About Emily

Welcome. I write, teach, speak, and think about science and society and how they intersect and interact.

I've written books about genitalia 🍆, brains 🧠 🧠, biology 🧬, and parenting 👥, all of which are related despite the apparent distinctions. You can find my writing at Scientific American, where I am a regular contributor, and other delightful places about the web. My writing portfolio, curated under a Google News search, is here, or you can find more here.

As a co-recipient of the John Maddox Prize for "showing courage and integrity in standing up for sound science," I received recognition in part because of a lawsuit threat from none other than Andrew Wakefield. Speaking of famous men who got mad at me, Neil deGrasse Tyson didn't care for my expert-level correctives of some comments he made about sex and biology, and when interviewed about it, attempted to dismiss me as "a woman who has a blog." He kind of skipped over the more salient fact that I am a woman who has doctorate in such matters. [My students liked this tidbit so much that they made a t-shirt for me with this quote on it. I love them.] I've also repeatedly made RFK Jr mad at me because, well, to put it as generously as possible, he's wrong. 

When I am not drawing the ire of famous men because they are wrong about things, I am sometimes earning some recognition for other reasons. I have been recognized by the San Francisco Press Association for my work, have served as a keynote conference speaker, and am a 2021-2022 MIT Knight Science Project Fellow, a 2022 finalist for the Sharon Begley Science Reporting Award, a Texas Writers League Nonfiction Book Award finalist, and two-term elected board member of the National Association of Science Writers.

If you have any lingering curiosity about me, you can see my LinkedIn profile here and find my Google scholar profile here. 

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