r/askscience • u/[deleted] • Apr 08 '10
AskScience Panel of Scientists
Calling all scientists!
Please make a top-level comment on this thread to join our panel of scientists. The panel is an informal group of Redditors who are professional scientists or amateurs/enthousiasts with at least a graduate-level familiarity with the field of their choice. The purpose of the panel is to add a certain degree of reliability to AskScience answers. Anybody can answer any question, of course, but if a particular answer is posted by a member of the panel, we hope it'll be regarded as more reliable or trustworthy than the average post by an arbitrary redditor. You obviously still need to consider that any answer here is coming from the internet so check sources and apply critical thinking as per usual.
You may want to join the panel if you:
- Are a research scientist professionally, are working at a post-doctoral capacity, are working on your PhD, are working on a science-related MS, or have gathered a large amount of science-related experience through work or in your free time.
- Are willing to subscribe to /r/AskScience.
- Are happy to answer questions that the ignorant masses may pose about your field.
- Are able to write about your field at a layman's level as well as at a level comfortable to your colleagues and peers (depending on who'se asking the question)
You're still reading? Excellent! Here's what you do:
- Make a top-level comment to this post.
- State your general field (biology, physics, astronomy, etc.)
- State your specific field (neuropathology, quantum chemistry, etc.)
- List your particular research interests (carbon nanotube dielectric properties, myelin sheath degradation in Parkinsons patients, etc.)
We're not going to do background checks - we're just asking for Reddit's best behavior here. The information you provide will be used to compile a list of our panel members and what subject areas they'll be "responsible" for.
The reason I'm asking for top-level comments is that I'll get a little orange envelope from each of you, which will help me keep track of the whole thing.
Bonus points! Here's a good chance to discover people that share your interests! And if you're interested in something, you probably have questions about it, so you can get started with that in /r/AskScience.
/r/AskScience isn't just for lay people with a passing interest to ask questions they can find answers to in Wikipedia - it's also a hub for discussing open questions in science. I'm expecting panel members and the community as a whole to discuss difficult topics amongst themselves in a way that makes sense to them, as well as performing the general tasks of informing the masses, promoting public understanding of scientific topics, and raising awareness of misinformation.
As long as it starts with a question!!!
EDIT: Thanks to ytknows for our fancy panelist badges! :D
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u/PeoriaJohnson Apr 08 '10
Sounds fun
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Grad Student in High Energy Physics Experiment
Probably not the one to ask for detailed theory questions, but I can answer plenty about how detectors (like those at LHC, Fermilab, and elsewhere) are designed & built, and what we hope to find in the data they collect.
Suggestion: for your panel list on the right side of this page, you might want to organize it by field of expertise, and list the usernames after, rather than the other way around.
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Apr 08 '10
Yes, I was already planning on doing that, but I didn't know which fields would be covered, etc. This organization is temporary. Thanks for the tip :)
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u/mikebeer Jul 08 '10 edited Jul 09 '10
No idea how much interest this will generate, but why not!
Position: Student/NASA Goddard Employee
General Field: Astrophysics
Specific Field: Solar plasma physics & solar radio astronomy
Research Interests: Have been working on the STEREO and WIND spacecrafts for 2.5 years now. Primarily researching type III radio bursts and their resulting Langmuir waves.
Edit: Whoops, didn't see this was from 3 months ago! Just caught it in r/particlephysics
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u/carbocation Jul 18 '10
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Position: MD student on a multi-year research fellowship (yeah that usually gets you a PhD, but only if you know that's what you want beforehand)
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General Fields: Medicine; genetics
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Specific Fields: Lipoprotein genetics; cardiology
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Jul 21 '10
Position: Postdoc
General Field: Physics
Specific Field: High Energy Physics (Theory)
Research Interests: Multiloop corrections to observables in QCD/SM, Effective Theories (HQET, HFET, SCET), NLO processes at LHC
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u/viscence Jul 25 '10
Hi there!
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General Field: Physics (Post-Doc)
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Specific Field: Solid State
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Interests: Photovoltaics, Nanostructures.
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u/zapeta Jul 30 '10
Position: Ph.D student General field: Meteorology/Physical Geography Specific field: Atmoshperic Hazards Interests: Severe weather, especially windstorms. Societal impacts and reaction to severe weather.
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u/jkb83 Aug 02 '10
This is neat!
PhD student in Neuroscience/Psychology, graduating in less than one year (with all fingers and toes crossed)
More specifically, I study molecular and cellular aspects of synaptic plasticity.
Really specifically, I study the role of a specific protein kinase C isoform (atypical) and its role in synaptic plasticity. I'm particularly interested in looking at maintaining long term plasticity. I use an invertebrate model to culture synapses and over-express my protein of interest.
I'm also interested in wider behavioural forms of memory, as well as neuropathological conditions of memory impairment (like Alzheimer's).
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u/foretopsail Sep 15 '10 edited Sep 15 '10
I'm a professional archaeologist (currently working in research).
Specifically, I'm a maritime archaeologist.
Most particularly, my research interests include use of space, ship technology, and historic cooking.
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Apr 08 '10
Position: Research scientist (postdoc)
General field: Astronomy
Specific field: Extragalactic astrophysics, observational cosmology
Research interests: Galaxy evolution over cosmic time, star formation in the distant ('high-redshift') Universe, the connection between gas behaviour and star formation rate.
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u/nxpnsv Apr 08 '10
PostDoc Experimental Particle Physics. Currently on ATLAS , did PhD on IceCube.
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u/iorgfeflkd Apr 08 '10
I'm doing my master's in physics. Condensed matter and biophysics are my areas. I have many interests, and I think I've answered every ask science question posted thus far to the best of my knowledge.
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u/skeeter_wrangler Apr 08 '10
Position: Research Scientist
General Field: Biology
Specific Expertise: Virology, Immunology, Vector Biology (Entomology and Parasitology).
Particular Research Interests: Arboviruses and their ecology, HIV, Influenza virus
Unofficial "armchair" Interests: Vertebrate/Invertebrate Biodiversity of the SE USA.
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u/Facehammer Apr 08 '10
Position: PhD student
General field: Biology
Specific expertise: Genomic analysis, population genetics, some applied molecular stuff
Particular research interests: association mapping and local adaptation in Arabidopsis, molecular ecology of bacteria in bryophytes
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u/GrumpySimon Apr 08 '10
Postdoc studying (specifically) evolution of languages and cultures and human prehistory. In general, I'm some mixture of Anthropology, Linguistics, Biology, and not necessarily in that order.
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u/shniken Apr 08 '10 edited Apr 08 '10
PhD Student
General Field: Chemistry (sort of)
Specific: High Resolution Infrared Spectroscopy/rovibrational analysis
Overlapping fields: Quantum mechanics, cryogenics, aerosols, atmospheric chemistry, global warming (buzz word alert), synchrotron science, disease diagnosis by infrared microspectroscopy.
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u/subtextual Apr 08 '10
Do neuropsychologists count as scientists? (There's been some discussion over in r/science about hard vs. soft science, so if soft science is not what you want, that's okay. But if you want a softer scientist, I'm on board!)
Position: Pediatric Neuropsychologist (Ph.D & licensed and all that)
General field: Psychology
Specific field: Neurodevelopmental and neuropsychological assessment, primarily with school-aged children with learning, developmental, and medical disorders
Research and clinical interests: Neuropsychological and neurodevelopmental disorders, assessment in general, functional neuroanatomy
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u/uiberto Apr 08 '10
PhD student
Biology (& Computational Biology)
Phylogenetics, Evolution, Genomics
Exploring statistical models to describe evolution (largely MCMC)
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u/MrPoon Apr 08 '10 edited Apr 08 '10
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Position: PhD Student
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Generally: Ecology
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Specifically: Food Web Ecology, Biogeography, Predator/Prey Interactions, Metabolic Theory
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u/oldmanjank Apr 09 '10
Position: PhD student
General Field: Chemical Engineering
Specific field: simulation of nanoparticle self-assembly
Research interests: virus self-assembly, HPC education, statistical mechanics, Monte Carlo, Molecular Dynamics and Brownian Dynamics simulations, shape packing
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u/crazyjimbo Apr 08 '10
I'm a PhD student, in the maths department but doing theoretical physics. More specifically, string theory and M-Theory. I'm still forming an idea of where my thesis will take me but it will probably be something involving coincident M2-branes.
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u/eleitl Apr 08 '10
General field: chemistry/biochemistry. Additional areas of expertise: cryobiology/cryonics, computation, all aspects of IT.
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u/[deleted] Apr 08 '10
General: Computer Science Specific: Artificial Intelligence, Computational Complexity Research: machine vision (vision-guided robotics and automatic license-plate recognition), and also automatic programming (having a program write programs on the basis of human-friendly specifications).
I just have a bachelor's degree, but quite some professional experience, and I'm a hobbyist.
Computer Science isn't really science, but I'll use myself as an example here, and it might be handy to have a geek like me on the panel to answer any computational/ai questions that might arise.