For the latest issue of Outlook, the alumni magazine of Temple University’s College of Science and Technology (CST), I contributed more than 40 percent of the editorial content—including the cover story and the other major feature story. I love writing about science, and the diverse topics that these stories encompassed is why I love writing for CST.
The cover story focused on research opportunities afforded to the college’s undergraduates. One of the challenges was to create a cohesive story about the collaborative research that undergrads in a wide range of majors are engaged in with their professors. These included: an opera performed by robots programmed by CST computer information majors, in collaboration with both their sponsoring professor and a professor and students from Temple’s Boyer College of Music and Drama; sophisticated software programs that audit the security of cloud data-storage technology; chemical research into the effectiveness of toxic titanium as an anti-cancer agent when modified by ascorbic acid; and the development of two sophisticated techniques to detect the chemical fingerprints of fossilized bone—which could become a powerful tool in the National Park Service’s efforts to prosecute and prevent poaching in Badlands National Park in South Dakota.
The other feature story involved interviews with a total of eight geology graduates or soon-to-be graduates who, after completing their classes, had all undertaken what is a rite of passage for all geology majors: a month-long or longer field camp at various locations in the West or Alaska to map massive geological formations. Due to the length of some of the camps, I was under an extremely tight deadline—a deadline I met.
I also wrote three one-page profiles of CST graduates: insurance industry software pioneer Christopher Gali, MS ’94; copper mine hydrogeologist Todd Keay, BA ’83; and George and Marion Evans, a couple who both graduated with chemistry degrees in 1950 and married a year later.
Finally, I wrote about a Department of Mathematics Saturday enrichment program for 5th– through 8th-graders that is led by undergraduate math majors.
Click here to see a full PDF of Outlook magazine.