About Jenny
By day: cell biologist at UCL. By night: novelist, broadcaster, science writer, sci-lit-art pundit, blogger and Editor of LabLit.com. I blog about my life in science, not the facts and figures.
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Author Archives: Jennifer Rohn
In which we sort ourselves out
Writing space: the final frontier When you move into a new house, you unpack about 90% of your belongings in the first months. And then, of course, there’s that lingering tail that seems to get put off indefinitely. This asymptote … Continue reading
Posted in Domestic bliss, LabLit, Writing
8 Comments
In which I bring Lego to lab meeting
Our floor recently initiated a monthly lunchtime meeting as an informal feedback conduit. Although the individual labs all work in one mammoth communal room, the research that goes on is disparate. The key to propelling your project forward might be … Continue reading
Posted in Research, Scientific thinking
Comments Off on In which I bring Lego to lab meeting
In which horizons expand
Every career probably has a tipping point. Twenty-seven years after embarking on my PhD, a period riddled with false starts, uncertainties, twists and turns, I sense the shifting of weight beneath me and momentum gathering as I start to swing … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Careers, Research, The profession of science
2 Comments
In which an era ends
She was decent and hard-working. She seldom complained, even when she got herself into a jam. She witnessed my awakening as a writer, from tentative, cliché-prone beginner to confident, stripped-down wordsmith capable of earning money and book deals. She saw … Continue reading
Posted in LabLit, Nostalgia, Work/life balance, Writing
4 Comments
In which I’m published – in ‘Science Fiction by Scientists’
As the Queen of Lab Lit, a literary subgenre whose defining characteristic includes not being science fiction, people are often surprised to discover that I do actually like SF. But it’s true. I read little else when I was younger, … Continue reading
In which I am cloistered
I’ve had to do a lot of working from home these past two weeks, as our Athena SWAN submission reaches its final denouement. (Let’s pause to appreciate the image of “Athena SWAN” as a reassuringly corpulent opera singer with Viking … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, The profession of science
1 Comment
In which green means go
It’s often been said that witnessing your child grow up is akin to scientific experiment – an intense longitudinal observational study with no control group. As a fan of language in all of its nuances, it’s been fascinating watching Joshua … Continue reading
Posted in Domestic bliss, Scientific thinking, Work/life balance
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In which the calm cowers before the storm
Can you hear it? Yes, that’s the sound of a distinct lack of undergraduates knocking around the place. Even the summer lab students have departed, off for a few weeks of R&R or debauchery before the grind kicks back in … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Students, Teaching, The profession of science
Comments Off on In which the calm cowers before the storm
In which I wave in your general direction
Has it really been a few months since my last post? Holidays are only partially to blame: that covers two weeks. Maybe three, if you count the frazzled week finishing up in the lab beforehand, or the frazzled week on … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Domestic bliss, Gardening, Research, The profession of science, Women in science, Work/life balance
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In which I snap
I’m not a neat freak or anything, at home or in the lab, but sometimes, enough is enough. Behold the new arrangement of our lab’s stash of fluorochrome-conjugated secondary antibodies. Is it not a thing of beauty? (A moment of … Continue reading
Posted in Research, Scientific thinking, Silliness
3 Comments

