life Monkey
7/24/2018 Why the Most Helpful Dogs Keep Calm and Carry On
7/24/2018 A Jamestown Skeleton is Unearthed, but Only Time—and Science—will Reveal His True Identity
7/25/2018 Compelling Evidence Suggests There’s a Liquid Lake Beneath Mars’ Surface
7/26/2018 Dads Pass On More Than Genetics in Their Sperm
7/27/2018 To Pinpoint the Origin of a Fish, Check Out Its Physique
7/30/2018 At Nearly Four Months Old, the Zoo’s Youngest Gorilla Has Begun to Show His Rambunctious Roots
7/31/2018 How Dad’s Genes Can Prepare Mom for Parenthood
8/01/2018 Lemurs Smear Bugs on Their Privates to Ward Off Infection
8/01/2018 Death Valley Scorches Its Own Record for the Hottest Month in History
8/03/2018 The Real Science Behind the Megalodon
8/03/2018 The Other Amelia Earharts: Five daredevil women who led the way into the wild blue yonder
8/06/2018 Popcorn-Powered Robots? Get ’Em While They’re Hot!
8/06/2018 Koalas Use Ancient Viral DNA to Neutralize New Invaders
8/06/2018 Four Foals Join the Herd of Przewalski’s Horses at the Smithsonian
8/07/2018 Zebra Finches Dream a Little Dream of Melody
8/08/2018 Why This Year’s Perseid Meteor Shower Promises to Be Especially Dazzling
8/08/2018 What the Fox Genome Tells Us About Domestication
8/09/2018 Behind the Scenes With the Spacecraft That Will Soar Through the Sun’s Atmosphere
8/09/2018 The National Zoo’s Beloved, Aging Emu Has Died
8/13/2018 A Macaw Breeding Center Supplied Prehistoric Americans With Prized Plumage
8/14/2018 Cancer Is One Worry Elephants Can Feel Free to Forget
8/15/2018 See Shells of Sea Spuds on the Seashore
8/16/2018 Museum Curators Reflect on the Legacy of the Queen of Soul
8/16/2018 Oldest Cheese Ever Found in Egyptian Tomb
8/20/2018 Do Not Fear the Drones Air-Dropping 50,000 Mosquitoes From Above
8/21/2018 In the Quest for Universal Blood, Go With Your Gut
8/23/2018 Newly Discovered Turtle Ancestors Chomped With Beaks But Bore No Shells
8/23/2018 Like Humans, Some Birds Blush to Communicate
8/27/2018 For Men, Gains in the Gym May Come at a Cost to Sperm
8/28/2018 Pregnant Male Pipefish are the Sea’s Swaggery Swingers
9/04/2018 The Mysterious Origins of the Smallpox Vaccine