About Lab Culture
Lab culture is about bringing people from all over the world together to share their love of food, science, and culture. How are these connected? It started with a group of friends who happened to be scientists. Though science is often portrayed as a sterile and solitary endeavor, these friends found that shared meals inspired great new ideas, fruitful collaborations, and the discovery of ways that we are different and similar to one another that helped form deep and lasting connections.
Lab culture: A recipe for innovation in science is a cookbook and website community that aims to humanize the public's view of scientists by highlighting scientists from all over the world through the lens of their cultures, favorite foods, stories, and scientific journeys.This idea stemmed from my love of food, cooking, and many lively scientist dinners that I have participated in over the years. At these dinners a great deal of laughter, memories, life-long friendships, collaborations, and innovative ideas have been generated.
Our different backgrounds and cultures shape not only the way each of us see the world, but also how the diversity of scientists can bring distinct talents and ideas together to tackle universal problems, such as cancer, infertility, neurodegeneration, climate change, the global food supply, and technology use.
Dr. Ahna Skop received funding from the AAAS IF/THEN (https://www.ifthenportal.org/about) on behalf of her role as IF/THEN Ambassador to create innovative outreach programs to activate a culture shift among young students to open their eyes to a career in science.
One of my life-long friends that I met while at UC-Berkeley as a post-doc is Diana Chu, who is a co-author on this project. Through our many travels, dinners, and time spent in the lab together, we discovered our shared joy of food. Diana’s recipes have been published in the Food52 cookbook. In fact, most scientists also have several ‘outside of the lab’ interests that include baking, cooking, photography, travel, and art. The experiences and outside passions scientists from across the globe share with one another make the scientific community an amazing place to call our second home.
Many young students and the public, never hear about our passions outside of science. With Lab culture we have the opportunity to connect with the public through our shared cultures, childhood memories, career paths, personal stories, and food, and through this, we can come to recognize how similar we are to each other. Equally, the public will gain knowledge about how vastly important cultural, ethnic, racial, gender, religious, socio-economic, sexual orientation, disability, language, mental health, and life experiences are to science and innovation.
Our short-term goals are to create an online community to share our journey as scientists and outside passions. We will do this by building a websites to share recipes, assemble a cookbook, and maintain a blog of longer personal stories from scientists. Our hope is to highlight scientists from all over the world and humanize them through the lens of their cultures, favorite foods, stories, and scientific journeys.
We look forward to cooking with you and hearing your stories!
“You learn a lot about someone when you share a meal together.”
— Anthony Bourdain
Our Team
Dr. Ahna Skop
Ahna Skop is a geneticist, artist, science communicator, and champion for the underrepresented in science. Her lab studies how cells divide. Cell division is highly dependent on visual data, which dovetails perfectly with one of her other passions, art. Ahna has several scientific art installations on the UW-Madison campus and has also curated, and created several traveling science art exhibitions. She is equally passionate about increasing the numbers of underrepresented students in STEAM fields. Ahna majored in biology and minored in ceramics at Syracuse University, obtained her Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology at UW-Madison, and her post-doctoral work at UC-Berkeley. Ahna is a Professor in the Laboratory of Genetics and an affiliate faculty member in Life Sciences Communication and the Division of the Arts at the UW-Madison. One of her great hobbies is traveling and baking, including scientific cakes, and manages a foodblog, foodskop.com in her free time.
Hometown: New Haven, CT & Fort Thomas, KY
Dr. Diana Chu
Diana Chu is a scientist and professor in Biology at San Francisco State University (SFSU). Her research on male fertility has been featured on the cover of Science magazine and has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. As an professor at San Francisco State University, she developed a course in Science Communication and launched the SFSU Science Communication website, where the diverse students at SFSU share their passion for research and personal stories that led them to careers in science and technology. She has a passion for cooking that she shares with her family, friends, students,and colleagues. Her recipes have been featured on the food52.com website (as monkeymom) and have been published in two cookbooks: The Food52 Cookbook, Volumes 1 and 2. Each recipe tells a story of how food has connected her to those around her.
Hometown: Reno, NV
Dr. Stephanie Blaszczyk
Stephanie Blaszczyk is a science communicator, medical writer, and a former AAAS Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellow for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel with a serious sweet tooth. Stephanie obtained her bachelor's degree from Rockford University in 2013. She then worked in industry, first at a small company then at a global corporation, before returning to the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2016 to pursue her PhD in organic chemistry under the direction of Professor Weiping Tang. Her research focused on developing more efficient methods for the chemical synthesis of carbohydrates. After graduating from UW-Madison in 2020, she began working for Covance as a medical writer. In her free time, Stephanie is either spending time outdoors, crafting, reading, or sampling new desserts with her family.
Hometown: Loves Park, IL
Elif Kurt
Elif Kurt is a recent graduate with a major in Genetics and Genomics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an artist. Elif is looking forward to applying to medical school in the near future and volunteers at the hospital in the meantime. She also tutors children in the sciences and uses art to teach topics that would normally appear daunting. As a diverse woman in the field of science, Elif is passionate about promoting diversity and inclusion in the STEAM fields any chance she can get. She hopes to inspire others to get involved with science outreach at their own schools and communities. Elif enjoys spending time with her cat, experimenting in the kitchen, and illustrating in her free time.
Hometown: Waunakee, WI
