Emily writes:

Hello!

I enjoy your podcast series. I was just listening to Immune episode 10 and was excited to hear the mention of faculty member Vera Tarakanova from the school I attend! I did want to clarify, though, that our name is actually The Medical College of Wisconsin – Steph referred to us as Milwaukee Medical College and since we are currently working on some re-branding I thought it important to clear that up in case you’d like to give us a shout-out in the future for any reason.

Thanks again for the great podcast series!

Emily Vonderhaar

Medical Scientist Training Program, Graduate Year 3

Dwinell Laboratory

Medical College of Wisconsin

Ross writes:

Hello,

I really enjoyed the “episode 14 – Breaking Bad”.

A reference was made to a podcast with respect to cost recovery to the government (NIH) funded research.  I was unable to locate that link.

Could this link be provided?

Thanks Again for this podcast!

Follow up:

Reference to 47 minutes into episode 14 podcast.

Mariana Mazzucato on Freakonomics episode 348

Aaditya writes:

AAAAAAAAAHHHH.

I just listened to the latest episode of Immune today, and I’m so grateful for being the winner!

On a side note, I’d like to mention how listening to Immune, TWiP, and TWiV convinced me to study biology this year. More broadly, how my love for programming and computer science got me fascinated with all things microbiology! I loved studying computer science last year, but there just wasn’t anything like it on offer this year. So, the next best thing was studying a subject called “student directed inquiry”, where I spend a subject line to complete my own research project.

Doing a little bit of googling and deliberation I thought, “hey, computational biology sounds like a really cool field I’m going to learn more about it”. Then, over the next few months I just got more and more fascinated by the natural sciences and I came upon your podcasts. It really changed my perceptions about what biologists actually did all day. I thought it was a ‘soft’ science, that it was purely observational. It never occurred to me that biology–just like everything else in this world–involved mathematics, chemistry and physics–or that it could be computed!

My inquiry doesn’t involve bioinformatics anymore and instead I’m studying how CRISPR and other gene-editing systems are used in medical research and therapy. Along side my inquiry, I’m also studying chemistry, biology, and specialised mathematics. I’ve come to love my biology and chemistry lessons very dearly, and I (tentatively) plan to study something like biochemistry or bioinformatics in university. I just can’t get enough of it all!

Sorry for the very long email, but I’d like to thank you again for selecting me as the winner for that textbook. It really means a lot.

Aaditya

P.S. If any of you are interesting in an email interview about CRISPR, or could recommend anyone who’s involved with CRISPR, it would be really appreciated!