Greetings all.
I am a graduate student in molecular biology going for my PhD. I am currently researching DNA damage pathways and accordingly stare at many tiny dots in a microscope and little purple lines on membranes.
Anyway, I was curious to see how many like minded and careered people were about, in case I wanted to bounce ideas around or complain about my day without needing to define it frist. 
We’re around. I’m in just about the same boat - I’ll be applying for grad school soon. edwino often fills my question-bouncing needs, since he can often be found in chat. There are others as well. Welcome. You will never escape.
Sorry, used to be a Physics major but, thank god, I switched to Telecommunications.
Well, I have my degree in archaeology… that’s a science. Oh. Molecular biology you say? Hmm. Sorry… I’m no help there.
Anyhoo, welcome aboard!
I am still an undergrad but am planning to go to grad school in (probably cell) biology. I’ve been a proud bio nerd since about eleven, and have always wanted to do research. From one newbie to another - welcome!
Smeghead: Good luck to you in seeking a school. If you need any advice on what to look for in a school et cetera, feel free to ask.
Tyklfe: Probably a good career move, but I think its a shame I will never read of the Tyklfe Theorem.
Rasa: Thanks for the welcome. Several of my best friends of archaeologists or anthropologists. If you want to me to feel at home, random phrases in dead languages would help.
GilaB: Again thanks for the welcome, and good luck in your schooling.
Welcome aboard! I’m in grad school working on a mathematics PhD, doing research in topology. And I spend too much time here.
I earned a BS in cellular biology years ago, but didn’t pursue a science career. I miss the academic world horribly, and am looking for ways to keep my education from rusting completely away. If you count me in, I’ll try not to embarrass you.
No problems, there, Peregrine. Anyone named for a bird of prey is welcome in my book.
And Cabbage, a PhD in Mathematics researching topology. How does that work exactly? Are you you trying to develop better equations to model the phenomenon? Please, my inquiring mind wants to know.
PhD Physics. Director of Applied Technology at my current job (which sounds more impressive than it is). Visiting Scientist at MIT.
I’ve had a variety of Optics-realted jobs, and every one of them has been different. But fun.
Indeed, as Smeghead mentioned.
I am pursuing an MD/PhD. I completed 2 years of medical school (with half of one being in clinics full time), and am nearly finished my second year of graduate school in molecular and human genetics. I work on Developmental Neurogenetics in the Drosophila eye.
My first grad school rotation was with a bacterial DNA repair lab. I studied the recQ protein, Werner syndrome and Bloom syndrome proteins. Good stuff.
Undergrad in Biochemistry (graduating in December :)). Not going into research because I want to be a genetic counselor. I’m more of a pseudo-scientist.
No, I’m not trying to model any phenomenon; it’s pure math so there’s no modeling involved. Topology came from people trying to generalize the idea of continuous functions that you encounter in calculus. What kinds of properties are preserved by continuous functions? Continuous functions can stretch or bend, but they can’t tear anything apart, so when you’re doing topology, you’re studying the properties of objects that don’t change if you bend or stretch them. So, for example, a circle is the same as a square is the same as a triangle (but not the same as a line segment, since you would have to tear a circle to make it a line segment), or, the classic example, a coffe mug is the same as a donut, since both have that single “hole” through them (but not the same as a ball, since the ball has no such hole)–the center of the donut, and the hole through the handle of the mug.
There are lots of real live scientists here on the boards. I’m an astronomer, and I play one on TV!
Geophysicist here, working in oil & gas exploration. Usual practice here is wishful thinking and lots of head scratching with science applied when we get desperate (I’m sort of kidding).
I’m a graduate of the Barbizon School of Physics – their motto was “Be a Physicist…or Look Just Like One!”
3rd year PhD student, working on methods of genetic control for arthropod disease vectors (a mishmash of medical entomology, population biology and ecology, modeling, and molecular biology).
I am really fun at parties…
MM
Geologist. Not one of those squiggly-line, I-look-at-numbers-not-rocks geophysical types like beatle. More specifically, an Igneous Petrologst interested in the trace element geochemistry of peralkalic volcanic rocks, hence the obscure and dull UserName that I don’t really like. (Although it’s still my fave rock.)
4th year (urp!) PhD student that WILL finish in 2001 who’s working in exile away from his (future) alma mater as a part-time University Lecturer at his (past) alma mater and even-more-part-time industrial minerals and hydrogeologic (double urp!) consultant.
Look for my exciting, exciting paper “Origin of a silica-oversaturated quartz trachyte-rhyolite suite through combined crustal melting, magma mixing, and fractional crystallization: the Leyva Canyon volcano, Trans-Pecos Magmatic Province, Texas” coming soon to an issue of the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research near YOU! (Hopefully by or before December, since it was accepted last December!)
All I talk is shop, hence my extraordinarily low post count.
It’s funny, Pantellerite, just this evening we were discussing the differences. In school, on field trips you could knock off the geophysics students. We were always the smaller group that was back in camp an hour or so ahead of the rest because we weren’t trying to drag back 55 pounds of really cool doorstops (Hey, I got my data points, let’s check out the cooler).
Today a wildcat my geologist and I drilled got down. They’ll trip the bit and condition the hole so ~1:00 AM he’ll get the call to start the couple or so hours drive down to the wellsite (just outside your hometown); about 3:30 or so he’ll start logging an almost 11,000’ hole. I’ll be snoozin’ ;).
Note geophysicist’s excessive use of “or so.”
The fact of the matter is, we can be wrong to four decimal places, and we know it. Engineers can be wrong to five, but they’re pretty damn sure they’re right. And geologists are pretty much happy to be on trend.
