William Wells: Writing Experience

Jump down to different categories of writing, editing, and managerial experience:
News Director for science publisher
Freelance writing for the general public
Freelance writing for scientific audiences
Editing

News Director for science publisher

From Feb 2001-Mar 2007 I was News Director at Rockefeller University Press. At RUP I created news sections in two major scientific journals (the Journal of Cell Biology and the Journal of Experimental Medicine), and wrote, commissioned and edited for these news sections. This involved hiring and directly supervising three staff writers, multiple freelance writers, and two designers, and coordinating production with ~20 additional editorial staff.

I directed redesigns of both journals (for JCB, JCB again, and JEM), and oversaw public policy for a University Press. I have been both a participant in and reporter on policy debates (such as the issue of open access publishing). I was invited to speak on science policy at Harvard Medical School and other locations, and to teach science writing courses at University of Pennsylvania, Harvard Medical School, Rockefeller University, and international conferences. Reporting has involved coverage of and travel to sites across North America, Europe, and Asia.

Regular sections included "In this Issue", "Research Roundup" (for examples see here, here, and here) and "People and Ideas" (see article on controlling neural activity). Other innovations have included:

• News features covering topics such as the development of science in China, cell biology in Japan, new microscopy techniques, how cells determine their size, and whether cells can morph from one type to another;
• An annotated Video Collection;
• A From the Archive section (see examples here and here);
• A guide to writing better research papers;
• Meeting reports (e.g., covering the 2006 AIDS meeting, a biotechnology meeting, the ASCB meeting, and a cell division meeting).

Freelance writing for the general public

• Feature article for TheBody.com on HIV superinfection.

• Feature article for Seed Magazine on the science behind negative campaigning.

• News and feature articles for New Scientist. Topics included minimal genomes, discrete memory lifetimes, circadian rhythms in bacteria, and tissue engineering, a possible function for junk DNA, and how we maintain a fixed course.

• Sole staff writer for major US National Academy of Sciences report on Scientific and Medical Aspects of Human Reproductive Cloning. The report prompted front page stories in many newspapers.

• Conceived and wrote Exploring the Cell, a 20-page educational booklet produced by the American Society for Cell Biology. Click here for the 4.2Mb pdf file. Copyright 1999 by the American Society for Cell Biology. Reprinted with permission.

• Eight-page features for Beyond Discovery, a series of articles produced by the Office on Public Understanding of Science (OPUS) of the National Academy of Sciences.
  • The cure for childhood leukemia.
  • From explosives to the gas that heals. The discovery that the body uses a toxic gas - nitric oxide - to signal in the circulatory, immune and nervous systems.

• Articles for the About Biotech section of Access Excellence, a web site for high school students and teachers.
  • Extreme chemistry - The next leap forward in laundry detergents may originate not in a chemist's laboratory, but with bacteria that live on a marine worm, a mile below the ocean surface, and at temperatures of over 80ºC.
  • The chips are coming - Implanted biochips could be the tool of Big Brother, but they are more likely to become the treatment of choice for the physician of the 21st century.
  • A three-part series on revolutions in drug hunting.
    • There are more targets for drugs thanks to genomics. As described in Selling DNA data, that allows Incyte to make millions of dollars selling a bunch of As, Cs, Gs and Ts.
    • There are more chemicals to test as potential drugs thanks to combinatorial chemistry. As described in Making more drugs, this set of methods is leading to better drugs, new superconductors and an artificial nose, all with a one-thousand-fold increase in productivity.
    • Finally, there are new methods to test all those chemicals against all those targets to find the rare drug. As described in Drug testers think small, unwieldy flasks and tubes are out, but worms, single cells and glass chips are in.
  • Using nature to fight pain - Opiates such as morphine are often not enough. A sea snail and a tree frog may come to the rescue of those with intractable pain.
  • Can science be stopped? - How society and scientists feel for a way forward.
  • Stinky science - Making money by working out how the brain classifies smells.
  • Making a movement machine - How cells move themselves using only a dense protein mesh.
  • When the goose lays a rotten egg - Industry funding of academic research is usually positive. But when results don't turn out as expected, things can get messy.

• News and feature articles for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Freelance writing for scientific audiences

• Monthly articles about biotech companies for the research journal Chemistry & Biology, and the now defunct web-magazine for biologists HMS Beagle. (For a full listing of these pdfs follow this link.)
  • Pharmacyclics - light-activated anti-cancer drugs.
  • Geron - drugs to stop aging.
  • Shaman - drugs from the rainforest, found with the help of native healers.
  • EntreMed - anti-cancer drugs that cut off the tumor's blood supply.
  • Helicon - drugs to improve memory.

• Feature articles for Modern Drug Discovery, a magazine published by the American Chemical Society. See an article on prostate cancer.

• Choosing a sex - how a gonad decides whether it is a testis or an ovary - written for ORGYN magazine.

• News articles for Stanford Report.
  • Acetylcholine found to act as traffic cop in brain.
  • Hydration boosts survival odds for tiniest transplant patients.
  • New transplant drug shows promise.
  • Even imperfect HIV vaccines could be valuable.
  • Sniffing may prepare brain for incoming smell.
  • Early learning induces brain changes used later in life.

• Feature articles for Stanford Medicine. These articles have covered topics such as cystic fibrosis, motion detection and the basis of consciousness, a sea squirt being used as a model for transplant rejection, transplant organ distribution (ghost written), medicine on the space shuttle, electron microscopy, DNA arrays on chips, fighting cancer with light, the secret life of glia, false promises and new hopes for DHEA, how cells define their front and back, construction of the rotavirus vaccine, writing a layman's book on HIV, and the trials and tribulations of being an expert witness in the Boston nanny trial.

• News stories for Genome Biology (such as one on dueling lizards), Current Biology, and BioMed Central.

Editing

• Prior experience included editing a book for the American Chemical Society Books Department, editing and reaching editorial decisions on articles for Chemistry & Biology and Current Biology, and editing grants worth over $10 million.

  
  

  
  

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