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I had the honor of being guest on the Perspective 2020 podcast hosted by my former UNC classmate Kara Marker Credle back in December 2020. We discussed living in a data driven world, both in general and during a pandemic. Read more
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Today is Memorial Day in the United States, a day when we honor those who lost their lives in service to our country. It is also a day we approach 100,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. Yesterday, the NY Times memorialized just 1% of those deaths starting on the Sunday front page. If we add every U.S. military death from the beginning of the Korean War in 1950 through all wars and conflicts up to today, we arrive at a similar number of 102,483 deaths (Note: this value is based on this table and could be more or less depending on inclusion of MIA or other nuances). In three months we have lost nearly the amount of Americans as the military personnel we’ve lost in 70 years of conflicts. To memorialize the sacrifice of those who gave their lives for the U.S., we should use our hard-fought freedoms responsibly to help our society and economy move forward as safely as possible in the presence of SARS-CoV-2. I acknowledge that the majority of our country is being conscientious and generous in their sacrifices, and I empathize that everyone has their own unique situation, but we are all interconnected in this pandemic. I believe the following are things we can do to live up to the American way our service members fought and died for. Read more
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In this blog post I discuss the credibility of the sources we turn to for evidence, and I provide a curation of resources for readers to explore claims in “Plandemic.” For the scientific community specifically, I summarize and comment on the lessons I’ve learned from “Plandemic”-related discourse the past week. I hope it will be relevant for science communication efforts during the pandemic! Read more
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Anecdotal evidence of positive outcomes from the antiviral remdesivir (developed by Gilead Sciences Inc.) have emerged through compassionate use in the previous months, but we needed randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to judge efficacy, or how well the drug worked. A summary of results from a clinical trial in China was inadvertently posted by the World Health Organization last week and did not look too promising. You can read more from TIME. Today, April 29, 2020, a statement was released from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) summarizing the preliminary results from the use of remdesivir at 68 international sites. The science and medicine publication, STAT, covered it here. We can’t see the entire methodology to assess the study and analysis limitations, but here is a first pass at what we do know. Read more
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You can read my previous pandemic blog posts from April 6, April 2, March 22-25, March 19-21, and March 14-18. As always, you should take everything you read on the internet with a healthy dose of skepticism, and I am not an epidemiologist. But I try to provide relevant evidence from credible sources and use my scientific/statistical training to summarize the highlights of pertinent research with a side of editorialization. Read more
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You can see previous pandemic blog posts here, here, here, and here. As always, you should take everything you read on the internet with a healthy dose of skepticism, but I try to provide relevant evidence from credible sources. Read more
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Today’s blog post comes to you as I hit the three week mark since the last time I was within 6 feet of another human. This isn’t a sacrifice, it is my responsibility as a citizen with privilege to stand in solidarity with those throughout our society who are suffering. I have friends who are health care professionals treating COVID-19 patients without proper PPE, I know people who have lost loved ones to COVID-19, and I know people who have lost jobs. And these are largely people with a lot of privilege. Read more
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As I continue to provide pandemic-related scientific resources, explanations, and news, please remember to take my interpretations with a grain of salt, as you should with everything you read on the internet. You can find my first batch of updates here and the second batch here. Read more
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As of March 19, 2020 it’s been about a week since widespread closures began in my area—Ann Arbor, Michigan. It’s been 8 days since the World Health Organization declared a pandemic. I’m continuing to curate the top (in my mind) science news and resources here on the blog. You can see my first few days of updates here! I’m trying to add explainers for non-scientists and adding my take on the significance of findings when possible. As with anything on the internet, readers should take my interpretations and editorializations with an ounce of skepticism. What started as advocating for a few weeks of social distancing, now looks more like an effort to present relevant science as humanity battles a potentially long-lasting pandemic. I hope it helps in some way. Read more
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This is your friendly neighborhood scientist asking you to practice social distancing if you have the privilege to do so! Read more
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This piece was originally posted on the Association of Women in Science (AWIS) at University of Michigan blog. Read more
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I was honored to be highlighted by the Association of Women in Science (AWIS) at Univeristy of Michgan. The spotlight should you give a sense of my career trajectory (including life as a Natonal Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow), experiences as a woman in STEM, and my commitment to outreach. Please reach out to me bwolford at umich.edu if you’d like to further discuss life in academia as a woman! Read more
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Last week was Computer Science Education Week, so naturally I wanted to highlight my favorte CS Ed organization, Girls Who Code at UM Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics! MiSciWriters, the awesome science communication blog at UM, published my article today. Our Executive Committee is really proud of the work we do here in Michigan and the materials we post on Github for other CS educators! Personally, I’m thankful for the women I work with who do amazing research and serve their communities so well. Happy belated CS Education Week! Read more
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For the past 2 years I’ve contributed to the ASHG Trainee Newsletter, the Nascent Transcript. 2018’s 4th quarter edition was published today, and includes my final contribution. I have greatly enjoyed interviewing trainees in the field, collaborating with other trainees through the editing process, flexing my science communication muscles, and curating #ASHGtrainee tweets. Read more
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Hei fra Trondheim! Read more
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I had the privilege of interviewing Natalie Telis at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics. We discussed the topic of her plenary talk, “Scalable computational quantification of gender representation and behavior at ASHG.” The interview was published in the November 2017 ASHG trainee newsletter, the Nascent Transcript. Read more
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Following last year’s American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) conference in Vancouver I applied for and was selected to write for the ASHG trainee newsletter, The Nascent Transcript. My first piece, an interview with a genetic counseling trainee, is out today! Read more
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Much to the chagrin of many patients in America, digital medical records have phased out paper copies of health records in doctors’ offices across the nation. In my latest blog post for MiSciWriters I make a case for the exciting uses of these digital medical records—called electronic health records (EHRs). The post is the second of a three part series examining ancient DNA, EHRs, and the legacy of Neanderthal DNA in you and me. Read more
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This week I had the privilege of writing a guest column for a weekly e-mail newsletter, Keeping up With the Content, curated by the queen of media herself, Kelsey Weekman. Read more
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A lot has changed in the extensive hiatus since my last blog post. I moved from Bethesda, Maryland to Ann Arbor, Michigan. I started a PhD program in Bioinformatics at the University of Michigan. I became a published scientist in a peer-reviewed journal. I picked a thesis laboratory, er, two. However, what hasn’t changed is my desire to communicate science to the public in an effort to increase genetic literacy and ultimately reduce health disparities. In this vein, I have recently become a contributor with MiSciWriters. Read more
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For those of you reading this who are familiar with my research interests or career goals, you know that I am driven by a passion for not only cool science, but scientific literacy, specifically in genomics and genetics. For those of you who don’t know me, let me explain. Read more
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As a postbaccalaurate trainee at the National Human Genome Research Institute I wrote for the Genome Advance of the Month to highlight recent work in the genomics field. This was my first experence with science communication to lay audiences. Read more