Davide Castelvecchi (“Catching the Cosmic Waves”) wanted to learn about everything, so he figured he should start with mathematics. During his first year at the University of Rome I, though, he began to truly enjoy the field itself — and the challenge of doing the hardest thing there could be. The virtual worlds of manifolds (a sub-field of geometry) became a passion that eventually took him to California, where he got his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2000. Then came a one-year stint teaching at UC Santa Barbara, followed by postdoctoral research at the University of Paris at Orsay. After landing a tenure-track job at the University of Rome II, he surprised his colleagues with the puzzling idea of becoming a science writer. Why on earth, they asked, did he want to quit his budding career and write only about others’ work — and not other mathematicians, but scientists in all fields? “Scientists often spend months or years sweating on a project,” he told his colleagues. “As a science writer, I get to show up at their labs at the end, and ask: ‘OK, now tell me the fun part.‘“ He wrote about pumpkins and vegan U.S. Marines for the Santa Cruz Sentinel, and about construction cranes and cosmic membranes for the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. His summer gig was at Fermi National Laboratory in Illinois.

A former biochemist, Quinn Eastman (“Energy Saviour? Or Climate Disaster?”, “Of Mice and Medicine”) spent a decade loading and unloading centrifuges (while studying the development of the immune system) in New England and Germany. He then discovered a fascination with ecology and geology at Santa Cruz. During the program, he wrote about Santa Cruz guitar makers, poisonous fried grasshoppers, clinical trials of antidepressants, ozone-eating pesticides, and electrical stun-guns. Quinn (B.S., chemistry, MIT, 1993, Ph.D., biochemistry, Yale 1998), interned at the Monterey Herald and the Stanford Medical Center’s press office. He spent the summer sweating and impersonating a general assignment reporter at the Bakersfield Californian.

Anna Gosline (“Amazing Feet of Engineering,” “A Night at the Hostel”) graduated from the University of Toronto with a bachelors degree in bug sex and fish food — or, as some call it, evolutionary biology. In this article, she abandons the pond and sticks her toe into the bio-design industry, following a team of researchers as they attempt to discover a way to mass-produce artificially the super-sticky feet of geckos. During “The Program” she interned at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center — lasers, electrons and beams, oh my! — The Public Library of Science and the Santa Cruz Sentinel, the local daily newspaper. She claimed most of the Sentinel’s front page on her last day of work with two stories on whales. One of these stories, about the unusually early return of blue whales to the Monterey Bay, went national on the Associated Press wire. Earlier in her internship she wrote on why ducklings cross the road, street theatre, tiny purses, and marijuana policy. The academic year over, the boundless Canadian returned to her roots in the Commonwealth, heading off to London for a six-month internship at New Scientist. She plans to launch her own science magazine in a few years and employ most of the class of ’04.

Mason Inman (“Civilized Outrage”) got his bachelor’s in physics from the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He then began a string of jobs, working as a teaching assistant in physics, a clerk at a bookstore and a technician in cancer research labs. While in the program he cut his newspaper reporter teeth at the daily Santa Cruz Sentinel, writing about a new heart monitoring device and a fire hydrant knocked over by a bus, among other news developments. At the Monterey County Herald, he covered the local aquarium’s new shark exhibit and profiled the exhibit’s designer. At the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center news office he wrote about a new theory that miniscule black holes permeate the universe. In the summer he worked at the open-access biology journal PLoS (Public Library of Science) writing summaries of technical articles. In the fall, Mason heads to Geneva, Switzerland, to snowboard and write for the particle physics center CERN.

Having dissected hundreds of mice while completing a Ph.D. in immunology at Harvard, Esther Landhuis (“The Man Who Found an Easier Way into Your Heart”) marvels at the elegance of future heart operations when doctors use this innovative tool to operate on humans. As a SciCommie, she wrote for the Santa Cruz Sentinel, Stanford News Service and Science magazine’s aging-research web site, Sage Ke. Her stories explored such topics as chocolate making, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, belly dancing, optical computers and coin tossing, to name a few. A Stanford alum (B.S., biology, 1996), Esther is thrilled to re-settle in the Bay Area with a yearlong internship at the San Jose Mercury News science/health desk.

Shawne Neeper (“Getting a Feel for Surgery”) explored the landscape of academic science like a tourist. Throughout her studies of human biology at Stanford University, two years in a clinical research center and her A.B.D. (all but dissertation) in neuroscience at the University of California, Irvine, she always felt like the curious outsider in a scientific laboratory. Shawne admired grand views onto concepts of mind and body, and techniques that could reach inside cells to touch their secrets. The broad views, not the laser sharp focus of the lab bench, held her gaze. Her science idols were the writers — Steven Gould, James Burke, Oliver Sacks. They communicate living, breathing science, woven into a living world, a web of social changes or a single human life. Most at home when buried in library research or drafting a paper, Neeper gravitated into science and technical writing. A satisfying six years as writer — later technical publications manager — for a scientific software company left her wanting even more. More breadth of science, more flexibility as a writer, more possibilities. Three internships (Stanford Medical School, Public Library of Science and Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) and a few freelance jobs later, Shawne is looking forward to exploring her broadened vistas.

Regina Nuzzo (“The Dummies’ Guide to Emergency Medicine,” “A Different Breed of Science Writing”) knows of one place that haunts young doctors even more than the infamous “hotseat” featured in her story: the biostatistics class she taught while doing her doctoral work at Stanford. Still, all three hundred and some medical students who took her hazardous course made it through without a casualty. Before becoming a science writer, Regina had also practiced industrial engineering in a toilet paper factory and, much later, used differential equations to describe clarinet performances. This year, she broke with tradition and interned all three quarters at the Monterey County Herald, where she enjoyed covering an eclectic beat. In pursuit of stories, Regina ran a grueling seven-mile leg of the Big Sur marathon, hiked through a redwood forest to investigate a ladybug invasion, and splashed through Monterey Bay tidewaters under a midnight full moon to watch mysterious, sardine-sized fish mate. Then she was off to write about nuclear energy at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory for six months. In January she’ll move again, no doubt to yet another job that transcends the nine-to-five grind.

Czerne Reid (“The Information Symphony,” “Past Imperfect”) began her peregrinations in her native Jamaica when she moved from the small town of Malvern to the bright city lights of Kingston, where she studied chemistry at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies. She then moved to Atlanta, Georgia, earning a Ph.D. in environmental chemistry at Emory University before coming to Santa Cruz. While at UC Santa Cruz, Czerne interned as a science writer for Stanford News Service and Stanford Medical Center, and as a reporter at the Salinas Californian newspaper in John Steinbeck’s hometown. Czerne spent her summer as a Kaiser Media Intern in Urban Health Reporting at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She enjoyed discovering Wisconsin’s parks and going for ten-mile runs near Lake Michigan. When not pursuing a fascinating story, Czerne likes to sing for her supper. In 2001 she released her first solo CD of Christian music, writing seven of the nine songs on the recording. She also did singing tours across the U.S., Canada and Jamaica. While reveling in the glow of the stage lights of the present, Czerne continues to leave herself open to possibility.

After completing a bachelor’s degree in marine biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Megan Williams (“Buy a Plant, Kill a Forest?”) spent three years as a field biologist learning the Latin names of virtually every seaweed, sea star and snail in the tidepools. Turning her attention to the dry land in this story, Megan uncovers a dangerous development in the ongoing saga of sudden oak death, the mysterious and as yet incurable disease that is killing oaks and other species of trees by the hundreds of thousands. During her first two quarters in the Science Communication Program, Megan interned as a reporter at the Salinas Californian, where she covered fire, flood and robbery. In her third and last quarter she interned by email at Science magazine’s online news service, ScienceNOW. Her stories there explored how oysters make their shells, why trees can grow only so high, and how grape color evolved (apropos of her love of wine). Megan happily spent the summer in San Francisco as an intern for California Wild, the general-audience magazine of the California Academy of Sciences. The unsinkable Megan plans to hit The Big Apple in the fall, where she’ll intern at Discover, then take on the rest of the world.