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This time around, we're talking to GrrlScientist of Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted).

What's your name?
Because I would like to have a job someday and because blog writing is typically seen as a liability in my pursuit of that goal, I prefer to respond online to one of several monikers that I use in the blogosphere; GrrlScientist is one and Hedwig the owl is the other. I chose GrrlScientist as my main pseudonym for obvious reasons, but the origin of "Hedwig the owl" might be somewhat mysterious. Basically, I chose "Hedwig the owl" because she is a messenger in the popular Harry Potter series, serving as a link between Harry Potter and the outside world. I view myself as a link between the world of science and the outside world.

What do you do when you're not blogging?
I am an avid birder, writer and sailor. I read nearly constantly. I teach my parrots how to play basketball. I enjoy sudoku. I try not to teach my parrots how to swear. I also (not surprisingly) read -- a LOT -- usually while hanging out in my favorite local watering hole, drinking beers, and eavesdropping on the local drunks. I chase my parrots off the curtain rods. I mess around on my computer.

What is your blog called?
Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted).

What's up with that name?
When I first started my blog, I was employed as a postdoctoral fellow, and I had intended that my blog would chronicle what it is like to be a scientist. Instead, my funding ended and I couldn't find a job, so my blog instead became my primary source of self-worth and social connections while I struggled to keep myself housed and fed -- thus, the parenthetical name, which I hope to drop one fine day.

How long have you been blogging, anyway?
I have been formally bloviating on my public blog for more than two years: my second blogiversary was 4 August, 2006.

Where are you from and where do you live now?
I am a bicoastal grrl. I was born and grew up in a small farming community outside of Spokane, then I went to college for awhile in Portand, then in Steilacoom and Tacoma, and then I finished my formal education in Seattle. I've lived most of my life in Seattle, which I consider to be my West Coast home. I also lived in Tokyo, Japan, for a short time when I was a graduate student. I currently am in New York City (Manhattan), where I have lived for more than four years now, and consider it to be my East Coast home. NYC natives refer to me as a "real New Yawkuh".

Would you describe yourself as a working scientist?
Yes. If we define a working scientist only as someone at the bench (or computer), then the only scientists are graduate students. Seriously, we need more Ph.D. level scientists engaged in public policy, public health, and education.

Any educational experiences or degrees you'd like to mention?
I have a BS in Microbiology and Immunology with a special emphasis in Virology from the University of Washington in Seattle. My senior thesis was entitled "The Neurobiology of AIDS (HIV)". I am also one class short of a second BS in Biochemistry.

While an undergrad, I worked in AIDS research for two years. After graduating, I worked as a lab manager and technician at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. I identified correlations between HLA type/subtype and particular autoimmune diseases, and I also studied antigen switching in trypanosomes.

While I was working, I finally took the GRE and surprised myself by earning high scores. I soon discovered that I was being actively recruited by graduate schools around the country. I finally applied to a few of them and was pleased when I was accepted by nearly all of them. At that point, I had a big choice to make: what to do with the rest of my life? I debated about pursuing my graduate degree either in Virology (I wanted to research the evolution of RNA viruses, especially the influenzas) or in Ornithology (I wanted to research the evolution of the parrots in the south Pacific Islands).

Because I had been a private aviculturist specializing in breeding lories and lorikeets for more than one decade, I decided to follow my dream and pursued my doctorate in Zoology. My dissertation focused on the hormonal control of breeding behavior in migratory passerines. I chose the white-crowned sparrow as my model organism because blood hormone levels and the corresponding behaviors were both well-studied in this species. But because the relationship between plasma hormone levels and breeding behaviors were correlative only, I wanted to fill in this gap by examining a direct relationship between the two. To do this, I studied the androgen receptor, which is "activated" in individual cells when bound to testosterone and other androgens.

My hypotheses were (1) the androgen receptor levels change seasonally, especially in the brain, and especially in the avian song control circuitry; (2) different potential androgen receptor isoforms, if they exist, have distinct actions in different cell types, and (3) male and female birds have different seasonal expression and distribution patterns, and concentrations of androgen receptors on a tissue-wide basis. My hypotheses were that all these differences were at the heart of different responses to hormones that had been observed in these birds.

To accomplish this research, my goals were to clone and identify any isoforms of the androgen receptor and to create RNA probes to determine both gender- and tissue-specific changes in seasonal expression patterns of those isoforms.

Shortly before I defended my dissertation, I wrote a successful grant to pursue my dream research; to reconstruct a molecular phylogeny of the lories (Lorinae) and their relatives, the fig parrots, hanging parrots and eclectus parrots. Ten days after I turned in my dissertation to "the ruler lady", I was on an airplane to NYC where I have worked and lived for more than four years.

What are your main academic interests, in or out of your field?
My main professional academic interests are evolutionary biology, ornithology, hormones and their receptors, RNA viruses and molecular biology. Besides those professional interests, my other academic interests include psychology, first amendment law, history, languages, literature, poetry, music and other arts.

The last book you read?
I usually read three books at the same time; one book is my "subway book" and I read two others at home; one of which is a book in my field, evolutionary biology or ornithology, and one that is recreational reading outside my field. Because I am trying to improve my Spanish and Indonesian, I also like to read the Harry Potter books in these languages.

The most recent books that I've finished reading are;
Fiction: Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd.
Nonfiction: Seeking the Sacred Raven: Politics and Extinction on a Hawai'ian Island by Mark Jerome Walters.
Poetry: American Primitiveby Mary Oliver

What is your idea of a perfect day?
Observing my research birds, the lories, in the wilds on an island in the south Pacific Ocean.

What's your greatest habitual annoyance?
People with illogical or nonexistant thought patterns; particularly religious wingnuts and rabid animal rights activitsts.

Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
Hermione Granger and my namesake, Hedwig the owl, from the Harry Potter series. John Thornton in Jack London's Call of the Wild. I know there ar eothers but I cannot recall them right now.

Your favorite heroes in real life?
There are plenty of people whom I admire, such as Eugienie Scott and Martin Luther King Jr., but because I see heroes as being something close to super-human, I don't have any real life heroes.

What's your most marked characteristic?
Before people speak to me, they notice my hair color and height. After people speak to me, they notice my intelligence and wit.

What's your principal defect?
Excessive sarcasm.

What quality do you admire most in a person?
I admire people who are honest, articulate, logical and witty. Oh wait, that's more than one quality. Sorry about that.

Who are your favorite writers?
I have so many beloved authors that I doubt I can list them all, but I'll name a few that immediately spring to mind; Jack London, John Steinbeck, Kurt Vonnegut, Margaret Atwood, Bernd Heinrich, Mary Oliver, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

What would you like to be?
If I ever grow up, which appears unlikely at this point, I aspire to be a tenured faculty member at a large research university with multiple grants funded, tons of publications in high profile journals, with minions to do my bidding while I travel to the south Pacific Islands to study my birds. Either that or I'd like to be a virus hunter somewhere in the heart of Africa.