Bio

What shapes a person? For me, it was a free-range childhood in rural Kentucky, with days spent working and playing outside and evenings buried in books. Then, it was leaving that comfortable place for the rigor and structure of academic science. And it was motherhood, which made me ask what mattered most.

Writing has always mattered to me. It has been a steady current through my life, from private journals to scientific papers to grant proposals. I left the world of academic research in 2011, but I didn’t want to leave behind the science, and there was no question that I would find a way to keep writing. At first, my blog, Science of Mom, was my sole outlet, and then that grew into a book of the same name, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2015, with a 2nd edition published in 2021).

I discovered that writing stories about science was the best job I could imagine. It allowed me to keep learning, to talk with fascinating people, and to find satisfaction in clarifying complex, nuanced stories for readers. I’m hooked, and I’m happy to finally feel like I’ve found my place in the world.

EXPERIENCE:

• Independent science writer, 2012-present
• Author of The Science of Mom: A Research Based Guide to Your Baby’s First Year, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015 (2nd edition due out November 2021)
• Coauthor and editor of Nutrition: Science and Application, an 11-chapter, college-level online textbook, published by OpenOregon in December 2020 and updated in summer 2022. The text has since been adopted for use by faculty at 50 colleges and universities around the country, with at least one adoption in Japan!
• Part-time Faculty, Health Professions Division, Lane Community College, 2012-present
• Courtesy Instructor, Department of Human Physiology, University of Oregon, 2012, 2016-2017
• Postdoctoral fellowship in fetal physiology, University of Arizona, 2008-2011 (funded by National Institutes of Health Individual Postdoctoral F32 Fellowship)
• Graduate student researcher, Department of Nutrition, University of California, Davis, 2004-2008 (funded by individual National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship)
• Lab technician, Smithsonian Institution, National Zoological Park, 2002-2004

EDUCATION:

• University of California, Davis, Ph.D. in nutritional biology, minor in endocrinology, 2008
• Cornell University, B.S. in animal science, 2002 (for a time, I wanted to be a farmer)

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS:

• National Association of Science Writers (2016 – present
• Association of Healthcare Journalists (2017 – present)

You can read more about me and see my academic publications (previously as Alice S. Green) at my Linkedin profile.