Tale

Telling True Tales
Many writers land in their profession by deftly avoiding math and science in school. Not so with Elizabeth Dougherty, who composes monthly profiles of SBGrid members, developers, and applications. Dougherty credits her math degree and computer science experience with providing an unexpectedly useful foundation.

“They’re my favorite interviews of all my work,” says Dougherty, a freelance science writer and editor, about her SBGrid assignments. Since 2011, when the new website featuring SBGrid Tales was introduced, Dougherty has been calling scientists and software developers to hear their stories.

“I ask them to go in the way-back machine and tell me how they got started, how their careers developed, and what exciting things they’re working on,” she says. “Everyone is fascinating. People come to structural biology from the strangest places. There are a huge variety of people with this one connection in common.”

Like the people she profiles, Dougherty (pronounced DOCK-er-tee) traveled an unpredictable path to become an SBGrid contributor. As a sophomore at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, she woke up one day to discover it was the deadline for declaring a major. A quick calculation revealed that the only degree she could complete in four years was math. “I would guess if you asked 99.9 percent of math majors, they probably did not make the choice by default,” she says.

After staying an extra year to earn a MA in math education, Dougherty moved to California, where she taught computer science and math to high school students in Silicon Valley. Two years later, she switched careers in the first Internet boom, extending her resume with the essential triad of experience working for legacy companies, startups, and those in between. She relocated to the Boston area in 1997, designing network management software and looking for a new direction.

She ventured cautiously into her writing career after hearing that a childhood friend had expected Dougherty to be a writer when she grew up, something she had never considered. Testing the waters, she signed up for Harvard Extension classes. Once she knew she could write, she entered the Boston University graduate science writing program. Internships took her to The Atlantic Monthly, public broadcasting science television show NOVA, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and finally Harvard Medical School, where she encountered structural biology for the first time and joined the staff. SBGrid was one of her first clients when she struck out on her own as an independent writing consulting.

Now bolder about delving into science-related narratives, Dougherty has written two novels. She wrote the first, “The Blind Pig,” on the commuter train to and from her Harvard job. It explores the future of a society fueled by bioengineered food. The latest is a young adult book that she describes as “Moneyball meets Lance Armstrong’s Tour de France,” featuring high school girls at the fictional Darling Academy. The new book’s performance theme may take some inspiration from the four marathons she has finished. “Running helps me loosen up my brain and think through stories,” she says.

Dougherty says she always looks forward to the next interview. The pieces help the SBGrid community identify potential collaborators, and give a sense of where the field has been and where it is headed.

-- Carol Cruzan Morton