About Mike

I am a licensed biochemist*, but I practice molecular biology, genetics, genomics, systems biology, computational biology, and synthetic biology without any certification whatsoever, in the risky tradition of antedisciplinary science.

My approach to life and blogging is reflected in the random walk of my educational history: after a B.A. in music, I earned a Ph.D. in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Rochester School of Medicine. I’m now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Genetics and the Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology at the Washington University School of Medicine, where I as a postdoc spent four years working back to back with my fellow publican Josh Witten, and where we amused ourselves with rambling nerd conversations that were the original offline version of the Finch and Pea. For a few years, I wrote a science column for Pacific Standard.

For details about my research, CV, visit my (currently neglected) faculty page. Contact me via twitter @genologos.

Find my writing at the Finch and Pea here.

As a pathological bibliophile, I look for every excuse I can to buy, read, and write about books of all sorts, especially science fiction and pathbreaking literature. I’m a sucker for vintage science fiction, and an index of my sci-fi reviews is here.

* A copy of this article which you can read without a license is available here.