#Interview #Maize #Corn #Genetics #Scientists It's our mid-season break, so we've got a bonus episode talking to a handful of game-loving scientists at the 2024 Maize Genetics Meeting. We talk about science, games, perseverence, the winding path of becoming a scientist, and plenty more. Timestamps 01:35 - Introductions 02:25 - How did you get into science? 06:28 - What do you research? 09:38 - Favorite games? 12:29 - Turning your work into a game? 14:24 - Advice to aspiring scientists 17:44 - Closing remarks Find our socials at https://www.gamingwithscience.net Links 2024 Maize Genetics Meeting Full Transcript Brian 0:06 Hello, and welcome to the gaming with science podcast, where we talk about the science behind some of your favorite games. Jason 0:14 Welcome back to Gaming with Science. This is Jason and it's just me today. So right now we're technically in our mid season break. But to make sure y'all have something, I want to introduce you to a bunch of scientists I met at the Maize Genetics Meeting back in March. And that's maize as in corn, not maze as in puzzles. Although of course, you may have been to a corn maze, which is actually a maze maze. And yeah, anyway, one of my goals with this podcast was trying to show the human side of scientists, we see a bunch of things in Hollywood where scientists are all uber-nerdy or geeky or have no social life. And I want to show that scientists are human, we have interests, we play games, we have fun. And so when I was back at this conference, I wanted to show off what real scientists are like and so I grabbed a microphone and started grabbing some people and just talking with them and ask them questions about how they got into science, what games they like, how we could turn their research into a game, that sort of thing. So, many thanks to the people who let me interview them: Briana, Chip, Jacob, Kate, Kyle, Lauren, and Mohammed; I'll let them all introduce themselves in a little bit. To keep things from getting repetitive, I spliced all the interviews together. So you'll hear me asking one question, but then you'll hear a bunch of them in turn, even though they were recorded at different times in different places, you'll have different amounts of background noises depending on where we were and how much stuff was going on at the time. Also, you probably guessed that being a maize genetics conference, corn genetics, everyone here works on corn. If you'd like this, we'll try to do a few more we'll maybe get some other ones. So without further ado, I'm just gonna let everyone introduce themselves and I hope you enjoy this. Okay, so first off, can you please introduce yourself? Brianna 1:37 My name is Brianna Griffin. I'm originally from Florida, but I'm actually at Iowa State University where I study molecular plant pathology. Chip 1:44 Yeah, I'm Chip Hunter. I work for the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Gainesville, Florida. Jacob 1:51 I am Jacob Kelly. I am a PhD student at the University of Missouri. Kate 1:56 I'm Kate Eastman, and I'm a graduate student at Purdue and Jen Wisecavers lab. Kyle 2:01 Hi, my name is Kyle Swentowski. I'm a postdoctoral fellow in David Jackson's lab at Cold Spring Harbor. Lauren 2:07 I'm Lauren Whitt. I'm a postdoc at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, just recently graduated and I'm a plant genetic researcher. Mohammed 2:17 My name is Mohammed El-Walid. I'm a fourth year PhD candidate at Cornell University working in Ed Buckler's lab. Jason 2:25 So what got you into science in the first place? Brianna 2:27 I've always been interested in science but it was it's a kind of an interesting path though. I actually went to an art school for middle and high school, like science was definitely not the focus at our school, but I just always really enjoyed it. And as I continued to advance it, I actually started to see science as a type of art form. I just thought it was very interesting and very creative, but in a completely different way than like I was used to seeing with like the dancers and the painters and stuff like that. And so actually, when I started in undergrad, I actually thought I was gonna go to med school and I luckily joined a program called Women in math, science and engineering at Florida State University. And they're really big on getting people more involved in research like earlier on. So my sophomore year, I actually started working in a maize genetics lab. So corn corn lab, as I was doing that, at the same time as doing everything for pre med and working at the hospital and stuff, I realized that I really enjoyed science, a lot more than healthcare, nothing wrong with doctors, you know, we definitely need them. But at least for me, science just seems so much more interesting. It was a lot more creative a field, there was a lot more options like to do kind of what you wanted to and each day is very different. And so that was something ...
