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How to Write an Academic Bio for Conferences

There are very few things as challenging as writing academic biographies (perhaps academic writing?). It seems simple, but things soon get awkward as you try to show how amazing you are without sounding arrogation or pretentious. Sophie shares her tips on writing a balanced bio…

It’s all going swimmingly until you read the Call for Papers: Please submit a proposal and brief bio.

What on earth is a bio (otherwise known as an ‘academic bio’)? And just how brief does it need to be? Writing an academic bio is a skill you can pick up like any other, and this article will take you through the basics of what to include, what to leave out, and how to craft this tricky piece of your academic arsenal.

Covering the Basics

Whatever discipline you’re working in, you’ll definitely need to include the following in your academic bio:

•  full name,
• position (i.e. PhD student; PhD candidate),
• institution.

All this should go into the first sentence, so it reads something like this:

Joe Bloggs is currently a PhD candidate [meaning he’s passed his upgrade] at the University of Warwick.

You can also mention your department, although it’s not strictly necessary for most of us.

The Big Picture

The rest of your academic bio should tell the reader about your research interests. Start by setting out your broad research question , whether that’s finding new ways to create Omega 3 in algae cultures or exploring fashion statements at Charles II’s court. Then focus it further; are you looking at a specific type of algae culture, or a particular poet who was into fashion? This is the most important part of your bio: it tells other people attending the conference where you’re coming from, and may present links between your research areas.

You can end your bio here, or add another sentence situating your research within wider scholarship. Is it important to reference your specific style of criticism, or how you’re leading on from recently-published developments in the field, for example? If it’s important for the theme of the conference, you may wish to add another sentence on the future directions of your research. However, if this isn’t relevant or necessary, feel free to leave it out, especially if you’ve been asked to submit a brief bio – best to keep it brief and stick to your research interests.

What Not to Do

Inevitably, we all do things early in our career/academic life that, with hindsight, make us cringe. To avoid that uncomfortable feeling in the future, four common errors are:

• Treating your bio like a humorous essay : only include a joke if you’re sure it’s really, really funny (maybe check with a straight-talking friend).
• Getting too personal : an academic bio is a chance to make an impression pre-conference, and it may be what people remember you by, so ensure that you stay professional.
• Giving too much information : remember that an academic bio isn’t the same thing as a CV – the conference organisers don’t need to know where you did your undergrad, MA or how much you’ve won in grants.
• Using exclamation marks : your writing should be relatively formal in style, so avoid coming across as too chatty – save your engaging manners for the big presentation day!

One final tip is to use the third person. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but at some conferences, your bio will be read out as an introduction, so personally I prefer to start a sentence like Joe Bloggs above.

What do you think about this approach?

Any more tips for writing academic bios?

Text credits: Sophie Shorland 

Sophie is a PhD student at Warwick, where she’s one of the organisers of the English Department’s annual postgraduate symposium for 2017. You can find out how to get involved in the symposium here , or check their Twitter here .  

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What a concidence. I’m sending the abstract and the bio for a conference at Warwick

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How to Write a Good Academic Biography (Part 1)

When your journal article gets accepted or you are preparing for a public presentation, you will often be asked for a short academic biography. For many people, these academic bios are more difficult to write than a dissertation. How do you sum up yourself and your work in 3-5 sentences? What do you need to include? What should you leave out?

What You Should Do

• Start with your full name followed by your current position, your general interests, and your current project, keeping them all very brief.
• If you are within a year of receiving a prestigious award, mention that as well.
• Finally, finish with a sentence that’s personal: add a hobby, a pet’s name, the city you live in—whatever you are comfortable with that is personal but not too private.

What You Should Avoid

• Avoid speaking in the first person, i.e., don’t use “I.”
• Don’t divulge details beyond your current position.
• In a longer bio of multiple paragraphs, you may add more awards and information about your master’s and bachelor’s degrees, but not in a short bio. Moreover, don’t add anything that happened before grad school—including your place of birth. For example:

Hi! My name is Scott. I was originally born in Vermont and now I’m a professor at North Yankee University in Fargone, New York (in upstate New York). I study antelopes’ migration patterns and their impact of native grain growth. My interest in antelopes began as a teenager when I first saw one in the wild. I did my undergrad degree in biology at SUNY and my masters and UCLA and my PhD in Forestry at Hunter College.

Related: Finished drafting your academic biography and heading for an international conference? Check out this post now!

The above example is far too casual and Scott’s work and current position are overshadowed by all the other random details. This can be written in a much better way:

Scott Sampson is a professor of Wildlife Biology at North Yankee University. His work focuses specifically on the migration patterns of antelope and their impact on the growth of native grain. His favorite place to do research in his backyard, which opens to the Akron National Forest.

This improvised version is concise, relevant, and makes Scott’s bio appear professional while giving a short description of his personal details.

Longer Bios

For longer bios, follow the same basic rules, but go into a bit more depth about your work, your education, and your future projects or interests. You may also consider adding a line about your immediate family. But as always, leave the personal details for a short and friendly mention at the end of the bio.

Mostly, your bio will be used by someone to introduce you at a conference or public event so if you write your bio using these tips, you will help them give a smooth and accurate introduction. Remember that the bio is the first thing that people know about you so pack it full of the most important things about yourself!

If you would like to know more about different formats of academic biography, read the next article in this series!

Appreciating the dedication you put into your blog and detailed information you provide. It’s good to come across a blog every once in a while that isn’t the same out of date rehashed material. Fantastic read! I’ve bookmarked your site and I’m including your RSS feeds to my Google account.

Greeting from Enago Academy! Thank you for your positive comment. We are glad to know that you found our resources useful. Your feedback is very valuable to us. Happy reading!

Super helpful! Thank you for writing about this.

wow great article. I got lots of new ideas from this post. Thanks a lot.

Thank you! Really a short and precise description of how to write short biographic sentence.

Excellent! Just what I needed; thank you.

Thanks for sharing this post, It is a very helpful article.

Excellent information…

Comparing to my introduction and yours, there is a huge difference and mine is like grade R?. Thank you so much for developing such content and helping disadvantaged students like me, hence holding Honours. Once again thank you

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Your articles are so much meaningful and informative.

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How to Write a scientific bio: tips, inspiration, and examples

Your scientific bio is more than just a dry resume entry. It's your chance to spark curiosity, showcase your expertise, and leave a lasting impression on colleagues, collaborators, and anyone else who encounters your work. But how do you craft a bio that stands out from the sea of generic summaries?

This guide is your map, highlighting the key elements that make a strong bio. Remember, your bio can change depending on where you write it and for whom, but this guide aims to fuel your creativity and equip you with essential tips. Whether you're crafting a quick intro for a conference or a longer piece for your website, these insights will get you started. So, let's unlock the secrets of a captivating bio and build a window into your scientific journey!

1. Hook & Introduction:

1.1. grab attention:.

Start with a provocative question, a personal anecdote, or a surprising fact related to your research. This ignites curiosity and draws readers in to learn more.

Here are some examples to "Grab attention" in your bio, depending on your research field and audience:

1. Provocative question:

2. Personal anecdote:

3. Surprising fact:

1.2. Introduce yourself:

Share your name, title, and a warm, welcoming tone . Express your passion for your field and let your personality shine through.

Here are some examples of introducing yourself in your bio, showcasing your warmth, expertise, and enthusiasm:

1. Enthusiastic and approachable:

2. Personal and inspiring:

3. Experienced and confident:

2. Academic Essentials:

2.1. state your position and affiliation:.

Make it clear where you work and what your official role is. This provides context and establishes your credibility .

Here are some examples of how to clearly and confidently state your position and affiliation in your bio, depending on your situation:

1. Academic researcher:

2. Industry professional:

3. Independent researcher:

2.2. Highlight your research interests:

Briefly and clearly list your main areas of focus . You can be broad or specific , depending on your audience and goals.

Here are some examples of highlighting your research interests:

3. Highlighting Expertise & Collaborations:

3.1. explain your research focus:.

Use clear, concise language and avoid jargon. If possible, use engaging metaphors or analogies to make your work relatable.

Explaining your research focus in a bio can be tricky – balance scientific accuracy with engaging language to captivate your audience. Here are some tips and examples to help you shine:

1. Keep it simple and clear:

• Aim for short, digestible sentences that avoid jargon. Instead of "investigating the biophysical properties of novel protein structures," explain that you're "deciphering how newly discovered proteins fold and function, like unlocking the secrets of tiny molecular machines."
• Use active voice and strong verbs to keep your audience engaged. "I'm exploring the impact of climate change on coral reefs" is more captivating than "The impact of climate change on coral reefs is being explored."

2. Employ relatable metaphors and analogies:

• Compare your research to everyday objects or experiences to make it easier to understand. For example, a plant biologist studying drought tolerance might say, "Imagine plants are like marathon runners, adapting to run with less water."
• Use humor or surprise to spark curiosity. An astrophysicist researching dark matter could say, "We're searching for the universe's invisible residents, the shadowy stuff that holds everything together, like the ghost in the cosmic machine."

3. Examples across fields:

• Don't dumb down your research, but find a way to make it relatable and intriguing to your audience.
• Embrace your passion and enthusiasm for your work – it shines through your explanation and draws readers in.
• Showcasing the "why" behind your research can be just as important as the "what."
• Not everyone visiting your page is an expert in your field.

3.2. Showcase your skills and tools:

Mention the specific techniques or technologies you use in your research. This demonstrates your expertise and gives readers a glimpse into your process.

1. Choose impactful skills and tools:

• Pick the key techniques or technologies that set you apart and directly contribute to your research achievements. Don't list everything you've ever learned!
• Use specific terms instead of generic categories. Mentioning "cryo-electron microscopy" instead of "imaging techniques" adds a touch of authority and intrigue.

2. Explain their significance:

• Briefly explain how you use these skills or tools to unlock insights in your field. A roboticist might say, "Using deep learning algorithms, I train robots to understand human gestures, paving the way for more intuitive human-robot interactions."
• Connect your skills to concrete achievements. A biochemist could mention, "My expertise in protein crystallography helped me decipher the structure of a key enzyme, paving the way for new drug development."

3.3. Feature key collaborations:

Highlight any interdisciplinary partnerships or joint projects you're involved in. This showcases your ability to work with others and your awareness of the broader scientific landscape.

Collaborations are the lifeblood of scientific progress, and featuring them in your bio demonstrates your ability to work across disciplines and contribute to larger research goals. Here are some examples of how to highlight key collaborations on your personal academic website:

1. Collaborative Spirit:

2. Specific Partnerships:

3. Quantify the Impact:

4. Demonstrating Impact & Storytelling:

4.1. quantify your achievements:.

Mention any grants you've secured, awards you've won, or significant discoveries you've made . This provides concrete evidence of your success.

Showcasing your achievements in your bio adds credibility and makes your research journey even more impressive. Here are some ways to quantify your success and make it shine:

1. Grants and Funding:

2. Awards and Recognition:

3. Publications and Impact:

4. Quantify with Context:

• Don't just list numbers; explain their significance. "Securing a {highly competitive grant} among {number} applicants allows me to pursue {cutting-edge research}."
• Connect achievements to future goals. "Winning the {award} provides a platform to expand {research area} and collaborate with {desired partners} to achieve {impactful result}."
• Focus on achievements relevant to your audience and career stage. Early-career researchers can emphasize scholarships and publications, while senior researchers might highlight grants and impactful discoveries.
• Maintain a humble and grateful tone while acknowledging your success.
• Quantify your achievements while weaving them into the narrative of your research journey.

4.2. Share a personal story:

Show how your work makes a real-world difference by sharing a story about how it impacts people's lives. This makes your research more relatable and emotionally engaging.

Sharing a personal story in your bio isn't just about humble bragging; it's about bridging the gap between your research and its real-world impact, making it relatable and emotionally engaging for your audience. Here are some ways to weave personal stories into your bio:

1. The Spark of Inspiration:

2. The Impact Journey:

3. The Vision Ahead:

5. Personal Touch & Call to Action:

5.1. share a personal project or hobby:.

Show the human side of your expertise by mentioning a passion or activity that connects to your research in a surprising way. This makes you more approachable and memorable.

5.2. Balance factual and personal:

Don't just list achievements; share your motivations and values . This gives readers a deeper understanding of who you are and what drives your work.

5.3. End with a memorable statement:

Leave a lasting impression with a thought-provoking quote, a call to action, or a vision for the future of your field. This leaves readers wanting to learn more and engage with your work.

6. Dazzle with Design: Formatting and Flair

Now that you've crafted the content of your captivating bio, it's time to dress it up for the stage . Think of this section as applying makeup to your scientific story: a touch of formatting and a dash of personality can make all the difference in grabbing attention and keeping your audience engaged.

Here's how to sprinkle some visual magic into your bio:

• Bold & Italic: Use bold text to highlight key points or your title. Italics come in handy for emphasizing specific terms or showcasing important publications . Remember, less is more – overusing these tools can dilute their impact.
• Bullet Points: Break down longer sections into digestible bullet points . This makes your bio scannable and visually appealing , especially for audiences reading on screens. Use bullet points to list your research interests, expertise, or key achievements.
• Emojis (cautiously!) : Emojis can add a touch of playfulness and personality to your bio, but use them cautiously. Stick to relevant and professional emojis that enhance your message without coming across as unprofessional. Imagine a emoji next to your research description or a emoji for your global collaborations.

Remember: When it comes to design, strike a balance between creativity and professionalism . Your goal is to make your bio visually appealing and engaging, but not at the expense of clarity or credibility. Think of it as adding a dash of spice to your scientific dish – enough to tantalize the taste buds, but not overwhelm the main course.

Why are these elements important?

By incorporating these elements, you craft a bio that is more than just information . It's a personal narrative , a passionate plea , and a window into your unique scientific perspective . It allows you to connect with your audience on a deeper level and leave a lasting impression that extends far beyond your research itself.

So, ditch the copy-paste templates and ✨grab your keyboard (or quill) to craft a bio that sparks like a supernova! Remember, your bio is your scientific saga – tell it with passion, creativity, and a healthy dose of you!

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CAUSE AN EFFECT

Blog on science communication

How to write a good bio for your research website (or LinkedIn)

Do you think it’s fun to talk about how great you are in your biography? No? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Most academics hate to talk about themselves, brag about their accomplishments or show how good they are. Be that as it may, it’s still important to do sometimes. Let’s find out how you can write a bio that is effective and that you feel comfortable about sharing with the world.

Things to avoid in your bio

• Past tense. You’re not living in the past, you’re living in the present and are writing for the future.
• Passive voice. Keep it active and snappy to keep people reading.
• Starting your bio with “My name is…”. You’re not in kindergarten anymore. Your name will probably be the heading of the biography, so leave this out to look more professional.
• Your age or where you live. It’s not necessary nor relevant.
• A list of facts. It’s boring to read.

An example of a badly written biography (based on a real one):

Write about yourself as if you were a colleague

To get researchers more comfortable with writing a biography, we often do a little experiment. We show them someone else’s bio and ask them if they find it too much. Most of the time, the answer is no. So if you’re afraid to come off as arrogant or bragging, a trick can be to think about yourself in the third person. Imagine you are a colleague. What are they good at, and what do you think the world needs to know about them? Distancing yourself from yourself a little bit helps to write better and be more comfortable.

Don’t write a resume, write about what you’re curious about

Nobody likes to read a chronological resume. A summary of what you have done in the past is not interesting to anyone. So don’t write about what education you have had, which schools you attended, and all the jobs you have done. If people want to see that, they will visit your LinkedIn page.

Instead, write about what you’re curious about. The one thing that makes scientists interesting is their passion about a topic (it’s also why we love working with them). Just write about what you want to discover, what gaps there are in the knowledge, and how you would like to solve this puzzle. If you love what you do, this should be easy to do!

Start with a powerful tagline

A catchphrase or tagline can be very effective, and make it easier for people to remember you. It’s infinitely better than starting a piece of text with “My name is…”. So think about what the essence of your research is. Are you solving a problem? Are you trying to understand a mechanism? Are you doing something that

An example for a PhD student in marine biology: Trying to understand micro-plastics and health

If you are using this for a LinkedIn headline, you can extend it as follows: Trying to understand micro-plastics and health | PhD in Marine Biology | Speaker | Blogger | Researcher & aspiring TV host.

Write your bio for your future you, not your past self

As we’ve mentioned, a biography is not a resume where you tell people every detail about your past career. Think about it, what you have done in the past might not be something you ever want to do again in the future! For example, I’ve done plenty of data analyses in SAS, but do I want to do that in my dream job? Definitely not. So I should probably not tell anyone that I can do this.

A bio is a promotion of the best parts of you, and should reflect what you’re interested in and what you would like to do in the future. Do you want to become an (assistant) professor, speaker, writer or TV host? Just write it down. People love to help others achieve their dreams. So write about what you want to do in the future, or what you have loved doing in the past. And maybe someone will notice.

Writing in first or third person?

Since it’s about you and your passion, we recommend writing your biography in first person. It’s a personal text, so write it as if you’re speaking to someone. Do you think it looks more professional if it’s written in the third person? It might, but the drawback is that it also sounds like you are not approachable, more distant, and more corporate. Unless you want people to think you’re too cool for them, write in first person.

The only exception is when you write the bio for someone else to introduce you with, and they would read your biography out loud. For example on a third party website, folder, brochure or as a speaker introduction. Then it’s be more suitable in the third person.

A biography is only 100-200 words

People don’t like to read, so keep your biography short. A good biography is only a few paragraphs long. If you need more words to talk about everything you want to say, like on LinkedIn, you can add paragraphs about your projects, interests, vision etc. But don’t forget to keep the paragraphs short and add a title, so it’s still readable.

Essential elements of a good biography

You write a biography for someone else, so it’s good to answer the questions that most people want to know. Here are some elements that we think are essential for a well-written biography.

Show your credentials

What makes you a good researcher? Is it the number of publications? Are you great in communicating science? Did you receive any awards or grants? If it feels to much like bragging you can hide your accomplishments inside a sentence.

For example: “I’m an assistant professor at Wageningen University, where I am working on an ERC starting grant to find out how we can prevent diabetes by looking at new incentives.”

What is the ultimate goal of your research?

This is the juicy part of your biography. What do you want to achieve with your work? Which disease are you trying to eradicate? Which fundamental problem are you trying to solve? What impact do you want to have with your work? This is an important bit, because it helps people outside of academia understand why your research is valuable. People might not know any of the names of the molecules or technology you’re working with, but they can definitely understand your work in terms of how it impacts the real world.

My own goal is to make science sexy and help researchers become better science communicators. What is yours?

Bring some personality into your writing

What makes you unique? Adding your personality in the text makes it fun to read. And people love to know how you’re different from other researchers. Are you very outspoken, nuanced, light-hearted, critical, down-to-earth, creative or expressive? Make sure it shines through in your text, so people get a taste of who you are as a person. I’m a very informal and direct person, and it usually reflects in my writing.

See for example the well-written bio of William Harrison that clearly shows his personality.

Connect with your audience

Are you tired of talking about yourself? Then write about the problems of your audience. Are they a potential employer, the general public, or a colleague? Address their problems and frustrations, and show what you can do for them. If you’re happily employed and are not looking for new opportunities, you can tell people what value you will give them when they start following you.

If you’re sharing lot’s of tips about what you’ve learned on the job on LinkedIn, you can talk about how following you might help them with their data analyses, field work or career. And if you want people to get in touch with you, you can include your phone, e-mail, social media accounts.

Some examples for social media:

• Follow me to learn more about marine biology, and how microplastics impact ocean life.
• Connect with me to regularly get tips for scientist to create more impact.

An e xample of a great biography that shows personality and passion about their work:

Don’t forget to include a good profile picture

Appearance is everything. So if your biography is presented with a photograph of yourself, make sure it looks professional. So no holiday pictures from ten years ago please. You might not be very comfortable in the spotlight, but nobody wants to have a bad picture floating around on the internet. Read our blog about how to create a good profile picture to get all the tips.

Happy with your bio? Use it on multiple platforms!

• Your LinkedIn profile
• A profile page on the website of your university
• A profile page on the website of your research group or consortium
• As an introduction for a (poster) presentation at a conference
• For other speaking engagements
• In the author acknowledgements underneath a blog you wrote
• As an introduction to your resume

About the Author: Liesbeth Smit

Search for more scicomm tips:, read more about science communication:.

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Our favorite (free) tools to create better designs for science communication

Designing for impact: the lessons I learned from my science communication internship

Become a pro science communicator with our workshops.

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Pitch your science to any audience

By understanding your audience and aligning your message to their needs, you can really get your point across. In this workshop you’ll create a short pitch or article to practice just that.

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Create beautiful and effective infographics, posters and graphical abstracts. You will learn the best practices in design to make sure your work gets noticed and is easier to understand.

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22 Famous Scientists Who Changed How We View the World (and the Universe)

From medicine to physics and astronomy, these scholars have saved lives and improved our understanding across all aspects of the natural world.

Whether it’s a medicine that has saved countless lives or an equation that helped propel the evolution of energy and technology, these breakthroughs arose from the scientific method of observation and experimentation.

Here are 22 of the most famous scientists from the 15 th century to today and how their crucial contributions in many fields of study still impact us.

Nicolaus Copernicus

Astronomer and mathematician 1473-1543

For centuries, people incorrectly believed the Earth was the center of the universe. Copernicus theorized otherwise, with the belief that the size and speed of a planet’s orbit depended on its distance from the centralized sun.

Rather than a breakthrough, however, Copernicus’ hypotheses were met with controversy as they deviated from the beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church. The church even outright banned his research collection, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres , in 1616 long after the German scientist’s death.

Galileo Galilei

Physicist and astronomer 1564-1642

Galileo changed how we literally see the world by taking early telescopes and improving their design. The Italian scientist made lenses capable of magnifying objects twenty-fold .

When Galileo used his tools to look toward the heavens, he discovered Jupiter’s four largest moons, now named in his honor , and stars far off in the Milky Way not visible to the human eye. His findings built the foundation for modern astronomy.

Learn More About Galileo Galilei

Robert Hooke

Astronomer, physicist, and biologist 1635-1703

Englishman Hooke coined the term “cell,” now known as the basic structural unit of all organisms, in his 1665 book Micrographia after observing the cell walls in slices of cork tissue. But his studies weren’t limited to biology. He is famous for Hooke’s Law, which states that the force required to compress or extend a spring is proportional to the distance of compression or extension. He also helped redesign London buildings destroyed by the city’s “Great Fire” in 1666.

Learn More About Robert Hooke

Sir Isaac Newton

Physicist and mathematician 1643-1727

You probably know about Newton’s three laws of motion, including that objects will remain at rest or in uniform motion unless acted upon. But did you also know his theory of gravity allowed the Englishman to calculate the mass of each planet and Earth’s ocean tides? Although Albert Einstein would later improve on some of his theories, Newton remains one of the most important minds in history.

Fun fact: Newton’s mother tried to pull him out of school at age 12 to become a farmer. Seems like a good thing that plan fell through.

Learn More About Isaac Newton

Charles Darwin

Biologist 1809-1882

Growing up in Great Britain, Darwin was raised in a Christian family and held creationist beliefs. That’s not what you’d expect from the man whose landmark 1859 book On the Origins of Species by Means of Natural Selection provided a detailed description of the theory of evolution. In his writings, he outlined his natural selection concept, in which species that evolve and adapt to their environment thrive while the others perish.

Learn More About Charles Darwin

Ada Lovelace

Mathematician and computer scientist 1815-1852

A computer scientist in the 1800s? Yes—Lovelace’s notes and instructions on mentor Charles Babbage ’s “analytical engine” are considered a breakthrough on the path to modern computers. For example, the London-born Lovelace first theorized a process now called looping, in which computer programs repeat a series of instructions until a desired outcome is reached.

Although her contributions weren’t recognized until the 20 th century, her legacy was forever cemented in 1980 when the U.S. Department of Defense named the new computer language Ada in her honor.

Learn More About Ada Lovelace

Gregor Mendel

Geneticist 1822-1884

Mendel, from Austria, became an Augustinian monk and an educator, instead of taking over his family’s farm as his father wished. His growing skills did pay off, as Mendel used pea plants to study the transmission of hereditary traits. His findings that traits were either dominant or recessive and passed on independently of one another became the foundation for modern genetic studies.

Learn More About Gregor Mendel

Louis Pasteur

Chemist and microbiologist 1822-1895

Pasteur used his observations of microorganisms to suggest hygienic methods we take for granted today, like sterilizing linens, dressings, and surgical instruments. The process of treating food items with heat to kill pathogens—known as pasteurization—also bears his name.

However, the French scientist is arguably most renowned for his efforts in creating vaccines for diseases such as cholera, smallpox, anthrax, and rabies. He worked on the rabies vaccine despite suffering from a severe brain stroke in 1868.

Learn More About Louis Pasteur

Sigmund Freud

Psychologist 1856-1939

Although his research initially focused on neurobiology, Freud—who was born in what is now the Czech Republic but grew up in Austria—became known for his psychoanalytic theory that past traumatic experiences caused neuroses in patients. He also proposed the ideas of the id, ego, and superego as the three foundations of human personality and that dreams were a method of coping with conflicts rooted in the subconscious.

Learn More About Sigmund Freud

Nikola Tesla

Physicist and mathematician 1856-1943

Chances are you’re reading this in a lit room. If so, you have the Croatia-born Tesla to thank. He designed the alternative current, or AC, electric system, which remains the primary method of electricity used throughout the world (rival Thomas Edison created a direct current system).

Additionally, his patented Tesla coil used in radio transmission antennas helped build the foundation for wireless technology. The scientist also helped pioneer remote and radar technology.

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George Washington Carver

Botanist and agricultural scientist Circa 1864-1943

Washington Carver is best known for his work with the peanut plant. Born into slavery , the Missouri native developed more than 300 uses for it —including shaving cream, shampoo, plastics, and of course, recipes for foods like bread and candies. But he also looked out for farmers by teaching them livestock care and cultivation techniques. Washington Carver built fruitful friendships with major figures like automaker Henry Ford , whom he worked with to create a soybean-based alternative to rubber and an experimental lightweight car body.

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Marie Curie

Physicist and chemist 1867-1934

Curie, originally from modern-day Poland, was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize —in physics—and also became the first person to win two Nobel prizes .

The scientist, with the help of husband Pierre Curie , discovered radioactivity and the elements polonium and radium. She also championed the use of portable X-ray machines on the battlefields of World War I. Curie died from aplastic anemia, likely caused by her exposure to radiation.

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Albert Einstein

Physicist 1879-1955

In addition to his frizzy hair and reported distaste for wearing socks, Einstein became famous for his theory of relativity , suggesting that space and time are intertwined . And, of course, the famous equation E=MC², which showed that even the tiniest particles can produce large amounts of energy.

The German scientist was also a champion for civil rights , once calling racism a “disease.” He joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in the 1940s.

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Physicist 1885-1962

Bohr studied and played soccer at Denmark’s University of Copenhagen before embarking to England to work with J.J. Thomson , who discovered the electron. Bohr proposed an entirely different model of the atom, in which electrons can jump between energy levels. This helped pave the way for quantum mechanics.

Bohr was also a key contributor to the Manhattan Project, in which the United States developed an atomic bomb during World War II. Bohr worked with project director J. Robert Oppenheimer , the subject of the 2023 biopic Oppenheimer .

Learn More About Niels Bohr

Rachel Carson

Biologist 1907-1964

Carson penned the famous book Silent Spring in 1962. The American scientist’s research on the adverse effects of DDT and other pesticides in nature is credited with beginning the modern environmental movement . Soon after the book’s release, the Environmental Protection Agency was established in 1970, and the use of DDT was banned by 1972. Carson, who died of breast cancer, posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980.

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Alan Turing

Computer scientist and mathematician 1912-1954

A skilled cryptanalyst, Turing helped decipher coded messages from the German military during World War II. The British mathematician is also considered the father of computer science and artificial intelligence, with his Turing Test purported to measure a machine’s ability to exhibit behaviors comparable to human beings.

Turing’s life and efforts during the war were the basis for the 2014 movie The Imitation Game , starring Benedict Cumberbatch .

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Gertrude B. Elion

Biochemist and pharmacologist 1918-1999

Elion, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1988, developed 45 patents in medicine throughout her remarkable career. Hired by Burroughs-Wellcome (now GlaxoSmithKline) in 1944, the American soon went on to develop a drug, 6-MP, to combat leukemia. In 1977, she and her team created the antiviral drug acyclovir that debunked the idea that any drug capable of killing a virus would be too toxic for humans. It’s used to treat herpes, chickenpox, and shingles.

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Katherine Johnson

Mathematician 1918-2020

Each of NASA’s early milestones—from sending an astronaut, Alan Shepard , to space for the first time in 1961, to Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 crew landing on the moon eight years later—were all possible because of Johnson. The West Virginia native helped perform the mathematical calculations necessary to determine their correct flight paths .

In a show of gratitude, NASA named a building at its Langley Research Center in Virginia after Johnson in 2017. Her inspiring true story was told in the 2016 movie Hidden Figures , with Taraji P. Henson playing her on the big screen.

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Rosalind Franklin

Chemist and biophysicist 1920-1958

Franklin began working at King’s College London in 1951 and used X-ray diffraction techniques to find that human DNA had two forms: a dry “A” form and wet “B” form. However, Franklin’s discovery was overlooked after a colleague leaked her findings to scientists Francis Crick and James Watson . That pair went on to create the double helix model for DNA structure. Franklin died from ovarian cancer at age 37.

Learn More About Rosalind Franklin

Jane Goodall

Primatologist 1934-present

Goodall’s extensive study of chimpanzees has helped us understand how similar humans are to our evolutionary relatives. After arriving in Tanzania in 1960, the British scientist discovered chimps create and use tools, develop complex language and social systems, and aren’t exclusively vegetarian as once believed.

Once she understood chimpanzees, Goodall turned her efforts to preserving their habitats and preventing unethical treatment of the animals in scientific experiments.

Learn More About Jane Goodall

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Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography - Features deceased scientists from ancient times through the 21st Century. Signed articles. Some portraits in black and white. Bibliographies. Index by specialty. Online version of Dictionary of Scientific Biography and New Dictionary of Scientific Biography.  Print editions held at Marx Library, Medical/Historical Library, and SML Starr Main Reference Room.

ORBIS - Online Catalog (books and journals in the Yale University Library System) To find biographies or autobiographies for an individual, enter the person's name in Orbis Advanced search keyword box. An example book is: Spencer Baird of the Smithsonian by EF Rivinius and EM Youssef. Library Shelving Facility QH31 B17 R58X For collective science biography enter a keyword search such as scientists biography or biologists biography. Some biographical indexes are also available which cover entries in collective science biography. These books may be found in Orbis by entering a keyword search such as science bio-bibliography indexes.

The Biographical Dictionary of Scientists. 2 volumes Editors: Roy Porter and Marilyn Ogilvie. 3rd edition Helicon Publishing, c2000. Over 1280 biographies of men and women scientists, living and deceased, from throughout time.  International in scope. Fields covered include: astronomy, botany, biology, chemistry, cosmology, engineering, exploration, geology, mathematics, physics.  Bibliographies for further reading. LSF

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• Published: 26 September 2012

Biography: The scientist within

• Richard Holmes 1  

Nature volume  489 ,  pages 498–499 ( 2012 ) Cite this article

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Richard Holmes celebrates today's revival of science biography, a tradition spanning 300 years.

Nearly two decades on from the explosion in popular-science publishing, books by luminaries such as Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins are still selling in six figures, and authors such as Brian Cox and Rebecca Skloot are drawing a younger generation of readers. But I am struck by a new emphasis — on popular-science biography. As I learned while researching my book The Age of Wonder (Harper, 2008), the “life scientific” can be an extraordinarily gripping adventure.

There is a noble tradition of science biography stretching back to the 1600s. Recently, a fresh hunger to understand the making of science through the making of scientists has emerged. We want to read about scientific work as part of a life story — to know what makes a scientist tick, and what set them ticking. We are intrigued to learn that Dawkins, the eminent biologist and atheist, had “a normal Anglican upbringing”, was inspired by the Dr Doolittle books and taught in 1960s San Francisco, in the time of flower power and demonstrations against the war in Vietnam.

The form is currently undergoing unprecedented transformation. Biographers are tackling highly complex and challenging areas such as X-ray crystallography, general relativity and quantum physics, explaining them as pure adventures of the human spirit. We see this in spellbinding biographies, from Georgina Ferry's Dorothy Hodgkin (Granta; 1998) and Walter Isaacson's Einstein (Simon & Schuster, 2007) to Graham Farmelo's award-winning biography of Paul Dirac, The Strangest Man (Faber and Faber, 2009) — which drew praise from readers as varied as Michael Frayn, Tom Stoppard and Martin Rees.

The evolution of a theory

A whole spectrum of books on Charles Darwin, published to mark the 2009 bicentenary of his birth, illuminated the debate surrounding the emergence and implications of evolutionary theory. Led by Janet Browne, who treated On The Origin itself as a biographical subject, and Adrian Desmond and James Moore, who looked at Darwin's work on human origins, this biographic experimentation expanded in original ways. Rebecca Stott's Darwin's Ghosts (Bloomsbury, 2012), for example, is a prequel consisting of vivid portraits of early evolutionists, starting with Aristotle doing marine biology on the isle of Lesbos.

Stott's book is part of a growing trend for group biographies of scientists. These use teamwork, competition and personal rivalry to reframe science as a kind of social history. Outstanding examples cover groupings in every century. Arabic trailblazers of the 'dark' ages and people of the early medieval period star in Jim Al-Khalili's Pathfinders (Allan Lane, 2010). Lisa Jardine's Ingenious Pursuits (Little, Brown and Co., 1999) focuses on seventeenth-century European natural philosophers, and Jenny Uglow's The Lunar Men (Faber and Faber, 2002) displays the enlightened industrialists of the eighteenth century. We can relish the pioneering efforts of nineteenth-century palaeontologists in Deborah Cadbury's The Dinosaur Hunters (Fourth Estate, 2000), and marvel at the groundbreaking work of twentieth-century physicists in Manjit Kumar's Quantum (Icon Books, 2008).

Mathematics could be seen as the hardest nut to crack biographically because of its abstract language. Yet Simon Singh rendered it thrilling in his treasure-hunt of a group biography over four centuries, Fermat's Last Theorem (Fourth Estate, 1997).

Profile Pioneers

There is a popular misconception that individual science 'lives' are essentially a Victorian creation.

But what of that earlier tradition of science biography? The word 'scientist' was coined only in 1834, and there is a popular misconception that individual scientific 'lives' — such as Henry Mayhew's Young Humphry Davy (1855) — are essentially a Victorian creation. In fact, as with literary biography, these go back well over 300 years. In the 1680s, John Aubrey wrote Brief Lives of William Harvey, Edmund Halley and Robert Boyle, as well as of Shakespeare and Milton.

A surprising pioneer of the form in the eighteenth century was Samuel Johnson. Along with his dictionary and The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1781), Johnson also wrote The Life of Dr Herman Boerhaave (1739), a vivid short biography of the great Dutch botanist and medical doctor who founded clinical teaching at Leiden, improved diagnostic techniques and isolated urea.

Johnson perceived that Boerhaave's childhood was essential to his adult science. He writes, for instance, of Boerhaave's gruesome teenage leg ulcer: “his own pain taught him to compassionate others, and his experience of the inefficacy of the methods then in use, incited him to attempt the discovery of others more certain.”

Similarly, William Stukeley in his Life of Newton (1752) is careful to cite “the extraordinary pregnancy of his genius, whilst a boy”. Stukeley gives vivid descriptions of Newton's boyish windmills, counter levers and water clocks. Stukeley also relates the first known version of the young Newton's famous vision of “universal gravitation” in the orchard at Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, as he contemplates the falling of an apple from a tree: “Why sh d it not go sideways, or upwards? but constantly to the earths centre? ... there must be a drawing power in matter. & the sum of the drawing power in the matter of the earth must be in the earths center, not in any side of the earth.” (Stukeley's original manuscript, one of the treasures of the Royal Society, can be read at http://royalsociety.org/library/moments/newton-apple ).

The growing fascination with scientific biography in the nineteenth century is illustrated by the supplements to the fourth, fifth and sixth editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica , completed in 1824. Of 165 lives selected for individual treatment, 35% were broadly scientific. Another landmark was David Brewster's The Life of Sir Isaac Newton (1831), which presented the natural philosopher as a secular saint, “the high-priest of science” and a man of universal genius. Like Stukeley, Brewster emphasized the originality of mind revealed by Newton's boyhood. Brewster also gave the idea of scientific childhood a new, metaphorical dimension.

It was his superb final chapter that called attention to Newton's now celebrated remark about the mysterious, shifting infinity of scientific truth: “...to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great Ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” Newton may here have been adapting an image from Book IV of Milton's Paradise Regained — the observation that “wise men” may think themselves “deep versed” in research, yet in reality may be “as children gath'ring pebbles on the shore”.

Setbacks and serendipities

In what ways do biographies, whether written last year or in the seventeenth century, throw light on science and scientists? The Royal Society, announcing a historic symposium, Writing Scientific Biography, in 2008, observed that such works “show us the human face of science: the motivations, set-backs, serendipities and moments of enlightenment in the quest for knowledge”.

I think they do more. First, they show the crucial shaping power of childhood and youth, where the scientific vocation and vision begin to emerge. Second, they examine the nature of the creative breakthrough. Eureka moments are only one manifestation. Discovery may equally be the product of painful years of research, experiment and thought, as with Darwin or Dirac. Or it may be the result of a short but intense period of competition and rivalry, as with Francis Crick, James Watson, Rosalind Franklin and Linus Pauling, in the race to discover the structure of DNA.

Third, biographies point to the importance of the inner, imaginative and emotional life. They contradict the fallacy that all scientists are icy rationalists. The great US physicist Richard Feynman played the bongos. The famously elusive chemist Henry Cavendish was a secret member of the notorious Cat and Bagpipes Club. Michael Faraday was an elder of the Sandemanian church. James Clerk Maxwell wrote Scottish poetry and accompanied himself on the guitar. Alan Turing was an outstanding marathon runner. All these traits and characteristics can be linked to the energies that both inspired and occasionally impeded their research.

Fourth, biographies show that error and uncertainty are central to discovery, in a way that is lost in 'the literature', that official record of scientific endeavour. Victorian histories of science tended to propose models of unbroken, cumulative progress, which encouraged the alarming triumphalism of classical science in the early twentieth century. Contemporary 'scientism' has perhaps inherited something of this bias. By contrast, individual biography reveals doubt, scepticism and the historically shifting boundaries of interpretation and truth. The forthcoming life of the nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer by Ray Monk (the inspired biographer of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell) reveals just such a powerful field of political, financial and ethical ambiguities surrounding US science during the cold war.

Biographies can also probe originality and disputed cases of priority, as in the “discovery” of oxygen by Antoine Lavoisier, or Joseph Priestley or Carl Scheele; or the theory of evolution by Darwin or Alfred Russel Wallace. They show that at particular times, certain areas of science are intensely active and open to discovery — currently, cosmology, neuroscience and nanotechnology — while others are comparatively dormant. It is in these active areas that the linked forces of teamwork and rivalry are most fiercely alive, and their consequences can be best understood.

In The Strangest Man , for instance, Graham Farmelo memorably compares the development of quantum mechanics in the 1920s by a team of 50 physicists to “a group of construction workers” labouring on an enormous building site occupying much of northern Europe. “Virtually all the builders were male, under thirty, intensely competitive and craving the respect of their peers as well as the blessing of posterity.”

So science is always a story. A detective story, perhaps; a mystery story; a love story; even, on occasion, a ghost story (the Higgs boson?). But always a story of human lives. And that is what seems to fascinate us — again.

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On Scientific Biography and Biographies of Scientists

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The genre of scientific biography is among the oldest in the history of science literature, but its historiographical value has not always been appreciated. With the professionalization of history of science in the post-1950 period, and especially with the turn to social history in the 1970s, biographies of individual scientists became somewhat unfashionable. Although it is generally agreed that biographies that integrate social and institutional dimensions are preferable, the approach is not without problems. One problem concerns the division between science and non-science, and another the involvement of the biographer in the history of his or her chosen subject. In the discussion of the merits of scientific biographies, it is important to recognize how broad and varied the genre is, not least when it comes to audiences. Although the standard biography deals with the life and work of an individual scientist of the past, there are also interesting experiments with more non-standard kinds of biography.

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20 of the Best Professional Bio Examples We’ve Ever Seen [+ Templates]

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Lindsay Kolowich Cox | HubSpot | October 13, 2022

Your professional bio is not only relevant when applying for jobs, seeking new clients, or networking — it also gives the world a brief snapshot of who you are and your professional ideals.

To help you author one that packs a punch, we’ll teach you how to write a professional bio and leverage professional bio templates with the best professional bio examples we’ve ever seen to draw inspiration from.

What is a Professional Bio?

A professional bio or biography is a short overview of your experience. Professional bios usually include details about education, employment, achievements, and relevant skills.

Purpose of Professional Bios

A bio tells an audience who you are, and what you’ve done, and also hints at what you are capable of doing. It can help potential employers, fans, or customers get a sense of your personality and what you stand for.

That may be hard to achieve without a starting point. Below, we’ve included professional templates to expedite the process of writing a great resume bio.

Read the full article and access templates here .

How to Write a Biography

Biographies are big business. Whether in book form or Hollywood biopics, the lives of the famous and sometimes not-so-famous fascinate us.

While it’s true that most biographies are about people who are in the public eye, sometimes the subject is less well-known. Primarily, though, famous or not, the person who is written about has led an incredible life.

In this article, we will explain biography writing in detail for teachers and students so they can create their own.

While your students will most likely have a basic understanding of a biography, it’s worth taking a little time before they put pen to paper to tease out a crystal-clear definition of one.

What Is a Biography?

A biography is an account of someone’s life written by someone else . While there is a genre known as a fictional biography, for the most part, biographies are, by definition, nonfiction.

Generally speaking, biographies provide an account of the subject’s life from the earliest days of childhood to the present day or, if the subject is deceased, their death.

The job of a biography is more than just to outline the bare facts of a person’s life.

Rather than just listing the basic details of their upbringing, hobbies, education, work, relationships, and death, a well-written biography should also paint a picture of the subject’s personality and experience of life.

Full Biographies

Teaching unit.

Teach your students everything they need to know about writing an AUTOBIOGRAPHY and a BIOGRAPHY.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ( 26 reviews )

Features of a Biography

Before students begin writing a biography, they’ll need to have a firm grasp of the main features of a Biography. An excellent way to determine how well they understand these essential elements is to ask them to compile a checklist like the one-blow

Their checklists should contain the items below at a minimum. Be sure to help them fill in any gaps before moving on to the writing process.

The purpose of a biography is to provide an account of someone’s life.

Biography structure.

ORIENTATION (BEGINNING) Open your biography with a strong hook to grab the reader’s attention

SEQUENCING: In most cases, biographies are written in chronological order unless you are a very competent writer consciously trying to break from this trend.

COVER: childhood, upbringing, education, influences, accomplishments, relationships, etc. – everything that helps the reader to understand the person.

CONCLUSION: Wrap your biography up with some details about what the subject is doing now if they are still alive. If they have passed away, make mention of what impact they have made and what their legacy is or will be.

BIOGRAPHY FEATURES

LANGUAGE Use descriptive and figurative language that will paint images inside your audience’s minds as they read. Use time connectives to link events.

PERSPECTIVE Biographies are written from the third person’s perspective.

DETAILS: Give specific details about people, places, events, times, dates, etc. Reflect on how events shaped the subject. You might want to include some relevant photographs with captions. A timeline may also be of use depending upon your subject and what you are trying to convey to your audience.

TENSE Written in the past tense (though ending may shift to the present/future tense)

THE PROCESS OF WRITING A BIOGRAPHY

Like any form of writing, you will find it simple if you have a plan and follow it through. These steps will ensure you cover the essential bases of writing a biography essay.

Firstly, select a subject that inspires you. Someone whose life story resonates with you and whose contribution to society intrigues you. The next step is to conduct thorough research. Engage in extensive reading, explore various sources, watch documentaries, and glean all available information to provide a comprehensive account of the person’s life.

Creating an outline is essential to organize your thoughts and information. The outline should include the person’s early life, education, career, achievements, and any other significant events or contributions. It serves as a map for the writing process, ensuring that all vital information is included.

Your biography should have an engaging introduction that captivates the reader’s attention and provides background information on the person you’re writing about. It should include a thesis statement summarising the biography’s main points.

Writing a biography in chronological order is crucial . You should begin with the person’s early life and move through their career and achievements. This approach clarifies how the person’s life unfolded and how they accomplished their goals.

A biography should be written in a narrative style , capturing the essence of the person’s life through vivid descriptions, anecdotes, and quotes. Avoid dry, factual writing and focus on creating a compelling narrative that engages the reader.

Adding personal insights and opinions can enhance the biography’s overall impact, providing a unique perspective on the person’s achievements, legacy, and impact on society.

Editing and proofreading are vital elements of the writing process. Thoroughly reviewing your biography ensures that the writing is clear, concise, and error-free. You can even request feedback from someone else to ensure that it is engaging and well-written.

Finally, including a bibliography at the end of your biography is essential. It gives credit to the sources that were used during research, such as books, articles, interviews, and websites.

Tips for Writing a Brilliant Biography

Biography writing tip #1: choose your subject wisely.

There are several points for students to reflect on when deciding on a subject for their biography. Let’s take a look at the most essential points to consider when deciding on the subject for a biography:

Interest: To produce a biography will require sustained writing from the student. That’s why students must choose their subject well. After all, a biography is an account of someone’s entire life to date. Students must ensure they choose a subject that will sustain their interest throughout the research, writing, and editing processes.

Merit: Closely related to the previous point, students must consider whether the subject merits the reader’s interest. Aside from pure labors of love, writing should be undertaken with the reader in mind. While producing a biography demands sustained writing from the author, it also demands sustained reading from the reader.

Therefore, students should ask themselves if their chosen subject has had a life worthy of the reader’s interest and the time they’d need to invest in reading their biography.

Information: Is there enough information available on the subject to fuel the writing of an entire biography? While it might be a tempting idea to write about a great-great-grandfather’s experience in the war. There would be enough interest there to sustain the author’s and the reader’s interest, but do you have enough access to information about their early childhood to do the subject justice in the form of a biography?

Biography Writing Tip #2: R esearch ! Research! Research!

While the chances are good that the student already knows quite a bit about the subject they’ve chosen. Chances are 100% that they’ll still need to undertake considerable research to write their biography.

As with many types of writing , research is an essential part of the planning process that shouldn’t be overlooked. If students wish to give as complete an account of their subject’s life as possible, they’ll need to put in the time at the research stage.

An effective way to approach the research process is to:

1. Compile a chronological timeline of the central facts, dates, and events of the subject’s life

2. Compile detailed descriptions of the following personal traits:

•      Physical looks
•      Character traits
•      Values and beliefs

3. Compile some research questions based on different topics to provide a focus for the research:

• Childhood : Where and when were they born? Who were their parents? Who were the other family members? What education did they receive?
• Obstacles: What challenges did they have to overcome? How did these challenges shape them as individuals?
• Legacy: What impact did this person have on the world and/or the people around them?
• Dialogue & Quotes: Dialogue and quotations by and about the subject are a great way to bring color and life to a biography. Students should keep an eagle eye out for the gems that hide amid their sources.

As the student gets deeper into their research, new questions will arise that can further fuel the research process and help to shape the direction the biography will ultimately go in.

Likewise, during the research, themes will often begin to suggest themselves. Exploring these themes is essential to bring depth to biography, but we’ll discuss this later in this article.

Research Skills:

Researching for biography writing is an excellent way for students to hone their research skills in general. Developing good research skills is essential for future academic success. Students will have opportunities to learn how to:

• Gather relevant information
• Evaluate different information sources
• Select suitable information
• Organize information into a text.

Students will have access to print and online information sources, and, in some cases, they may also have access to people who knew or know the subject (e.g. biography of a family member).

These days, much of the research will likely take place online. It’s crucial, therefore, to provide your students with guidance on how to use the internet safely and evaluate online sources for reliability. This is the era of ‘ fake news ’ and misinformation after all!

COMPLETE TEACHING UNIT ON INTERNET RESEARCH SKILLS USING GOOGLE SEARCH

Teach your students ESSENTIAL SKILLS OF THE INFORMATION ERA to become expert DIGITAL RESEARCHERS.

⭐How to correctly ask questions to search engines on all devices.

⭐ How to filter and refine your results to find exactly what you want every time.

⭐ Essential Research and critical thinking skills for students.

⭐ Plagiarism, Citing and acknowledging other people’s work.

⭐ How to query, synthesize and record your findings logically.

BIOGRAPHY WRITING Tip #3: Find Your Themes In Biography Writing

Though predominantly a nonfiction genre, the story still plays a significant role in good biography writing. The skills of characterization and plot structuring are transferable here. And, just like in fiction, exploring themes in a biographical work helps connect the personal to the universal. Of course, these shouldn’t be forced; this will make the work seem contrived, and the reader may lose faith in the truthfulness of the account. A biographer needs to gain and maintain the trust of the reader.

Fortunately, themes shouldn’t need to be forced. A life well-lived is full of meaning, and the themes the student writer is looking for will emerge effortlessly from the actions and events of the subject’s life. It’s just a case of learning how to spot them.

One way to identify the themes in a life is to look for recurring events or situations in a person’s life. These should be apparent from the research completed previously. The students should seek to identify these patterns that emerge in the subject’s life. For example, perhaps they’ve had to overcome various obstacles throughout different periods of their life. In that case, the theme of overcoming adversity is present and has been identified.

Usually, a biography has several themes running throughout, so be sure your students work to identify more than one theme in their subject’s life.

BIOGRAPHY WRITING Tip: #4 Put Something of Yourself into the Writing

While the defining feature of a biography is that it gives an account of a person’s life, students must understand that this is not all a biography does. Relating the facts and details of a subject’s life is not enough. The student biographer should not be afraid to share their thoughts and feelings with the reader throughout their account of their subject’s life.

The student can weave some of their personality into the fabric of the text by providing commentary and opinion as they relate the events of the person’s life and the wider social context at the time. Unlike the detached and objective approach we’d expect to find in a history textbook, in a biography, student-writers should communicate their enthusiasm for their subject in their writing.

This makes for a more intimate experience for the reader, as they get a sense of getting to know the author and the subject they are writing about.

Biography Examples For Students

• Year 5 Example
• Year 7 Example
• Year 9 Example

“The Rock ‘n’ Roll King: Elvis Presley”

Elvis Aaron Presley, born on January 8, 1935, was an amazing singer and actor known as the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” Even though he’s been dead for nearly 50 years, I can’t help but be fascinated by his incredible life!

Elvis grew up in Tupelo, Mississippi, in a tiny house with his parents and twin brother. His family didn’t have much money, but they shared a love for music. Little did they know Elvis would become a music legend!

When he was only 11 years old, Elvis got his first guitar. He taught himself to play and loved singing gospel songs. As he got older, he started combining different music styles like country, blues, and gospel to create a whole new sound – that’s Rock ‘n’ Roll!

In 1954, at the age of 19, Elvis recorded his first song, “That’s All Right.” People couldn’t believe how unique and exciting his music was. His famous hip-swinging dance moves also made him a sensation!

Elvis didn’t just rock the music scene; he also starred in movies like “Love Me Tender” and “Jailhouse Rock.” But fame came with challenges. Despite facing ups and downs, Elvis kept spreading happiness through his music.

Tragically, Elvis passed away in 1977, but his music and charisma live on. Even today, people worldwide still enjoy his songs like “Hound Dog” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” Elvis Presley’s legacy as the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll will live forever.

Long Live the King: I wish I’d seen him.

Elvis Presley, the Rock ‘n’ Roll legend born on January 8, 1935, is a captivating figure that even a modern-day teen like me can’t help but admire. As I delve into his life, I wish I could have experienced the magic of his live performances.

Growing up in Tupelo, Mississippi, Elvis faced challenges but found solace in music. At 11, he got his first guitar, a symbol of his journey into the world of sound. His fusion of gospel, country, and blues into Rock ‘n’ Roll became a cultural phenomenon.

The thought of being in the audience during his early performances, especially when he recorded “That’s All Right” at 19, sends shivers down my spine. Imagining the crowd’s uproar and feeling the revolutionary energy of that moment is a dream I wish I could have lived.

Elvis wasn’t just a musical prodigy; he was a dynamic performer. His dance moves, the embodiment of rebellion, and his roles in films like “Love Me Tender” and “Jailhouse Rock” made him a true icon.

After watching him on YouTube, I can’t help but feel a little sad that I’ll never witness the King’s live performances. The idea of swaying to “Hound Dog” or being enchanted by “Can’t Help Falling in Love” in person is a missed opportunity. Elvis may have left us in 1977, but he was the king of rock n’ roll. Long live the King!

Elvis Presley: A Teen’s Take on the Rock ‘n’ Roll Icon”

Elvis Presley, born January 8, 1935, was a revolutionary force in the music world, earning his title as the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” Exploring his life, even as a 16-year-old today, I’m captivated by the impact he made.

Hailing from Tupelo, Mississippi, Elvis grew up in humble beginnings, surrounded by the love of his parents and twin brother. It’s inspiring to think that, despite financial challenges, this young man would redefine the music scene.

At 11, Elvis got his first guitar, sparking a self-taught journey into music. His early gospel influences evolved into a unique fusion of country, blues, and gospel, creating the electrifying genre of Rock ‘n’ Roll. In 1954, at only 19, he recorded “That’s All Right,” marking the birth of a musical legend.

Elvis wasn’t just a musical innovator; he was a cultural phenomenon. His rebellious dance moves and magnetic stage presence challenged the norms. He transitioned seamlessly into acting, starring in iconic films like “Love Me Tender” and “Jailhouse Rock.”

However, fame came at a cost, and Elvis faced personal struggles. Despite the challenges, his music continued to resonate. Even now, classics like “Hound Dog” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love” transcend generations.

Elvis Presley’s impact on music and culture is undeniable. He was known for his unique voice, charismatic persona, and electrifying performances. He sold over one billion records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling solo artists in history. He received numerous awards throughout his career, including three Grammy Awards and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Elvis’s influence can still be seen in today’s music. Many contemporary artists, such as Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, and Justin Timberlake, have cited Elvis as an inspiration. His music continues to be featured in movies, TV shows, and commercials.

Elvis left us in 1977, but his legacy lives on. I appreciate his breaking barriers and fearlessly embracing his artistic vision. Elvis Presley’s impact on music and culture is timeless, a testament to the enduring power of his artistry. His music has inspired generations and will continue to do so for many years to come.

Teaching Resources

Use our resources and tools to improve your student’s writing skills through proven teaching strategies.

BIOGRAPHY WRITING TEACHING IDEAS AND LESSONS

We have compiled a sequence of biography-related lessons or teaching ideas that you can follow as you please. They are straightforward enough for most students to follow without further instruction.

BIOGRAPHY LESSON IDEA # 1:

This session aims to give students a broader understanding of what makes a good biography.

Once your students have compiled a comprehensive checklist of the main features of a biography, allow them to use it to assess some biographies from your school library or on the internet using the feature checklist.

When students have assessed a selection of biographies, take some time as a class to discuss them. You can base the discussion around the following prompts:

• Which biographies covered all the criteria from their checklist?
• Which biographies didn’t?
• Which biography was the most readable in terms of structure?
• Which biography do you think was the least well-structured? How would you improve this?

Looking at how other writers have interpreted the form will help students internalize the necessary criteria before attempting to produce a biography. Once students have a clear understanding of the main features of the biography, they’re ready to begin work on writing a biography.

When the time does come to put pen to paper, be sure they’re armed with the following top tips to help ensure they’re as well prepared as possible.

BIOGRAPHY LESSON IDEA # 2:

This session aims to guide students through the process of selecting the perfect biography subject.

Instruct students to draw up a shortlist of three potential subjects for the biography they’ll write.

Using the three criteria mentioned in the writing guide (Interest, Merit, and Information), students award each potential subject a mark out of 5 for each of the criteria. In this manner, students can select the most suitable subject for their biography.

BIOGRAPHY LESSON IDEA # 3:

This session aims to get students into the researching phase, then prioritise and organise events chronologically.

Students begin by making a timeline of their subject’s life, starting with their birth and ending with their death or the present day. If the student has yet to make a final decision on the subject of their biography, a family member will often serve well for this exercise as a practice exercise.

Students should research and gather the key events of the person’s life, covering each period of their life from when they were a baby, through childhood and adolescence, right up to adulthood and old age. They should then organize these onto a timeline. Students can include photographs with captions if they have them.

They can present these to the class when they have finished their timelines.

BIOGRAPHY LESSON IDEA # 4:

Instruct students to look over their timeline, notes, and other research. Challenge them to identify three patterns that repeat throughout the subject’s life and sort all the related events and incidents into specific categories.

Students should then label each category with a single word. This is the thematic concept or the broad general underlying idea. After that, students should write a sentence or two expressing what the subject’s life ‘says’ about that concept.

This is known as the thematic statement . With the thematic concepts and thematic statements identified, the student now has some substantial ideas to explore that will help bring more profound meaning and wider resonance to their biography.

BIOGRAPHY LESSON IDEA # 5:

Instruct students to write a short objective account of an event in their own life. They can write about anyone from their past. It needn’t be more than a couple of paragraphs, but the writing should be strictly factual, focusing only on the objective details of what happened.

Once they have completed this, it’s time to rewrite the paragraph, but they should include some opinion and personal commentary this time.

The student here aims to inject some color and personality into their writing, to transform a detached, factual account into a warm, engaging story.

A COMPLETE UNIT ON TEACHING BIOGRAPHIES

Teach your students to write AMAZING BIOGRAPHIES & AUTOBIOGRAPHIES using proven RESEARCH SKILLS and WRITING STRATEGIES .

• Understand the purpose of both forms of biography.
• Explore the language and perspective of both.
• Prompts and Challenges to engage students in writing a biography.
• Dedicated lessons for both forms of biography.
• Biographical Projects can expand students’ understanding of reading and writing a biography.
• A COMPLETE 82-PAGE UNIT – NO PREPARATION REQUIRED.

FREE Biography Writing Graphic Organizer

Use this valuable tool in the research and writing phases to keep your students on track and engaged.

WRITING CHECKLIST & RUBRIC BUNDLE

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (92 Reviews)

To Conclude

By this stage, your students should have an excellent technical overview of a biography’s essential elements.

They should be able to choose their subject in light of how interesting and worthy they are, as well as give consideration to the availability of information out there. They should be able to research effectively and identify emerging themes in their research notes. And finally, they should be able to bring some of their personality and uniqueness into their retelling of the life of another.

Remember that writing a biography is not only a great way to develop a student’s writing skills; it can be used in almost all curriculum areas. For example, to find out more about a historical figure in History, to investigate scientific contributions to Science, or to celebrate a hero from everyday life.

Biography is an excellent genre for students to develop their writing skills and to find inspiration in the lives of others in the world around them.

HOW TO WRITE A BIOGRAPHY TUTORIAL VIDEO

OTHER GREAT ARTICLES RELATED TO BIOGRAPHY WRITING

How to write an Autobiography

How to Write a Historical Recount Text

15 Awesome Recount & Personal Narrative Topics

Personal Narrative Writing Guide

Short Biography

Mark Crovella is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Boston University, where he has been since 1994. From 2013 to 2018 he served as Department Chair. From 2012 to 2014 he served as Chief Scientist of Guavus, Inc. During 2003-2004 he was a Visiting Associate Professor at the Laboratoire d'Infomatique de Paris VI (LIP6), and in 2018-2019 he was visiting faculty at LIP6, INRIA Paris, and LINCS Paris. He received a B.S. from Cornell University in 1982, and an M.S. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Rochester in 1994. From 1984 to 1994 he worked at Calspan Corporation in Buffalo NY, eventually as a Senior Computer Scientist.

His research interests span both computer networking and network science. Much of his work has been on improving the understanding, design, and performance of parallel and networked computer systems, mainly through the application of data mining, statistics, and performance evaluation. In the networking arena, he has worked on characterizing the Internet and the World Wide Web. He has explored the presence and implications of self-similarity and heavy-tailed distributions in network traffic and Web workloads. He has also investigated the implications of Web workloads for the design of scalable and cost-effective Web servers. In addition he has made numerous contributions to Internet measurement and modeling; and he has examined the impact of network properties on the design of protocols and the construction of statistical models. In the network science arena, he has focused on the analysis of social, biological, and data networks.

Professor Crovella is co-author of Internet Measurement: Infrastructure, Traffic, and Applications (Wiley Press, 2006) and is the author of over two hundred papers on networking and computer systems. He holds ten patents deriving from his research. As of 2021, Google Scholar reports over 30,000 citations to his work. He has given numerous invited talks and tutorials, and is a founder of and consultant to companies involved in Internet technologies.

Between 2007 and 2009 Prof. Crovella was Chair of ACM SIGCOMM. He is a past editor for Computer Communication Review, IEEE-ACM Transactions on Networking, Computer Networks and IEEE Transactions on Computers. He was the Program Chair for the 2003 ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference and for IFIP Networking 2010, and the General Chair of the 2005 Passive and Active Measurement Workshop . His paper (with Azer Bestavros) “Self-Similarity in World Wide Web Traffic: Evidence and Possible Causes” received the 2010 ACM SIGMETRICS Test of Time Award, and his paper (with Gonca Gursun, Natali Ruchansky, and Evimaria Terzi) “Routing State Distance: A Path-Based Metric for Network Analysis” won a 2013 IETF/IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize. Professor Crovella is a Fellow of the ACM and the IEEE.

27 of the Best Professional Bio Examples I've Ever Seen [+ Templates]

Published: December 20, 2023

As a writer, I have to let readers and potential clients know my expertise, my skills, and why they should work with me or be interested in what I say. So, a professional bio is a must in my industry.

Though I'm definitely familiar with professional bios, I can admit they can be challenging. What do I include? What do readers need to know?

As daunting as writing a professional bio can be, professional bios are crucial when applying for jobs, seeking new clients, or networking. A professional bio also gives the world a brief snapshot of you and your professional ideals.

If you‘re at a loss for how to write a professional bio that packs a punch, I’ve got you covered. In this journey, tools like HubSpot’s user-friendly drag-and-drop website builder can be instrumental in showcasing your professional bio online with ease and style.

I will walk you through how to write a professional bio that you can proudly publish, provide professional bio templates, and show you the best professional bio examples you can get inspiration from.

What is a professional bio?

Professional bio templates, how to write a professional bio, best professional bio examples, how to write a short bio.

80+ Professional Bio Templates & Examples

Create a compelling professional narrative for a proper, attention-grabbing introduction.

• LinkedIn Summaries
• Speaker Intros
• Website Bios
• Professional Profile

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Tell us a little about yourself below to gain access today:

A professional bio or biography is a short overview of your experience. Professional bios usually include details about education, employment, achievements, and relevant skills.

Purpose of Professional Bios

A bio tells an audience about who you are, what you've done, and what you can do. It can help potential employers, fans, or customers understand your personality and what you stand for.

Writing a bio without a clear starting point is challenging — believe me, I've tried. To ease the process, here are some templates I put together to get you started.

I‘ve found it’s best to keep your professional bio honest and to the point. Too long of a bio, and you risk losing your audience's attention. After all, audiences will only read a web page for less than a minute before clicking elsewhere.

And honesty is key because most consumers and clients won‘t invest in someone or something if it doesn’t seem trustworthy. In fact, 67% of consumers say they must trust a brand before investing in its products or services.

"Plus," she adds, "I'm always happy to talk about my cats at any given moment. You never know when a fellow cat mom could be reading."

Values and Work Approach

Your values can sometimes show your work ethic more effectively than your career path. It can also help you endear yourself to employers and colleagues who want to work with people with similar values.

So don‘t be shy: Share how you incorporate your values into your work. Whether it’s a commitment to innovation, customer satisfaction, or ethical decision-making, explain what drives you and be enthusiastic about it.

Your Personality

Remember: Your bio should always include a taste of your personality! Your sense of humor, creativity, or collaborative nature could all give readers a sense of who you are. This helps readers connect with you on a more personal level.

Remember to tailor your bio for different platforms and audiences. Also, keep it concise and impactful while highlighting the most relevant information in each context.

First-Person Bio vs. Third-Person Bio

While first-person bios are common, third-person bios can be more effective in formal situations.

Your decision to write your professional bio in the first or third person depends on your desire to leave a more personable or assertive impression.

Both approaches work, provided you tailor them to your goals and audience. What’s important is to be clear and tell your story in a way that connects with your reader.

How to Write a First-Person Bio

Writing in the first person can be a great way to connect with your audience when building a personal brand. When you write a first-person bio, use "I" or "me" to make yourself relatable and approachable.

Here's one way I’d write a first-person bio:

"I'm a freelance writer specializing in small business content. I've worked with companies in a variety of industries like home care to fine leather goods."

Speaking in the first person here connects you with a client or brand based on your experience and opinions. Put another way, writing a first-person bio is like telling your story to your audience.

Here are a few tips to make your first-person bio great:

Don’t start every sentence with "I."

Showing instead of telling is a great approach.

Let’s say you’re a writer who wants to create a short professional bio. Instead of saying, "I love to write," you can say, "Writer. Bad but enthusiastic dancer."

This portrays your writing skill, shows your personality outside of writing as a dancer, and includes a little sense of humor, which is essential for a writer.

Remember, you know yourself better than anyone.

Adding a back story to your bio helps create context for the roles and successes you write about. Think of it like a case study about who you were, what you are now, and the process that got you to your current position.

Focus on valuable details.

Quick facts about you can showcase your identity and values. For example, if you're writing a bio for LinkedIn, think about how to tie your hobby into what you do.

Let's say Animal Crossing is your hobby. Does it align with your career aspirations? It can be a great addition to your bio if you want to pursue a video game career.

However, if your interests lie elsewhere, including a more relevant hobby is better.

How to Write a Third-Person Bio

Third-person bios sound more authoritative and objective. So, if you’re job searching in a formal industry, applying for grants, or trying to get published, you may want to stick to the third person.

For instance, when you write a third-person bio, you may start with:

"Jasmine Montgomery is a Senior Hiring Manager at L’Oreal based in New York. She recruits across several business units to connect with the brightest talent from around the globe."

By only using your name and pronouns to speak about yourself here, you are letting your title and skill set speak for themselves.

These bios create distance between the subject of the bio (you) and the reader through a third person. This person could be anyone, but they usually speak in a tone emphasizing their expertise.

This makes third-person bios feel aloof or overly formal sometimes.

Ideally, your third-person bio should sound friendly but polished, like a message from a close colleague at work. Here are a few tips on how to write a great third-person bio.

Write from the perspective of someone you know and trust.

It can be challenging to write about yourself, so try to see yourself from the perspective of your favorite person at work or a mentor you trust. This can help you write from a position of authority without feeling self-conscious.

Show the reader why they should trust your opinion.

A professional bio often reflects a specific industry or niche. With this in mind, your text should include relevant details that professionals in your industry know. Avoid jargon whenever you can.

Remember, you're telling a story.

If you want a third-person bio, but you're used to writing in first-person, it may help to write it the most comfortable way for you.

Your professional bio is an essential piece of writing, so edit it carefully. Edit your writing from both points of view and see which works best for your target audience.

Here's how to write a professional bio, step by step.

• Create an 'About' page for your website or profile.
• Begin writing your bio with your first and last name.
• Mention any associated brand name you might use.
• State your current position and what you do.
• Include at least one professional accomplishment.
• Describe your values and how they inform your career.
• Briefly tell your readers who you are outside of work.
• Use humor or a personal story to add flavor to your professional bio.

If you’re anything like me, you probably don't think about your professional bio until you’re asked to "send one over via email."

You have one afternoon to come up with it, so you scramble together a bio that ends up reading like this:

"Rodney Erickson is a content marketing professional at HubSpot, a CRM platform that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers.

Previously, Rodney worked as a marketing manager for a tech software startup. He graduated with honors from Columbia University with a dual degree in Business Administration and Creative Writing."

To be fair, in certain contexts, your professional bio needs to be more formal, like Mr. Erickson's up there. But there are also cases where writing a personable and conversational bio is good.

Whether you choose the formal or casual route, use the following steps to create a perfect bio.

1. Create an 'About' page for your website or profile.

You need an online space to keep your professional bio. Here are a few to consider (some of these you might already have in place):

• Facebook Business page .
• Industry blog byline .
• Instagram account .
• Personal website .
• LinkedIn profile .
• Industry website .
• Personal blog .

As you'll see in the professional bio examples below, the length and tone of your bio will differ depending on the platforms you use.

Instagram, for example, allows only 150 characters of bio space, whereas you can write as much as you want on your website or Facebook Business page.

2. Begin writing your bio with your first and last name.

If your readers remember nothing else about your bio, they should remember your name. Therefore, it's a good idea for your first and last name to be the first two words of your professional bio.

Even if your name is printed above this bio (hint: it should), this is a rare moment where it's okay to be redundant.

For example, if I were writing my bio, I might start it like this:

Lindsay Kolowich

Lindsay Kolowich is a Senior Marketing Manager at HubSpot.

3. Mention any associated brand name you might use.

Will your professional bio represent you or a business you work for? Ensure you mention the brand you associate with in your bio. If you're a freelancer, you may have a personal business name or pseudonym you advertise to your clients.

Here are a few examples:

• Lindsay Kolowich Marketing.
• SEO Lindsay.
• Kolowich Consulting.
• Content by Kolowich (what do you think ... too cheesy?).

Maybe you founded your own company and want its name to be separate from your real name. Keep it simple like this: "Lindsay Kolowich is the founder and CEO of Kolowich Consulting."

4. State your current position and what you do.

Whether you're the author of a novel or a mid-level specialist, use the following few lines of your bio to describe what you do in that position. Refrain from assuming your audience knows what your job title entails.

Make your primary responsibilities known so readers can know you and understand what you offer to your industry.

5. Include at least one professional accomplishment.

Just as a business touts its client successes through case studies, your professional bio should let your audience know what you've achieved.

What have you done for yourself — as well as for others — that makes you a valuable player in your industry?

6. Describe your values and how they inform your career.

Why do you do what you do? What might make your contribution to the market different from your colleagues? What are the values that make your business a worthwhile investment to others?

Create a professional bio that answers these questions.

7. Briefly tell your readers who you are outside of work.

Transition from describing your values in work to defining who you are outside of work. This may include:

• Your family.
• Your hometown.
• Sports you play.
• Hobbies and interests.
• Favorite music and travel destinations.
• Side hustles you're working on.

People like connecting with other people. The more transparent you are about who you are personally, the more likable you'll be to people reading about you.

8. Use humor or a personal story to add flavor to your professional bio.

End your professional bio on a good or, more specifically, a funny note. By leaving your audience with something quirky or unique, you can ensure they'll leave your website with a pleasant impression of you.

Following the steps above when writing your bio is important, but take your time with one section. People consume lots of information daily. So ensure your bio hooks 'em in the first line, and you won’t lose them.

(P.S. Want to boost your professional brand? Take one of HubSpot Academy's free certification courses . In just one weekend, you can add a line to your resume and bio that over 60,000 marketers covet.)

Why Good Bios Are Important for a Professional

You may think, "How many people read professional bios, anyway?"

The answer: A lot. Though there's no way to tell who is reading it, you want it catchy. Your professional bio will delight the right people coming across it on multiple platforms.

Professional bios can live on your LinkedIn profile , company website, guest posts, speaker profiles, Twitter bio , Instagram bio , and many other places.

And most importantly, it‘s the tool you can leverage most when you’re networking.

Bottom line? People will read your professional bio. Whether they remember it or it makes them care about you is a matter of how well you present yourself to your intended audience.

So, what does a top-notch professional bio look like? Let‘s review a few sample bios for professionals like you and me. Then, we’ll cover bio examples from some of the best people in the industry.

Short Sample Bios

Your bio doesn't have to be complicated. Here are five samples to glean inspiration from.

Example 1: Friendly Sample Bio

"Hey! My name is Ryan, and I'm a marketing specialist passionate about digital advertising. I have five years of experience managing various online campaigns and improving brand visibility for clients across multiple verticals. I love analyzing consumer behavior and leveraging data-driven strategies to maximize ROI. Outside work, I enjoy traveling, taking funny photos, and exploring new hiking trails."

Example 2: Mid-Career Sample Bio

"Jennifer Patel is a versatile graphic designer known for her creative approach and attention to detail. With a background in visual arts and eight years of experience, Jennifer has worked on diverse projects ranging from logo designs to website layouts. Her ability to understand and translate client needs into visually striking designs sets her apart. Jennifer finds inspiration in nature, music, and pop culture."

Example 3: Sales Sample Bio

"I'm a seasoned sales executive with a track record of exceeding targets and building strong client relationships. With a background in B2B sales, I've built a natural ability to understand customer needs and consistently exceed quota every month. I pride myself in my communication skills and strategic approaches, which have helped me thrive in highly competitive markets such as SaaS sales. Outside work, I enjoy playing basketball and volunteering at local charities."

Example 4: HR Sample Bio

"I am a dedicated human resources professional with a passion for fostering a positive workplace culture and facilitating employee development. With eight years of experience in talent acquisition and HR operations, I've played a key role in building high-performing teams. I'm known for my strong interpersonal skills and ability to create inclusive and supportive work environments. In my free time, I enjoy practicing yoga and exploring new culinary experiences."

Example 5: Software Engineer Sample Bio

"David Chang is a senior software engineer specializing in backend development. With a strong background in computer science and six years of experience, David has successfully built scalable and efficient solutions for complex technical challenges. He is well-versed in various programming languages and frameworks like C++, Java, and Ruby on Rails. In his spare time, David enjoys reading science fiction novels and playing the guitar."

Below, we've curated some of the best professional bio examples we've ever seen on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and the various places you might describe yourself.

Check 'em out and use them as inspiration when crafting your own.

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Author
• Chima Mmeje: SEO Content Writer
• DJ Nexus: DJ
• Lena Axelsson: Marriage & Family Therapist
• Mark Levy: Branding Firm Founder
• Audra Simpson: Political Anthropologist
• Marie Mikhail: Professional Recruiter
• Wonbo Woo: Executive Producer
• Chris Burkard: Freelance Photographer
• Lisa Quine: Creative Consultant
• Nancy Twine: Hair Care Founder
• Trinity Mouzon: Wellness Brand Founder
• Alberto Perez: Co-Founder of Zumba Fitness
• Ann Handley: Writer and Marketer

1. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie : Author

Bio platform: personal website.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie begins her professional bio with an invitation to her roots.

In a few paragraphs, she describes when and where she was born, her family, her education, her honorary degrees, and the depth of her work, which has been translated into 30 languages and several publications.

She can keep readers engaged by leading with a powerful hook that aligns with her target audience’s marketing needs.

• There’s clarity about who Chima serves.
• The hook is bold, catchy, and compels anyone to read further.
• Including client results makes clients visualize what they can expect.

3. DJ Nexus : DJ

Bio platform: facebook.

This New England-based DJ has single-handedly captured the Likes of over 2,000 people in and beyond Boston, MA. And even if you don‘t listen to the type of music he produces, it’s hard not to read his compelling Facebook bio.

For instance, consider his tagline, under "About" — " Quiet during the day. QUITE LOUD at night! " DJ Nexus tells you when he works awesomely. I got goosebumps just imagining a dance club where he might play music.

The second is the "long version," which is even more interesting than the first. Why? It reads like a story — a compelling one, at that. In fact, it gets hilarious in some parts.

The second sentence of the bio reads: "He was frightened of public school, loved playing baseball and football, ran home to watch ape films on the 4:30 Movie, listened to The Jam and The Buzzcocks, and read magic trick books."

Here's another excerpt from the middle:

It's a well-put value proposition that sets her apart from the rest of the HR industry.

Marie concludes her bio with a smooth mix of professional skills, like her Spanish fluency, and personal interests, such as podcasting and Star Wars (she mentions the latter with just the right amount of humor).

• Straight off the bat, Marie uses a story to share her experiences of how she began as a recruiter.
• It provides a subtle pitch for readers to check out her podcast.
• The bio exudes Maries approachable, fun, and playful personality.

8. Wonbo Woo : Executive Producer

Wonbo Woo is the executive producer of WIRED's video content and has several impressive credits to his name. What does this mean for his professional bio? He has to prioritize.

With this in mind, Wonbo opens his bio with the most eye-catching details first (if the image below is hard to read, click it to see the full copy ).

I wouldn‘t necessarily be inclined to follow Chris if his bio had simply read, "I post beautiful images." But images that inspire me to travel? Now that’s something I can get behind.

Last, he ends on a humble, sweet note: "He is happiest with his wife Breanne raising their two sons." So inject personal information into your bio — it makes you seem approachable.

• It highlights Chris’s achievement without bragging.
• The last sentence portrays Chris as a responsible man who loves his family.
• The well-written bio speaks to nature lovers who like the outdoors, surfing, and more. This gives them reasons to follow Chris.

10. Lisa Quine : Creative Consultant

Bio platform: portfolio website.

Creative professionals who specialize in visual art may find it challenging to balance the writing of their bio and displaying of their portfolio. Not Lisa Quine. Lisa has an exceptional balance of her professional bio and creative work.

Throughout her bio, you'll notice the number of murals she's completed and a brief timeline of her career. This helps her paint the picture of who she is as a professional.

The rest of her bio similarly focuses on Twine's strengths as someone who’s able to take hair care "back to basics."

Mouzon effectively grips the reader's attention with this introduction and then dives into some of her impressive accomplishments — including a brand now sold at Urban Outfitters and Target.

The language used throughout Mouzon's bio is authentic, real, and honest.

For instance, in the second paragraph, she admits:

"While building a brand may have looked effortless from the outside, starting a business at age 23 with no resources or funding quickly forced me to realize that early-stage entrepreneurship was anything but transparent."

As an avid Zumba fan, I was excited to include this one. Perez styles his LinkedIn bio as a short story, starting with his background as a hard-working teen who held three jobs by age 14.

His bio tells the fun and fascinating origin story of Zumba, in which Perez, an aerobics teacher in Florida at the time, forgot his music for class and used a Latin music cassette tape instead ... "And it was an instant hit!"

His bio continues:

"Shortly after he was connected to Alberto Periman and Alberto Aghion, and Zumba was officially created ... What started as a dream now has 15 million people in more than 200,000 locations in 186 countries who take Zumba classes every week."

There's something in there for everyone.

• The last section of the bio shows Ann’s warm personality — "Ann lives in Boston, where she is Mom to creatures two- and four-legged."
• Written in the third person, this bio has lots of proof (like followers), which shows Ann is a terrific marketing leader.

If you're posting a bio on a social media account or sending a quick blurb to a client, you want to keep it short and sweet while showcasing your accomplishments.

To get started, use these best practices for writing your short professional bio:

• Introduce yourself.
• State what you do.
• Add key skills or areas of expertise.
• Include a personal mission statement
• Celebrate your wins.
• Provide your contact information.
• Show them your personality.

1. Introduce yourself.

Your introduction is your first impression, so always begin by telling people who you are. You may start with a greeting like, "Hello, my name is" or "Hi! Let me first introduce myself …" when sending your bio as a message.

If you’re writing a bio for an online platform, stating your name at the beginning works as well.

Leading with your name — even as a question — is important for recognition and building relationships.

2. State what you do.

Give people an idea of what you do daily and where you work. Your job title is how the people put you into context and consider whether your profession relates to their industry.

So detail your most relevant work in your short bios, like CEO, professor, and author.

Take a cue from Angela Duckworth , who specifies what she does in her LinkedIn bio:

3. Add key skills or areas of expertise.

If you send a bio to a client or potential employer, highlight your most valuable skills. For instance, if your expertise is in social media marketing and content creation, like Ivanka Dekoning , list these skills.

• A joke. "Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once. At least that’s what I learned when I created…"
• Mention a hobby. "I’ll be honest: for me, tennis is life — Go Nadal!"
• A fun fact. "Every year, I watch 100 new films! I’m a cinephile and love every movie genre."
• A few emojis related to your interests. "🎶🤖🎾🎬🎭"

Whichever way you choose to get personal, give people a glimpse into who you are as an individual.

When writing a short bio, it can be tempting to pack in as much relevant information about yourself as possible — but this isn’t the most effective approach.

Instead, focus on including the details that you and your audience care about most and leave out the fluff.

Let's dive into a few examples of short professional bios.

Short Professional Bio Examples

• Tristen Taylor: Marketing Manager
• Lianna Patch: Copywriter
• Precious Oboidhe: Content Strategist and Writer
• Rebecca Bollwitt: Writer
• Megan Gilmore: Cookbook Author
• Bea Dixon: Feminine Care Founder
• Tammy Hembrow: Instagram Influencer
• Dr. Cody: Chiropractor
• Larry Kim: Founder
• Dharmesh Shah: Founder and CTO
• Lily Ugbaja: Content Strategist
• Ian Anderson Gray: Marketer
• Van Jones: Political Commentator, Author, and Lawyer

1. Tristen Taylor: Marketing Manager

Bio platform: blog byline.

Tristen Taylor is a Marketing Manager here at HubSpot. She's written content for HubSpot's Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service blogs; her blog author bio is one of my favorites.

What I love most about Tristen's bio is that it’s a great example of how to deliver information about yourself that is relevant to your work while also sharing fun details that audiences will find relatable.

Her bio reads:

"Building from her experience with GoCo.io and Southwest Airlines, Tristen's work has been recognized by Marketing Brew and BLACK@INBOUND. She lives in Washington, DC, attending anime conventions and painting in her free time."

Gilmore further includes a CTA link within her Instagram bio that leads followers to free, ready-to-use recipes. You might think, " Why would she do that since it discourages people from buying her book?"

But that couldn't be further from the truth.

By giving her followers the chance to try out her recipes, she's slowly turning leads into customers. After I tried a few of her Instagram recipes and loved them, I bought her book, knowing I'd like more of what she offered.

• The bio is short and direct.
• The CTA link includes an invitation for people to join her newsletter. Meaning, she can build her email list.

6. Bea Dixon : Feminine Care Founder

Bea Dixon, Founder and CEO of The Honey Pot Company, efficiently uses the space on her Instagram profile to highlight who she is as a well-rounded human — not just a businesswoman.

For instance, while she highlights her girl boss attitude with a tiara emoji, she equally calls attention to her fashion interests (Free People), her pets, Boss and Sadie, and her love for ramen noodles.

What more do you need to know?

Ian doesn't take his bio too seriously but uses every character to highlight everything about him.

He includes his skills as a marketer and podcast host, who he is outside work as a dad, and what he can help you do. His smiles also give the bio a sense of humor and realness.

Don't forget to share this post!

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Eat, Sleep, Wander

20+ Student Biography Examples

Welcome to the world of students! We have created an amazing collection of 30 student biography examples to help you write your own.

As a student, you are likely to be writing a variety of biographical pieces. Whether you are writing a personal profile for your CV, a biography for an awards application or a biography for a college admissions essay, it’s important that you construct an interesting and engaging narrative of who you are.

Student Biography Examples

1. Growing up I was always interested in the sciences and technology. In high school, I excelled in math and science classes, which led me to pursue a degree in engineering. I went on to earn my Bachelor’s degree in Engineering and am currently working on my Master’s in Civil Engineering. After I finish my degree, I plan to use my knowledge to help improve infrastructure in developing countries.

2. Since a young age, I have been passionate about helping people in need. During college, I decided to focus my studies on sociology and political science. I used my knowledge to take action and participated in several non-profit organizations to promote social justice. With the help of internships, I have also gained experience in policy development and public relations. I’m currently working on a graduate degree in Social Work and aim to eventually work for the United Nations .

3. As a freshman in high school, I was unsure of what kind of career path I wanted to pursue. After talking with my parents and teachers, I decided to start college as an undeclared major. After two years of exploration, I settled on a double major of business and economics. I’ve been able to take advantage of various opportunities on and off campus and served as an intern in the Human Resources department of a major banking firm. I look forward to earning my degree and using my skills to become a successful business leader.

4. I never thought that I had the ability to become a professional photographer, but my high school photography teacher pushed me to pursue my dreams. I learned how to use a variety of cameras, develop photographs, and post-process my images. I continued my photography studies at college, where I gained additional knowledge in studio lighting and digital editing. I was even able to gain experience in the fashion industry, interning for a well-known photographer . Today, I am working as an event photographer, documenting weddings, reunions, and corporate events.

5. When I was younger I was passionate about art, which prompted me to pursue a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts. During college, I was able to gain experience as a studio assistant and also learn various digital and traditional art techniques. With the help of a scholarship, I was able to travel to various countries and learn even more about different art styles. After graduation, I started working as a freelance artist and have been able to produce several commissioned artworks and pieces.

6. As a child, I always exhibited an aptitude for mathematics and problem solving. After researching various career paths, I decided to major in Computer Science. I was able to gain valuable experience while interning at a tech startup and also during an internship with the Department of Defense. I am currently working on my master’s degree and plan to focus my studies on artificial intelligence and machine learning.

7. I have been involved in theater since I was a young child. During my high school years, I focused on honing my abilities through various extracurricular activities. I was able to gain valuable experience by participating in multiple productions and I even gained a scholarship for theater. I attended college to study Musical Theater and continued to foster my talent. With help from internships and workshops, I was able to build additional experience and formed a touring theater company with some of my colleagues.

8. From an early age, I was interested in the environment and the outdoors. I spent a lot of time reading environmental books and researching environmental issues. This passion inspired me to major in Environmental Science in college. I’ve gained valuable experience through various internships and part-time jobs. With the help of my degree, I’ve been able to work on several conservation projects and hope to soon work for a non-profit organization focused on sustainability.

9. When I graduated high school I wanted to focus my career on the medical field. After much research, I decided to major in Biomedical Engineering. During my time in college, I was able to gain a valuable experience by interning as a research assistant. I have been able to learn more about medical technology and have been able to contribute to various projects. I’m currently pursuing a master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering and plan to continue my research in the field and eventually work for a healthcare company.

10. I have always had an interest in fashion and design, so when the time came to decide my career path it made sense to pursue design. During college, I was able to study many aspects of fashion and gain experience through various internships. I was also able to travel to other countries to observe trends and learn about different cultures. With my degree, I am currently working as a fashion designer and I plan to continue to use my creative eye to come up with innovative and stylish designs.

More Student Biography Examples on the next page…

What Is Entanglement and Why Is It Important?

This article was reviewed by a member of Caltech's Faculty .

Entanglement is at the heart of quantum physics and future quantum technologies. Like other aspects of quantum science, the phenomenon of entanglement reveals itself at very tiny, subatomic scales. When two particles, such as a pair of photons or electrons, become entangled, they remain connected even when separated by vast distances. In the same way that a ballet or tango emerges from individual dancers, entanglement arises from the connection between particles. It is what scientists call an emergent property.

How do scientists explain quantum entanglement?

In the video below, Caltech faculty members take a stab at explaining entanglement. Featured: Rana Adhikari, professor of physics; Xie Chen, professor of theoretical physics; Manuel Endres, professor of physics and Rosenberg Scholar; and John Preskill, Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Allen V. C. Davis and Lenabelle Davis Leadership Chair, and director of the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter.

Unbreakable Correlation

When researchers study entanglement , they often use a special kind of crystal to generate two entangled particles from one. The entangled particles are then sent off to different locations. For this example, let's say the researchers want to measure the direction the particles are spinning, which can be either up or down along a given axis. Before the particles are measured, each will be in a state of superposition , or both "spin up" and "spin down" at the same time.

If the researcher measures the direction of one particle's spin and then repeats the measurement on its distant, entangled partner, that researcher will always find that the pair are correlated: if one particle's spin is up, the other's will be down (the spins may instead both be up or both be down, depending on how the experiment is designed, but there will always be a correlation). Returning to our dancer metaphor, this would be like observing one dancer and finding them in a pirouette, and then automatically knowing the other dancer must also be performing a pirouette. The beauty of entanglement is that just knowing the state of one particle automatically tells you something about its companion, even when they are far apart.

Are particles really connected across space?

But are the particles really somehow tethered to each other across space, or is something else going on? Some scientists, including Albert Einstein in the 1930s, pointed out that the entangled particles might have always been spin up or spin down, but that this information was hidden from us until the measurements were made. Such "local hidden variable theories" argued against the mind-boggling aspect of entanglement, instead proposing that something more mundane, yet unseen, is going on.

Thanks to theoretical work by John Stewart Bell in the 1960s, and experimental work done by Caltech alumnus John Clauser (BS '64) and others beginning in the 1970s, scientists have ruled out these local hidden-variable theories. A key to the researchers' success involved observing entangled particles from different angles. In the experiment mentioned above, this means that a researcher would measure their first particle as spin up, but then use a different viewing angle (or a different spin axis direction) to measure the second particle. Rather than the two particles matching up as before, the second particle would have gone back into a state of superposition and, once observed, could be either spin up or down. The choice of the viewing angle changed the outcome of the experiment, which means that there cannot be any hidden information buried inside a particle that determines its spin before it is observed. The dance of entanglement materializes not from any one particle but from the connections between them.

Relativity Remains Intact

A common misconception about entanglement is that the particles are communicating with each other faster than the speed of light, which would go against Einstein's special theory of relativity. Experiments have shown that this is not true, nor can quantum physics be used to send faster-than-light communications. Though scientists still debate how the seemingly bizarre phenomenon of entanglement arises, they know it is a real principle that passes test after test. In fact, while Einstein famously described entanglement as "spooky action at a distance," today's quantum scientists say there is nothing spooky about it.

"It may be tempting to think that the particles are somehow communicating with each other across these great distances, but that is not the case," says Thomas Vidick , a professor of computing and mathematical sciences at Caltech. "There can be correlation without communication," and the particles "can be thought of as one object."

Networks of Entanglement

Entanglement can also occur among hundreds, millions, and even more particles. The phenomenon is thought to take place throughout nature, among the atoms and molecules in living species and within metals and other materials. When hundreds of particles become entangled, they still act as one unified object. Like a flock of birds, the particles become a whole entity unto itself without being in direct contact with one another. Caltech scientists focus on the study of these so-called many-body entangled systems, both to understand the fundamental physics and to create and develop new quantum technologies. As John Preskill, Caltech's Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Allen V. C. Davis and Lenabelle Davis Leadership Chair, and director of the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, says, "We are making investments in and betting on entanglement being one of the most important themes of 21st-century science."

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We Urgently Need More Organs for Transplantation. Science and Policy Can Come to the Rescue.

Related articles.

Both scientific and policy advancements could provide desperately needed organs for transplantation. For example, there have been some promising early studies using kidneys from pigs genetically engineered to prevent rejection, but a policy change – paying human donors for donating organs – could be implemented immediately and would be a game changer.

Modern medicine has produced many kinds of high-tech miracles, among them gene therapy  to correct malfunctioning genes,  electrical stimulation devices to restore significant function after traumatic spinal cord injury ,  surgery performed using robots , and a  wearable, postage-stamp-size ultrasound patch  that can take real-time images of the heart and monitor its performance.

Another sector of medicine that desperately needs breakthroughs is the transplantation of solid organs, which are in severely short supply. Currently,  more than 100,000 Americans are waiting for transplants , and due to a shortage of hearts, lungs, livers, and kidneys, at least 17 die each day. Donor organs — from a living person or cadaver — must match the rejection recipient’s tissue type and size; they are often not perfect. By one estimate, approximately  half of transplanted organs are rejected by recipients’ bodies within 10-12 years , despite a  constantly expanding understanding of what causes rejection . Another obstacle is that the organ procurement system in the U.S. is  inefficient, inconsistent, and unaccountable  – in short, a mess that causes preventable deaths.

We are making progress, but too slowly. Two new high-tech approaches to providing organs for transplantation might ultimately both eliminate the need for organ donors and reduce the risk of tissue rejection. And there is also a low-tech approach that would require only a tweak in healthcare policy.

Organs produced by 3D bioprinting

The first of the high-tech approaches is  three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting , which uses “bio-ink,” a printable material made from a patient’s own cells, to print layer upon layer, creating tissue the recipient will not reject. But in progressing from tissue to a complex organ, one critical challenge has been creating blood flow to keep the cells alive; researchers have devised  several approaches , which include threading tiny channels through the organ, where blood vessels develop when implanted in animals, or  seeding channels  with the endothelial cells lining the inside blood vessels.

An exciting advance was  reported  by a Swedish research group attempting to create human lungs by 3D printing. According to the lead author of the study,

We started small by fabricating small tubes, because this is a feature found in both airways and in the vasculature of the lung. By using our new bioink with stem cells isolated from patient airways, we were able to bioprint small airways which had multiple layers of cells and remained open over time.

The fabrication of other organs presents additional, more imposing obstacles. The liver and kidneys produce hormone-like substances that modulate physiological processes such as blood coagulation, blood pressure, and removing toxins from the bloodstream. It is difficult to see how these closely regulated functions could be incorporated into 3D-printed organs.

Credit: Centromere121 via CC-BY-SA-3.0

In addition to the daunting technical challenges, healthcare executive Daniel Troy has described the regulatory lassitude at the FDA as one that has discouraged commercial interest in the field. He  observed  that while the FDA is accustomed to evaluating the safety and efficacy of mass-produced therapies and medical devices, “bioprinted organs are one-of-a-kind creations, tailor-made for each patient,” and the agency’s long-promised regulatory guidance for such products has not materialized.

Organs from genetically modified pigs

A second approach to providing a sufficient supply of organs for transplantation is genetically engineering animals — most often, pigs (because they are an appropriate size) — so their transplanted organs will not be rejected. In effect, it uses genetic engineering to grow “humanized” tissues and organs in animals. There was a  breakthrough with this approach  in 2018 when scientists used gene editing to create hybrid embryos containing both human and sheep cells.

Another milestone occurred in December 2020 when the FDA “ approved a first-of-its-kind intentional genomic alteration  (IGA) in a line of domestic pigs” called GalSafe, which may be used for food or human therapeutics. The IGA in the animals eliminates the gene that makes α-Gal, a sugar molecule found naturally on the surface of porcine cells. It is the source of allergy in some people when they consume certain meats, and it is also involved in tissue or organ rejection after transplantation into humans. That was the first IGA in an animal approved by the FDA for both human food consumption and as a potential source for therapeutic uses.

There is considerable  research  underway to create lines of pigs for transplantation, but there is also  controversy  about the extent of genetic modification necessary to both avoid rejection and ensure the absence of harmful pathogens. Two separate, very small clinical trials blazed the trail – a  pig heart  transplanted into a patient with terminal heart disease and  a pig kidney  implanted in a brain-dead patient. The heart transplant patient died two months post-transplant, and the kidneys worked well until the experiment was terminated after three days.

In March, a gene-edited pig kidney , created using "CRISPR-Cas9" technology, was transplanted   into a living 62-year-old man. The donor pig’s genome had 69 edits. Some of the changes disabled genes in the pig that could otherwise lead to immune rejection of the organ in the human recipient. Other edits introduced human genes that promoted circulation and removed pathogenic porcine viruses. It was reported on May 12 that the patient had died; the cause was not revealed.

Around the same time as the kidney transplant, researchers transplanted the  liver  of a pig with three genes disabled and three human ones added to prevent immune rejection into a clinically dead patient. During the 10-day experiment, the liver produced bile, and there was no sign of immune rejection. 

The low-tech policy approach

Although friends and relatives and even the occasional “good Samaritan” donor can donate kidneys, they must be given without compensation. Under section 301(a) of the National Organ Transplant  Act  of 1984 (NOTA), it is a federal crime for “any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human organ for valuable consideration for use in human transplantation if the transfer affects interstate commerce.”  Therefore, we propose a  federal tax credit  for living donors willing to save the life of a stranger. The value of the reward should be between $50,000 and $100,000, which physicians and others who endorse donor compensation believe would be sufficient to address the organ shortage. An economic  analysis published in 2022 estimated that a reward of $77,000 could encourage sufficient donations to save 47,000 patients annually.

The credit would be universally available—refundable in cash for people who do not owe income tax, not phased out at high-income levels, and available under the alternative minimum tax. NOTA’s restriction on payments by organ recipients and other private individuals and organizations would not change—it would still be illegal for recipients to buy organs.

Credit: Rmarlin via CC-BY-SA-4.0

A qualified organ donation would be subject to stringent safeguards. As all donors are now, prospective compensated donors would be carefully screened for physical and emotional health. A minimum six-month waiting period before the donation would filter out impulsive donors and donations by financially desperate individuals seeking instant cash.

In addition to saving lives, the credit would save the government money, perhaps as much as  $14 billion  per year, by reducing expenditures on dialysis. Thus, donors would receive financial compensation from the government for contributing to the public good and bearing the risk of a surgical operation to remove the organ.

This would be a compassionate and pragmatic policy. Moreover, it could be implemented immediately, rapidly clearing much of the backlog of Americans waiting for organs in advance of the longer-term high-tech approaches.

The organ shortage kills thousands of Americans every year. We must do all we can to alleviate it now.

Henry Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is the Glenn Swogger Distinguished Fellow at the American Council on Science and Health. He was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology. Follow Henry on Twitter @henryimiller

Sally Satel, a psychiatrist and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is a kidney recipient. She and economist Alan Viard developed the tax proposal in depth. Follow Sally on Twitter @slsatel

An earlier version of this article previously appeared on the Genetic Literacy Project on February 23, 2024.

By Henry I. Miller, MS, MD

Henry I. Miller, MS, MD, is the Glenn Swogger Distinguished Fellow at the American Council on Science and Health. His research focuses on public policy toward science, technology, and medicine, encompassing a number of areas, including pharmaceutical development, genetic engineering, models for regulatory reform, precision medicine, and the emergence of new viral diseases. Dr. Miller served for fifteen years at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in a number of posts, including as the founding director of the Office of Biotechnology.

Latest from Henry I. Miller, MS, MD :

See the most detailed map of human brain matter ever created

Explore the tiny 'pizza slice' down to the neuron.

By Lauren Leffer | Published May 9, 2024 2:00 PM EDT

A cubic millimeter is, by all accounts, tiny. It’s barely noticeable–a speck or fleck or crumb. But look closely enough and you can uncover an entire world inside a particle of material. A team of neuroscientists and engineers, aided by machine learning tools, have charted a cubic millimeter volume of the human brain at nanoscale resolution, tracing every neuron, synapse, blood vessel, and supporting cell within the fragment and reconstructing a 3D model of the tissue. Though it represents just one-millionth of the total brain volume, it is the most detailed map of a piece of human brain matter ever created. It could spur a wave of scientific discovery about neurological disorders, brain structure, and the origins of our behavior. 

“In one respect, our data set is miniscule,” Jeff Lichtman , co-senior study researcher and a neuroscientist and professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard University, tells PopSci . “But it doesn’t feel small because when you get in it, you see it’s like a gigantic forest. It’s a very tiny forest, but it’s a very, very, very complicated forest,” he adds. 

All that complexity is on display in a study documenting the construction of this bit of comprehensive brain map or “connectome,” published May 9 in the journal Science . The first connectome was of a nematode brain, completed in 1986 . Since then, neuroscientists have continued to plot out increasingly large and complicated brains–including those of fruit flies, maggots, a tadpole, and an earthworm. Yet human brains pose a unique mapping challenge in their intricacy and inaccessibility. The new, partial human connectome is available online for anyone to explore.

“Not only is this an impressive technological feat, this is a tool and a resource that is really aimed at sharing with the world and getting all of this scientific information out there,” Tim Mosca , a neuroscientist at Thomas Jefferson University who was uninvolved in the new work, tells PopSci . “This group has done an amazing job designing all of the new tools and the pipelines to make this available to anyone who wants to look at it, wants to think about it, wants to use this in their research.” 

Serving up brain pizza

The study sample was collected over a decade ago from an anonymous patient undergoing epilepsy surgery. The surgeon removed a small piece of the temporal lobe to access and treat an underlying lesion, quickly preserved the tissue, and later shared it with scientists. Though the total volume of the fragment is about 1 cubic millimeter, it is not cube shaped. Instead, “it’s like a thick piece of pizza–but it’s not that thick,” says Lichtman. This blunt, triangular chunk, longer than it is wide, enabled the researchers to capture a bit of all six layers of the 3mm thick cerebral cortex. 

The first step to mapping the brain pizza was to slice it into 5,019 individual cross sections (each 30 nanometers thin) mounted on tape using a specially designed machine that cuts with a diamond knife. From there, the researchers spent a full year carefully imaging each slice via electron microscope. Then, they digitally aligned and stitched together the slices and used multiple machine learning tools to fill out the 3-D form and label and color each component. 

The segment’s neuron density is 16,000 neurons per cubic millimeter– about one-third lower than a previous density estimate of the same brain section and 10 times less dense than the corresponding section of a mouse’s brain, per the study. Glial cells, the connective glue that keeps brain tissue together, outnumber neurons in the fragment by a two to one ratio. 

Neural explorers

The physical size of the brain fragment may be teeny, but the level of detail means the data captured by the mapping effort is massive. The reconstructed segment is 1.4 petabytes in digital size, or 1,400 terabytes (equivalent to the storage capacity of about 2,800 average laptops). Within that, there is lots to potentially discover: individual neural circuits, previously unobserved cellular ratios and shapes, the makeup of each cortical layer, and more. 

“It’s like being an explorer that lands on a new island,” says Lichtman. “You keep looking around and you’re just going to keep finding new things.” 

Already, Lichtman and his many co-researchers have made some interesting observations. Amid the ~150 million synapses they mapped, they found a rare type of particularly strong connection. In the vast majority (96.5%) of cases, axons–the outgoing transmission line of neurons– formed one connection with a target cell. Some (about 3%) made 2 connections. But less than .01% forged more than four synapses, including some axons and target cells that were connected at over 50 points. 

“We’ve always had a theory that there would be super connections, if you will, amongst certain cells,” says Mosca. “But it’s something we’ve never had the resolution to prove…Now we know that it exists and we can go after the question of what it does.” Lichtman’s current hypothesis is that these extra-fortified connections are the sort of hyper-fast pathways that enable “automatic use of the brain” for well-established, learned actions. 

Another new observation: many dendrites (the branching extensions of neurons that generally receive inputs) seem to mirror each other–pointing symmetrically in one of just two directional arrangements out of infinite three-dimensional possibilities. “We’d never seen anything like that [before],” says Lichtman. “Why are they doing that? We don’t know… [it is] a complete mystery.” 

The scientists further found a new type of unexplained structure that they’ve named an “axon whorl,” wherein long axon cables appear to tangle around themselves. Though it wasn’t every neuron, some axons contained multiple knots, says Viren Jain , co-senior study author and a senior staff scientist at Google where he leads the company’s Connectomics research team. Again, the function and cause of these whorls is unknown. “We were not expecting to find such a structure. It’s very peculiar… like a big jumble of wiring that sort of contravenes the purpose of a wire to begin with, which is to go places and contact other things.” 

These three findings are likely just the tip of the iceberg. “The data set is so large that one human being or lab group can not explore it [all], but a bunch of human beings can,” Lichtman says. Because of the open nature of the project, more than 200 papers have cited the brain reconstruction since it was first released as a pre-print, Jain points out.

In addition to being a large, fundamental advance in science, discoveries resulting from this partial connectome could eventually help us better understand and treat brain diseases. “The ability to measure neural wiring of human brains in such detail opens up exciting opportunities for advancing human health,” says Andrew Leifer , a physicist and neuroscientist at Princeton University who wasn’t involved in the project. “One could imagine comparing different brains to understand how brain wiring changes when a healthy brain suffers from a disease or falls into dysfunction,” he adds. 

Pushing into future frontiers 

But though there is lots to be discovered, there are also limits. The automated machine learning methods which were key to enabling such a large-scale endeavor carry a margin of error that requires human oversight to correct. Editing will be an ongoing project, and is a community science effort anyone who wants to can apply to participate in . 

The sample is also only one small piece of one person’s brain. There is much that can’t yet be inferred about human brains generally or other brain regions beyond the temporal lobe based on this single fragment without more samples and maps for comparison, notes Lichtman. 

And, perhaps most critically, the brain segment came from someone undergoing surgery for epilepsy–it may not represent a “normal” brain and there’s no way to know for sure unless and until we have more bits to assess, say Jain and Lichtman. “But we are planning many follow-ups to this,” Jain adds. 

The team has ambitions to construct multiple partial connectomes representing additional human brain samples. They are also working on zebrafish connectome, and are planning to tackle increasingly large segments of the mouse brain. Mammalian brains share many similarities, so a complete mouse connectome could offer new insights into our own brain as well as the evolution of brains across animals, Lichtman says. 

At the moment, with currently available technologies (and the ethical implications), a complete connectome of the human brian is “a bridge too far,” says Lichtman. “Literally, we’re a million times away from that,” says Jain. But through this study, the scientists have taken an early (if miniscule) step in that direction, and even the smallest peephole can be a portal into a whole universe of knowledge. 

“I would love people to think about this the same way they think about the Hubble or James Webb telescope,” says Lichtman. “We’re peering into an unknown domain, and one that is much more relevant to us than distant outer space. It’s this inner space that each of us have on our shoulders that we use, but know almost nothing about.” 

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Early iterations of the AI applications we interact with most today were built on traditional machine learning models. These models rely on learning algorithms that are developed and maintained by data scientists. In other words, traditional machine learning models need human intervention to process new information and perform any new task that falls outside their initial training.

For example, Apple made Siri a feature of its iOS in 2011. This early version of Siri was trained to understand a set of highly specific statements and requests. Human intervention was required to expand Siri’s knowledge base and functionality.

However, AI capabilities have been evolving steadily since the breakthrough development of  artificial neural networks  in 2012, which allow machines to engage in reinforcement learning and simulate how the human brain processes information.

Unlike basic machine learning models, deep learning models allow AI applications to learn how to perform new tasks that need human intelligence, engage in new behaviors and make decisions without human intervention. As a result, deep learning has enabled task automation, content generation, predictive maintenance and other capabilities across  industries .

Due to deep learning and other advancements, the field of AI remains in a constant and fast-paced state of flux. Our collective understanding of realized AI and theoretical AI continues to shift, meaning AI categories and AI terminology may differ (and overlap) from one source to the next. However, the types of AI can be largely understood by examining two encompassing categories: AI capabilities and AI functionalities.

1. Artificial Narrow AI

Artificial Narrow Intelligence, also known as Weak AI (what we refer to as Narrow AI), is the only type of AI that exists today. Any other form of AI is theoretical. It can be trained to perform a single or narrow task, often far faster and better than a human mind can.

However, it can’t perform outside of its defined task. Instead, it targets a single subset of cognitive abilities and advances in that spectrum. Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and IBM Watson are examples of Narrow AI. Even OpenAI’s ChatGPT is considered a form of Narrow AI because it’s limited to the single task of text-based chat.

2. General AI

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), also known as  Strong AI , is today nothing more than a theoretical concept. AGI can use previous learnings and skills to accomplish new tasks in a different context without the need for human beings to train the underlying models. This ability allows AGI to learn and perform any intellectual task that a human being can.

3. Super AI

Super AI is commonly referred to as artificial superintelligence and, like AGI, is strictly theoretical. If ever realized, Super AI would think, reason, learn, make judgements and possess cognitive abilities that surpass those of human beings.

The applications possessing Super AI capabilities will have evolved beyond the point of understanding human sentiments and experiences to feel emotions, have needs and possess beliefs and desires of their own.

Underneath Narrow AI, one of the three types based on capabilities, there are two functional AI categories:

1. Reactive Machine AI

Reactive machines are AI systems with no memory and are designed to perform a very specific task. Since they can’t recollect previous outcomes or decisions, they only work with presently available data. Reactive AI stems from statistical math and can analyze vast amounts of data to produce a seemingly intelligent output.

Examples of Reactive Machine AI  

• IBM Deep Blue: IBM’s chess-playing supercomputer AI beat chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in the late 1990s by analyzing the pieces on the board and predicting the probable outcomes of each move.
• The Netflix Recommendation Engine: Netflix’s viewing recommendations are powered by models that process data sets collected from viewing history to provide customers with content they’re most likely to enjoy.

2. Limited Memory AI

Unlike Reactive Machine AI, this form of AI can recall past events and outcomes and monitor specific objects or situations over time. Limited Memory AI can use past- and present-moment data to decide on a course of action most likely to help achieve a desired outcome.

However, while Limited Memory AI can use past data for a specific amount of time, it can’t retain that data in a library of past experiences to use over a long-term period. As it’s trained on more data over time, Limited Memory AI can improve in performance.

Examples of Limited Memory AI  

• Generative AI: Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Bard and DeepAI rely on limited memory AI capabilities to predict the next word, phrase or visual element within the content it’s generating.
• Virtual assistants and chatbots: Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, Cortana and IBM Watson Assistant combine natural language processing (NLP) and Limited Memory AI to understand questions and requests, take appropriate actions and compose responses.
• Self-driving cars: Autonomous vehicles use Limited Memory AI to understand the world around them in real-time and make informed decisions on when to apply speed, brake, make a turn, etc.

3. Theory of Mind AI

Theory of Mind AI is a functional class of AI that falls underneath the General AI. Though an unrealized form of AI today, AI with Theory of Mind functionality would understand the thoughts and emotions of other entities. This understanding can affect how the AI interacts with those around them. In theory, this would allow the AI to simulate human-like relationships.

Because Theory of Mind AI could infer human motives and reasoning, it would personalize its interactions with individuals based on their unique emotional needs and intentions. Theory of Mind AI would also be able to understand and contextualize artwork and essays, which today’s generative AI tools are unable to do.

Emotion AI is a theory of mind AI currently in development. AI researchers hope it will have the ability to analyze voices, images and other kinds of data to recognize, simulate, monitor and respond appropriately to humans on an emotional level. To date, Emotion AI is unable to understand and respond to human feelings.  

4. Self-Aware AI

Self-Aware AI is a kind of functional AI class for applications that would possess super AI capabilities. Like theory of mind AI, Self-Aware AI is strictly theoretical. If ever achieved, it would have the ability to understand its own internal conditions and traits along with human emotions and thoughts. It would also have its own set of emotions, needs and beliefs.

Emotion AI is a Theory of Mind AI currently in development. Researchers hope it will have the ability to analyze voices, images and other kinds of data to recognize, simulate, monitor and respond appropriately to humans on an emotional level. To date, Emotion AI is unable to understand and respond to human feelings.

Computer vision

Narrow AI applications with  computer vision  can be trained to interpret and analyze the visual world. This allows intelligent machines to identify and classify objects within images and video footage.

Applications of computer vision include:

• Image recognition and classification
• Object detection
• Object tracking
• Facial recognition
• Content-based image retrieval

Computer vision is critical for use cases that involve AI machines interacting and traversing the physical world around them. Examples include self-driving cars and machines navigating warehouses and other environments.

Robots in industrial settings can use Narrow AI to perform routine, repetitive tasks that involve materials handling, assembly and quality inspections. In healthcare, robots equipped with Narrow AI can assist surgeons in monitoring vitals and detecting potential issues during procedures.

Agricultural machines can engage in autonomous pruning, moving, thinning, seeding and spraying. And smart home devices such as the iRobot Roomba can navigate a home’s interior using computer vision and use data stored in memory to understand its progress.

Expert systems

Expert systems equipped with Narrow AI capabilities can be trained on a corpus to emulate the human decision-making process and apply expertise to solve complex problems. These systems can evaluate vast amounts of data to uncover trends and patterns to make decisions. They can also help businesses predict future events and understand why past events occurred.

IBM has pioneered AI from the very beginning, contributing breakthrough after breakthrough to the field. IBM most recently released a big upgrade to its cloud-based, generative AI platform known as watsonx.  IBM watsonx.ai  brings together new generative AI capabilities, powered by foundation models and traditional machine learning into a powerful studio spanning the entire AI lifecycle. With watsonx.ai, data scientists can build, train and deploy machine learning models in a single collaborative studio environment.

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