Science Communication

As a seasoned science communicator with over a decade of experience, I specialize in translating complex scientific concepts into engaging, accessible content. My work has taken me from the Galápagos Islands documenting invasive species research to California reporting on community biodigesters, always with the goal of making science relevant and understandable to diverse audiences. 

I bring both scientific rigor and storytelling expertise to every piece. Whether crafting award-winning articles (including recognition from Planet Forward's Storyfest), or creating content that drives real engagement, I'm committed to bridging the gap between scientific discovery and public understanding.

Below, you'll find several samples of science communication work.

And you'll find my wildlife photography by clicking here.

Ope Science logo. The word "Ope!" is in a word bubble with "outreach & public education for" underneath it. The word word "Science appears underneath the word bubble.

Featured Articles

Sergio Membrillas
Two small scientists  connect electrodes onto a blonde woman's head. One scientist stands next to a battery. Another is on a ladder.

Rewiring the brain: UW lab proves head injuries are not a life sentence

On a snowy Friday morning in 2005, Jeri Lake was riding her bicycle to the clinic where she worked as a nurse and midwife when a car suddenly drove into her path. “As far as I know, I hit the brakes to avoid hitting the car,” says the Champaign, Illinois, resident. “I must’ve slipped. I came down hitting the pavement, broke my helmet right behind my right ear. I don’t really remember much about it.” She continued on to work, but began having difficulty with little things, like how to park...
Clark Kellogg
A scientist in a white lab coat and glasses looks at a pipette he holds in front of him

The identities of enzymes: study further defines the function of a potential target for Alzheimer’s therapy

A new study from the lab of UW-Madison professor of medicine Luigi Puglielli, MD, PhD, opens a door to potential treatments for diseases of age, such as Alzheimer’s disease, by defining the roles of two enzymes that are imperative to protein production. “Endoplasmic reticulum acetyltransferases Atase1 and Atase2 differentially regulate reticulophagy, macroautophagy and cellular acetyl-CoA metabolism” was published in April in the journal Communications Bio...
Paul Skawinski
Main image shows bluegill and perch in water celery and background image shows ribbon-leaf pondweed

Embracing the benefits of aquatic plants: New ways of thinking help to ensure a healthy future for Wisconsin’s treasured lakes

Though retired, Diane Miesbauer finds herself hard at work scuba diving under the surface of the water in Clear Lake, which sits just at the northern tip of Lincoln County near where Highways 8 and 51 meet. She lugs with her through the water a giant suction tube as she slowly
claws her way across the muddy lake bottom.

Environmental Articles

Green Bay Water Utility
A construction worker in a hole being dug out by a loader truck

GET THE LEAD OUT | DNR loan programs assist with lead service line replacement

Peter Jurich

At a conference for the American Water Works Association’s Water Utility Council a few years ago in Washington, D.C., Nancy Quirk was eating lunch with other members of the council when someone brought up the topic of lead pipes.

The water crisis in Flint, Michigan, had been dominating the news cycle, and the group wanted to know what each member’s city was doing to handle lead pipe replacements within its borders.

Quirk, who is general manager for the Green Bay Water Utility, me...
Peter Jurich
Three large white holding tanks connected through a complex series of pipes

Biodigester transforms food waste into fertilizer, energy - Planet Forward

It’s a blistering hot day in Davis, California, and the sun beats down on four massive silos that are all connected through various networks of pipes. Workers on ladders are drilling new panels into one of these tanks, disturbing whatever silence that would otherwise give the illusion of solitude. There is very little shade on the dry grassland that was once an active landfill, but Abdolhossein Edalati has found the one spot with coverage.
He examines the contents of a series of glass jars. One...
Peter Jurich
Two dumpsters overloaded with trash in a lit alley at night

'Gross' and unpopular, but dumpster diving can help the planet - Planet Forward

One Friday in mid-October, around 11:45 p.m., my partner Emily and I had just finished a night of swing dancing with friends in Madison, Wisc. We were sore and sweaty and still a little wired, so sleep wasn’t the most likely option if we went home. We decided to go dumpster diving. On this particular night at a local grocery store, we found bushels of red peppers (wrapped up and still several days from expiration), a bag of about 50 bagels, two giant butternut squashes, and more corn than anyone...
Michael Branch
A man with a grey goatee and Nevada hat smiles in front of a giant tree

Environmentalist breaks conventions with comedy - Planet Forward

Michael Branch isn’t funny.
“If you’re hanging out with me, I’m not going to strike you as a class clown,” says the Pulitzer Prize-nominated environmental writer. “Despite my political convictions, I suffer from a case of good manners.”
That seems contradictory for someone a literary agent once said “writes like a drunken professorial hillbilly,” but Branch insists that is the voice he’s cultivated for his writing – his “narrator.”
“My narrator is more fun than I am, more irreverent, more energe...
Paul Skawinski
Main image shows bluegill and perch in water celery and background image shows ribbon-leaf pondweed

Embracing the benefits of aquatic plants: New ways of thinking help to ensure a healthy future for Wisconsin’s treasured lakes

Though retired, Diane Miesbauer finds herself hard at work scuba diving under the surface of the water in Clear Lake, which sits just at the northern tip of Lincoln County near where Highways 8 and 51 meet. She lugs with her through the water a giant suction tube as she slowly
claws her way across the muddy lake bottom.

Medical Articles

Artificial intelligence can accelerate clinical diagnosis of fragile X syndrome

An analysis of electronic health records for 1.7 million Wisconsin patients revealed a variety of health problems newly associated with fragile X syndrome, the most common inherited cause of intellectual disability and autism, and may help identify cases years in advance of the typical clinical diagnosis.
Researchers from the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison found that people with fragile X are more likely than the general population to also have diagnoses for a variety of c...
Waisman Center

Waisman CP Clinic strikes a balance

Twins Sebastian and Charlotte Sundly are quite the contrasting pair, yet they balance one another out perfectly in some interesting and unexpected ways.

For example, Sebastian’s favorite subject in school is reading, and Charlotte’s is science. “Sebastian loves robots and computers and everything super high tech,” says Kendra Hill, the mother of the 9-year-old twins. Meanwhile, Charlotte prefers singing and dancing. “She hates being in crowds, but if you put her on a stage, she’s a different kid!”

When research goes remote: adapting studies in the face of COVID-19

By Peter Jurich, Waisman Science Writer
With every challenge comes new opportunities. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S. in March 2020, much of the country went on lock-down with only essential services and operations remaining. The Waisman Center was no exception. Essential operations continued in the building and hundreds of employees transitioned to working from home. While clinic operations and appointments transferred to newly-established telehealth platforms, the circumstances posed u...

Remembering Ludell Swenson

A peek into a collection of newspaper clippings about Ludell Swenson reveals the life of an extraordinarily accomplished person: marathoner, competitive tournament bowler, outspoken social services advocate. But what stands out the most is his lifelong participation in research that would lay the very foundation for the Waisman Center’s Communication Development Program (CDP) and the Communication Aids and Systems Clinic (CASC).
Ludell died Apr. 22, 2020. He was 61 years old.
“I think the Waisma...

The sound beneath the waves

By Peter Jurich, Waisman Communications
If you’ve ever seen a graphical representation of a sound, you are probably familiar with what it looks like: hundreds of steep, tightly packed peaks and valleys, all of different heights, moving above and below a common line of symmetry that cuts horizontally through the middle. “When a sound travels through the air, it basically sets the molecules around us in motion, using sound pressure to create sort of a wave,” says Waisman researcher Michaela Warnec...

The ECHO effect

By Peter Jurich, Waisman Science Writer
The Waisman Center recently launched two new initiatives — ECHO AAC and ECHO Autism WI — to help improve and expand teletraining services using the Project ECHO® (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) program. Project ECHO (the mantra for which is “All teach, all learn”) uses video-conferencing technology to provide education and case consultation on best practice clinical services, training, and resources for individuals with specific healthcare ne...

Balancing act: what motor function can tell us about autism

By Peter Jurich | Waisman Communications
Can the way a person moves be a key identifier of autism?
It’s a question that Waisman Center investigator Brittany Travers, PhD, is trying to answer. A new paper from Travers’ lab suggests that movement patterns of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may differ from those with typical development. This opens the door to a more nuanced understanding of how individuals with ASD move in space and how this movement may be similar or different to...
Clark Kellogg
Three scientists look under a the hood of a lab bench

Improved technique illuminates fragile X protein

Twins Sebastian and Charlotte Sundly are quite the contrasting pair, yet they balance one another out perfectly in some interesting and unexpected ways.

For example, Sebastian’s favorite subject in school is reading, and Charlotte’s is science. “Sebastian loves robots and computers and everything super high tech,” says Kendra Hill, the mother of the 9-year-old twins. Meanwhile, Charlotte prefers singing and dancing. “She hates being in crowds, but if you put her on a stage, she’s a different kid!”
Peter Jurich
Three scientists look at graphs on a computer

Routine test reveals rare diseases

It used to be called floppy baby syndrome and it looks just as it sounds. The technical term is hypotonia, and it’s when newborns lack the muscle strength to resist passive movement; their muscle tone is much like a ragdoll. While hypotonia is not a disorder in and of itself, this condition is a harbinger of other disorders — some of which researchers lack an understanding of because they are classified as “rare.” One of those rare diseases is spinal muscular atrophy, or SMA, a rare and devastating muscle-wasting disease that affects one in every 11,000 children in the U.S.
Waisman Center
Two adults and a child sit on the floor looking at an assistive device with a screen. The adult on the right is laughing.

Catherine Kanter named speech-language pathologist of the year

By Peter Jurich, Waisman Communications
Catherine Kanter got into speech-language pathology almost by chance.
After receiving her bachelor’s degree in linguistics, she got a job as a special education paraprofessional and autism treatment therapist.
“I then found in speech-language pathology a wonderful marriage of my love for language and communication and helping individuals with disabilities, and came to UW-Madison to complete my graduate degree,” says Kanter, who has worked as a full-time sp...

Whole exome sequencing illuminates genetic condition

By Peter Jurich, Waisman Communications
If you ask David Seamans what his favorite thing to do is, he’ll pause thoughtfully for a moment before responding, “Everything.”
He really does mean everything. In May of this year, he traveled with his brother to Saipan to aid in hurricane relief. He spent two weeks in over 100-degree weather replacing roofs. “It was the coolest thing I’ve ever been involved with other than getting married and watching my two daughters be born,” he says. “The way the peo...
Sergio Membrillas
Two small scientists  connect electrodes onto a blonde woman's head. One scientist stands next to a battery. Another is on a ladder.

Rewiring the brain: UW lab proves head injuries are not a life sentence

On a snowy Friday morning in 2005, Jeri Lake was riding her bicycle to the clinic where she worked as a nurse and midwife when a car suddenly drove into her path. “As far as I know, I hit the brakes to avoid hitting the car,” says the Champaign, Illinois, resident. “I must’ve slipped. I came down hitting the pavement, broke my helmet right behind my right ear. I don’t really remember much about it.” She continued on to work, but began having difficulty with little things, like how to park...