Ciao Tutti (which is the beginning and possibly the end of my Italian)
I am Neeraja, currently based at Yonsei University in Korea where I teach undergraduates a variety of history of science and occasionally science-writing courses. Maybe because I was a science writer before beginning graduate school in history, my main research interests are in the history of 20th century life sciences. Within this broad field, all pathways seem to lead to (well actually branch from) my PhD dissertation work on Macfarlane Burnet and his research on bacteriophages. The history of viruses more broadly,microbial genetics and immunology have all been fair game. My claim to this conference was a recent paper on the role of the discovery of ribozymes in shaping origins-of-life research, and I'm interested to hear what ideas others might offer as to directions to take this work. I'm really excited to have been accepted to this summer school and can't wait to get to Italy!
