L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science - Brittney Borowiec, Ph.D.
2022

Brittney Borowiec, Ph.D., is an award-winning zoologist and freelance science writer. Her research interests are how animals cope with natural and human-induced environmental challenges, and how these responses intersect with the contemporary issues of the Anthropocene. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Waterloo investigating the molecular level mechanisms that co-ordinate how fish respond to extreme fluctuations in oxygen level. She was previously a postdoctoral fellow at Wilfrid Laurier University where she studied how the pesticides used to control invasive sea lamprey in the Great Lakes region damage their mitochondria. Her Ph.D. project at McMaster University focused on how killifish cope with different patterns of low oxygen conditions, especially rapid transitions in oxygen level that occur in environments such as estuaries and the intertidal zone.

Brittney’s interest in science communication, especially science writing, began in graduate school. As a freelancer, her writing appears in Nature, BBC Science Focus, Massive Science, The Conversation, and many other places. She’s also written scripts for science series on YouTube, including the entirety of Crash Course: Zoology, and a few episodes each of Bizarre Beasts and PBS Eons. She has authored several digital children’s books as a part of Plympton, Inc.’s Did You Know? series.

Brittney is also passionate about creating more scientist-science writers by helping her colleagues develop their science communication skills in the form of workshops, guest lectures, and mentorship roles. From 2019 to 2021, she worked as an Editor at Massive Science, where her favourite part of the job was seeing a pitch from a first time writer grow into an interesting and unique story about science. Currently, she is the Managing Editor of CSZ-SCZ Blog, a new initiative of the Canadian Society of Zoologists that seeks to develop popular science writing in its members, and previously co-facilitated an NSERC-funded science writing internship program for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.

Twitter:  @this_is_brit
Personal website:  https://www.bgborowiec.com/