Neil deGrasse Tyson is the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space and a research associate in the department of astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History. Read more
Tim Webber is a visual effects supervisor who has worked on an array of critically acclaimed blockbusters. He joined British visual effects company Framestore in 1988 and has been the driving force behind the company’s push into digital film and television, developing Framestore’s virtual camera and motion rig systems. He has worked on The Dark Knight, James Cameron’s Avatar and was second unit director on the Hallmark production of Merlin. He has most recently taken charge as Warner Brother’s VFX supervisor on Alfonso Cuarón’s space epic, Gravity. He won the Bafta Award for Best Special Effects and the Oscar for Best Achievement in Visual Effects. Read more
Parisa Tabriz is Google Chrome’s security lead. She has worked on information security at Google for more than 6 years, starting as a “hired hacker” software engineer for Google’s security team. As an engineer, she found and closed security holes in Google’s web applications, and taught other engineers how to do the same. Read more
Buzz Aldrin is a retired US Air Force pilot, a former American astronaut and the second person to walk on the Moon, on July 21, 1969. He was the lunar module pilot on Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing in history. Read more
Marcus du Sautoy, OBE, is the Simonyi Professor for Public Understanding of Science and a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. He is known for his efforts in popularizing mathematics and has been named by The Independent on Sunday as one of the UK’s leading scientists. He was a recipient of the London Mathematical Society’s prestigious Berwick Prize in 2001, which is awarded every two years to reward the best mathematical research by a mathematician under forty. Read more
Felicity Aston is a British adventurer, climate scientist and STEM advocate, who in 2012 became the first woman to ski solo across Antarctica. At 23, Felicity left the UK to spend three years living and working in the Antarctic as a meteorologist with the British Antarctic Survey at Rothera Research Station. On her return, she was part of the first all-female team to complete the Polar challenge, a 360-mile endurance race across the Canadian Arctic. A year later, Felicity led the first British women’s crossing of the Greenland ice-sheet. Since then she has gone on to lead numerous expeditions including the Kaspersky Lab Commonwealth Antarctic Expedition, the largest and most international women’s expedition ever to ski to the South Pole. Read more
Julio Licinio, MD, FRANZCP, is Deputy Director for Translational Medicine and Head, Mind and Brain Theme at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute and Strategic Professor of Psychiatry, Flinders University School of Medicine in Adelaide, South Australia. He is the current and founding Editor of three Nature Publishing Group journals; Molecular Psychiatry, The Pharmacogenomics Journal and Translational Psychiatry. … Read more
Marc Kuchner is the author of Marketing for Scientists, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and a country songwriter. He is the co-inventor of the band-limited coronagraph, a tool for finding planets around other stars that will be part of the James Webb Space Telescope. He is also known for his work on planets with exotic chemistries: ocean planets, helium planets, and carbon planets. Kuchner received his bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard and his Ph.D. in astronomy from Caltech. He was awarded the 2009 SPIE early career achievement award for his work on planet hunting. He has contributed to more than 100 research papers and published articles in journals including the Astrophysical Journal, Nature, and Astrobiology. Read more
Scott Wagers is a physician and a researcher who is dedicated to making collaborative research projects run well. He is the founder and CEO of BioSci Consulting and blogs about collaborative research at Assembled Chaos and eTRIKS. Read more
Marc Kuchner is the author of Marketing for Scientists, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and a country songwriter. He is the co-inventor of the band-limited coronagraph, a tool for finding planets around other stars that will be part of the James Webb Space Telescope. He is also known for his work on planets with exotic chemistries: ocean planets, helium planets, and carbon planets. Kuchner received his bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard and his Ph.D. in astronomy from Caltech. He was awarded the 2009 SPIE early career achievement award for his work on planet hunting. He has contributed to more than 100 research papers and published articles in journals including the Astrophysical Journal, Nature, and Astrobiology. Read more
Soapbox Science is a guest blog hosted by Nature Publishing Group, providing a forum for the discussion of science news, the history of science, ethics, details of expeditions or outreach activities and book reviews.
The views expressed in each blog post belong to the author(s) and are not necessarily shared or endorsed by Nature Publishing Group.
We welcome contributions from scientists, science communicators, project coordinators or book authors. If you'd like to take to the soapbox and contribute a guest post, please email blogs@nature.com.
Recent comments on this blog
Neil deGrasse Tyson on Cosmos and integrating science in popular culture
Naked Neuroscience: Dr Hannah Critchlow reflects on educating the public about Neuroscience
Chief Scientific Adviser to the European Commission discusses evidence-based policy and nurturing and supporting a European scientific culture