A balance of science and story, with a focus on the people doing biology now.
Written by a science journalist and teachers with over thirty years experience in the classroom,
Biology Now skillfully blends core biology concepts with popular science stories of real people doing science today. These stories capture the human face of biology, highlighting the work of researchers and medical professionals who are making new discoveries every day. The text is accompanied by a wealth of carefully crafted pedagogy that teaches students how to analyze science in the news, interpret data, ask questions, and distinguish between science and pseudoscience.
Anne Houtman is the President of Earlham College and the Earlham School of Religion. In addition, she serves as Professor of Biology. She has over 25 years of experience teaching non-majors biology at a variety of private and public institutions, which gives her a broad perspective of the education landscape. She is strongly committed to evidence-based, experiential education and has been an active participant in the national dialogue on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education for over 20 years. Anne’s research interests are in the ecology and evolution of hummingbirds. She grew up in Hawaii, received her doctorate in zoology from the University of Oxford, and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Toronto.
Megan Scudellari is an award-winning freelance science writer and journalist based in Boston, Massachusetts, specializing in the life and environmental sciences. She has contributed to Newsweek, Scientific American, Discover, Nature, and Technology Review, among others. For five years she worked as a correspondent and later as a contributing editor for The Scientist magazine. In 2013, she was awarded the prestigious Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award in recognition of outstanding reporting and writing in science. She has also received accolades for investigative reporting on traumatic brain injury and a feature story on prosthetics that mimic a sense of touch. Megan received an MS from the Graduate Program in Science Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a BA from Boston College, and she has worked as an educator at the Museum of Science, Boston.
Cindy Malone began her scientific career wearing hip-waders in a swamp behind her home in Illinois. She earned her BS in Biology at Illinois State University and her PhD in Microbiology and Immunology at UCLA. She continued her post-doctoral work at UCLA in Molecular Genetics. Dr. Malone is currently a distinguished educator and an Associate Professor at California State University, Northridge, where she is the Director of the CSUN-UCLA Bridges to Stem Cell Research Program funded by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Dr. Malone’s research is aimed at training undergraduates and masters degree candidates to understand how genes are regulated through genetic and epigenetic mechanisms that alter gene expression. She has been teaching non-majors biology for over 15 years and has won curriculum enhancement and teaching awards at CSUN.
Anu Singh-Cundy received her PhD from Cornell University and did post-doctoral research in cell and molecular biology at Penn State. She is an associate professor at Western Washington University, where she teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses, including organismal biology, cell biology, plant developmental biology, and plant biochemistry. She has taught introductory biology to non-majors for over 15 years and is recognized for pedagogical innovations that communicate biological principles in a manner that engages the non-science student and emphasizes the relevance of biology in everyday life. Her research focuses on cell-cell communication in plants, especially self-incompatibility and other pollen-pistil interactions. She has published over a dozen research articles and has received several awards and grants, including a grant from the National Science Foundation.
