Megan Frisk, Ph.D.
Associate Editor,
Science Translational Medicine

“Minding the Gap: Research and Publishing in Translational Medicine”

The translational research path is a continuum, with steps ranging from basic biomedical research to clinical trials to commercialization. This path is not as smooth or as straight as often envisioned—it’s really more of a network of research that works toward a common goal of improving patient health. Sometimes, translation also works in the reverse, where clinical problems feed back into preclinical or basic research. Science Translational Medicine, an interdisciplinary journal launched in 2009 by AAAS, the publishers of Science, aims to aid in the reinvention of translational research by publishing creative experimental approaches, novel technologies, and new ways of exploring the interface of established and emerging disciplines. In addition to highlighting various bioengineering-focused papers that have successfully traversed the translational path, I will discuss current research and policy areas of interest to the journal, in hopes of showing how we view exemplary translational advances and the gaps to cross in moving forward.

Megan Frisk is an Associate Editor of Science’s clinically focused sister journal Science Translational Medicine. Her responsibilities at STM include the bioengineering and imaging research articles and reviews, as well as policy commentaries and editorials. Prior to this position, she was the Editor of Trends in Biotechnology, a Cell Press review journal. Megan received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from The University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she leveraged biomolecular self-assembly and polymer technologies to develop microfluidic sensors.  Her postdoctoral research, also at the UW, focused on combining fluidics and surface chemistry for the enumeration and characterization of circulating tumor cells, ultimately as a tool for clinical cancer management.

Location
1005 GBSF