Placement: Sarah Hoenicke Flores (Comparative Literature, 5th year) with Adriana Briscoe (Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology)
Proposed Outline of Projects and Timeline
1. Fall Quarter 2024: The GSR will focus on a public-facing project by developing a pitch for Scientific American on butterfly color vision and/or aspects of behavior, ideally highlighting our lab’s discoveries on sexually dimorphic color vision and potentially other butterfly science stories. Responsibilities will include a literature review and drafting an outline for a possible article, including figures. Based on conversations with Scientific American editors, the magazine evaluates new pitches starting around January (please confirm). If a pitch to Scientific American does not work, we can also submit a pitch to The Conversation or other suitable media outlet based on the GSR’s interests.
2. Winter Quarter 2025: A second project is to read through [Briscoe’s] book in progress, Light, Heat and Butterflies: Adaptations of Insects to a Warming Planet and provide feedback on the writing. The GSR would also research literary references related to butterflies from philosophers, poets, novelists, memoirists, scientists, the Bible that I might eventually incorporate into the book. A related goal that would emerge from this would be to develop a pitch for a TED talk based on my book project.
3. A third project would be to assist on a biographical piece requested by the National Academies of Sciences as part of [Briscoe’s] recent election to the academy. This would involve reading through her unpublished autobiography as well as published profiles of [Briscoe] as a scientist, and identifying a set of questions, events, pivotal moments, lessons learned to highlight that will engage and draw a reader into the life of a scientist, with the goal of increasing public interest in careers in STEM. The idea would be to work as a developmental editor so that [Briscoe] can write this piece expected of the academy and that will be published in their flagship journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.