Retrospectacle: A Neuroscience Blog

Retrospectacle is now Of Two Minds!

About

The Blog

Run by a Neuroscience PhD candidate at the University of Michigan, Retrospectacle attempts to make brain-based blogging accessible, relevent, and fun. I highlight important discoveries in neuroscience (and science in general), as well as describe the process of obtaining a PhD, and being a upbeat savvy female scientist who wants world domination one first-author paper at a time. Writing from Retrospectacle has been quoted or featured in Slate, Newsweek, ComputerWorld, the Science Creative Quarterly, USATODAY.com, PCWorld, BlogHer, Pharyngula, MixEye, DailyKos, The Scientist, DigitalTrends, the Volokh Conspiracy, BoingBoing, SlashDot, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, the blogs of Scientific American and Nature, The Issue, Medicine at Michigan, and much, much more. Shelley was the recipient of a Student Blogging Scholarship from the Daniel Kovach Foundation in 2006 (3rd place) and 2007 (2nd place).

The Title

Back in the days of yore when I was hosted by Blogger, I set up this small blog as a way of looking out and looking in. Looking out, insofar that I wish to understand many areas of scientific endeavor, and how they intersect with money, politics, culture, religion, the environment, social policy, and globalization. Looking in, not only as a tool to better understand myself, the graduate student, but also to catalog the struggle to become a solid scientist from square one. I felt that the title, Retrospectacle, captured this purpose: the aim of centering your role in the context of whats come before, and whats yet to come.

The Author

I grew up outside Orlando, Florida and have been addicted to sunshine ever since. Moved to Greenville, South Carolina in middle school and received a thoroughly Southern Baptist upbringing as well as fine arts education in poetry at a magnet school. I moved back to Florida (Sarasota to be exact) for undergrad at the small liberal arts college New College of Florida. There, I studied a wide range of topics from Archaeology to Poetry to Chemistry to Philosophy to Psychology. I learned about Evolution for the first time and became a firm skeptic and a joyful atheist. I spent nearly all my spare time doing volunteer research: Alzheimers disease at the Roskamp Institute (Tampa, FL), manatee vision and behavior at Mote Marine Observatory (Longboat Key, FL), honeybee learning and memory, and wrote my undergrad thesis on RNA helicases in C. elegans. What little time was left I spent as an editor of our literary magazine, New Collage, and writing poetry. After graduation, I applied to Neuroscience PhD programs and entered the University of Michigan in 2003 where I became very interested in Systems Neuroscience and regenerative therapy following traumatic injuries. My thesis, which I am just starting work on, is focused on using both viral and non-viral methods to regenerate hair cells in the cochlea, which are lost following deafness. I look forward to a career in academic Neuroscience and to working towards a cure for deafness. I gotta get funded, get a PhD, and stay sane in the process! My parents live in Shanghai, China and I visit them there about one month out of the year.

The Bird

I have a Chicken Mcnugget-loving African Grey parrot named Pepper (after Irene Pepperberg) whom I raised from a chick. He is extremely charming and talkative. His first word was "Sup fool!" which is still is favorite thing to say (out of about 200+ words and phrases). He is the most loyal and loving creature in the world, and I no-doubt will be blogging about what funny phrases and sounds he learns next. He will likely outlive me, as their lifespan is between 70-90 years.