Hi penpals and friends of SSP!

As many of you know, Stanford Science Penpals started a little over 3 years ago. We began as a team of two frist-year graduate students and we ran a single penpal exchange with a school in Texas. Since then, our leadership team has more th...

Fiona Tamburini is a graduate student in the Genetics PhD program at Stanford. Fiona studies how the microbes that live in our bodies - the “microbiome” - impact our health. In this post, Fiona shares her journey toward becoming a scientist and how she became intereste...

A new study (published March 20, 2018 here and written up in Science here) demonstrated that when asked to draw a scientist, in the past decade, around 34% of children drew pictures of female scientists. This is in stark contrast to the 1960s and 70s, when children dre...

Susanna Brantley is a graduate student in the Developmental Biology program at Stanford. She studies how the environment surrounding adult stem cells promotes survival and proper stem cell differentiation using fruit flies as a model system. Here, Susanna shares her st...

Amber R. Moore is a graduate student in the Immunology program at Stanford. She studies how infection during pregnancy can change immune cell behavior in the mom and placenta and how these immune changes can lead to pregnancy complications. Here, Amber shares her story...

Hello Science enthusiasts!

Have you ever wanted to ask a scientist a question, but don't know one personally? Have you ever wondered what all those scientists at Stanford do all day? Do you wonder what being a scientist really means, or what kinds of people become scie...

Most people know that being a scientist means working in a lab doing research every day, but people probably know less about what that actually looks like and how it’s structured. In our ‘Scientists’ Daily Lives’ series, we will explore how science is done and what it’...

Are you passionate about science and looking for ways to become involved in real scientific studies? If so, you’re not alone! Due to the increasing connectivity of the Internet over the past decade, there has been a boom in the availability of so-called “citizen scienc...

Take a moment to imagine what a scientist looks like. 

Did you imagine an older white man, possibly with crazy white hair, wearing a lab coat standing next to flasks of bubbling, green chemicals? If so, you’re not alone—in studies as early as 1957, it was demonstrated t...

On Thursday October 12th, Stanford Science Penpals teamed up with a bunch of science outreach groups at Stanford for a Science Communication Mixer! We were joined by groups involved in all facets of science communication, including writers, speakers, and podcasters. Th...