Faye flam biography

I can't recommend the journalist-in-residence program highly enough to writers who want to get beneath the surface and understand the process of scientific inquiry. During my seven week stay there were three concurrent programs. I focused most of my attention on the one dealing with the evolution of cooperation and multicellularity. That proved to be a fascinating window into the way scientists approach an unsolved mystery: How and why did single-celled organisms start working together to become complex organisms like us?

I witnessed the way people brought different points of view to the table - as theorists and experimentalists studying everything from social amoebas to seaweed learned from each other. The interdisciplinary nature of the program illustrated ways that physicists and biologists approached the same mystery from different angles. I'm sure my experience at KITP will inform my writing for years to come. And I left with a number of great contacts.

The afternoon coffees and wine and cheese gatherings helped me get to know the staff scientists and some of the

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