Alissa Poh has written about peregrine falcons, NASA's latest gamma-ray observatory, and Stanford Medical School's first archivist. She has talked to a Vatican astronomer about religion and science, and explored the scientific basis for perfect pitch. She earned her B.Sc. (Hons) degree in biochemistry from the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, and an M.S. in pharmacology from Dartmouth Medical School, New Hampshire.

Alissa joined the Science Communication Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in September 2007, where she had the opportunity to write for Stanford Medical School, UCSC's Public Information Office, and the Santa Cruz Sentinel. She completed the program with a summer internship at Children's Hospital Boston in 2008, going on to join Cambridge Healthtech Institute (CHI) in Needham, MA, as assistant editor with the company's media group. There, she wrote original stories for and produced the e-newsletter PharmaWeek. She also helped develop a public outreach website for the multi-center Lung Genomics Research Consortium (LGRC), funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to better characterize two major lung diseases - chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and pulmonary fibrosis - using advanced molecular genomic technologies. She now works as a science and medical writer at the University of Kansas Medical Center, and regularly freelances for Dartmouth Medicine magazine.

E-mail: alissa.poh AT gmail DOT com