Invitation to ETI: Athena Andreadis

Who We Are: Athena Andreadis

Dr. Athena Andreadis is an academic research scientist at work in Boston, where she examines a fundamental gene regulatory mechanism known as alternative splicing. Knowledge of this mechanism will help us understand how the brain works, and contribute to the struggle against mental retardation and dementia. When not conjuring in the lab, she writes (and used to review) fiction, a skill she developed as an unexpected benefit of chronic insomnia. She arrived in the US from Greece at 18 to pursue biochemistry and astrophysics as a scholarship student at Harvard University and MIT. She had always wondered about the possibility of life on other planets and the limits of the human body and mind in radically altered environments. Combining all these interests, she wrote To Seek Out New Life: The Biology of Star Trek, a stealth science book which investigates biology, psychology and sociology through the lens of the popular eponymous series and films. In the wake of the book, she got invited to give talks in venues ranging from NASA research labs to the Mars Society to the NIH. She plans to write many more books, if only she can find the time. She's a voracious reader, has travelled extensively, and would travel even more if her benchwork allowed it. She does not play an instrument, though she keeps threatening to take up the bagpipes. However, she can sing on-key in the four languages that she knows -- all of which she speaks with a slight accent.

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