Iris Stone

Communication in all its forms, from writing to public speaking, has always been a big part of my life. English was my favorite subject in school growing up, and the skills I developed from spending so much time reading and writing ultimately helped me pay my way through college (see my blurb about Bloomrock Writing on the Leadership page). As I gravitated more towards science, I brought my communication skills along with me. I derive a lot of enjoyment from talking science with people of many backgrounds and different interests. It’s one of the reasons that I joined two labs in graduate school; even though I was doing computational work, I wanted to spend a lot of time talking to experimentalists and learning to speak their language as well as mine.

At one level, this has meant giving a lot of scientific talks about my research work (see “Invited Talks and Conference Presentations” on the Publications page). But my love of communication has extended to other realms, too. I’ve volunteered as a pen-pal for middle school “pre-scientists“, annotated a scientific article for the AAAS Science in the Classroom initiative, and taught a few courses for undergraduates:

• First Year Neuro Boot Camp, Co-organizer & Biophysics Lecturer (Summer 2021) 
• NEU 437/537: Computational Neuroscience, Assistant in Instruction (Spring 2020)
• NEU 201: Fundamentals of Neuroscience, Assistant in Instruction (Fall 2019)
• MATH 105: Pre-calculus, Learning Assistant (Fall 2015)

Fortunately, my interest in writing has also helped develop my science career in other ways. Aside from penning some scientific papers (and one runner up award for an “outstanding student paper” at the APS Conference), I’ve also applied for a number of grants. While I by no means have a 100% success rate, I’m very grateful for the number of institutions that have supported my work over the years (both financially and otherwise) and encouraged me to keep writing!