Science in the Classroom Team

Abigail Hils

Suzanne Thurston

Lydia Kaprelian

Melissa McCartney, PhD

Dr. Melissa McCartney, Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Florida International University, is the Director of Research for Science in the Classroom (SitC). Melissa performs discipline-based education research using SitC resources, focusing on how effective the SitC project is at conveying the nature and process of science to students, as well as how serving as a Contributor for SitC enhances the annotator's understanding of effective science communication.

Melissa developed, implemented, and managed SitC, serving as Senior Project Director for 2 years and as an Associate Editor for Science for 5 years. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia/Penn, received her PhD from The George Washington University, and received her bachelor of science from Binghamton University (SUNY).

Shirley Malcom, PhD

Dr. Shirley Malcom is a Senior Advisor at AAAS. She works to improve the quality and increase access to education and careers in STEM fields as well as to enhance public science literacy. Dr. Malcom is a trustee of Caltech and a regent of Morgan State University, and a member of the SUNY Research Council. She is a former member of the National Science Board, the policymaking body of the National Science Foundation, and served on President Clinton’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology. Malcom , a native of Birmingham, Alabama, received her PhD in ecology from The Pennsylvania State University, masters in zoology from UCLA and bachelor’s with distinction in zoology from the University of Washington. She holds 16 honorary degrees. Malcom serves on the boards of the Heinz Endowments, Public Agenda, the National Math-Science Initiative and Digital Promise.  Internationally, she is a leader in efforts to improve access of girls and women to education and careers in science and engineering and to increase use of S&T to empower women and address problems they face in their daily lives, serving as co-chair of the Gender Advisory Board of the UN Commission on S&T for Development and  Gender InSITE, a global campaign to deploy S&T to help improve the lives and status of girls and women. In 2003, Dr. Malcom received the Public Welfare Medal of the National Academy of Sciences, the highest award given by the Academy.

Beth Ruedi, PhD

Beth Ruedi joined AAAS as Project Director of Science in the Classroom (SitC) after six years of working for the Genetics Society of America. She received her Ph.D. from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007, where her research focused on the genetic basis of complex behavioral traits. After holding dual positions as postdoc and faculty lecturer at North Carolina State University, she moved to Washington, D.C., to serve as the Director of Education and Professional Development at the Genetics Society of America (GSA), providing strategic leadership for GSA’s growing portfolio in education and training as its first dedicated education staff member. Beth helped cultivate an educational mission for GSA, resulting in a complex portfolio of over 20 activities, initiatives, partnerships, and awards. After leading the project for two years, Beth became the full-time Director of Operations for SEA Change, a AAAS initiative  toward institutional transformation by identifying the systems, policies, processes, programs, and practices that perpetuate exclusion and create barriers to diversity and inclusion in STEM.

Jeremy Berg, PhD

Dr. Jeremy M. Berg became Editor-in-Chief of Science and the Science family of journals in July 2016. He came to Science from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine where he was Associate Senior Vice Chancellor for Science Strategy and Planning and Pittsburgh Foundation Professor and Director of the Institute for Personalized Medicine. Prior to that, he served as the Director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. He has been recognized for his accomplishments with awards including the American Chemical Society Award in Pure Chemistry, the Eli Lilly Award for Fundamental Research in Biological Chemistry, the Barry Wood Award for Preclinical Teaching, the Graduate Student Teaching Award at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, selection as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, election to the National Academy of Medicine, and public service awards from the Biophysical Society, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the American Chemical Society, and the American Society for Cell Biology. He served as President of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from 2011-2013.

Pamela Hines, PhD

Dr. Pamela J. Hines, Senior Editor at Science, works with the Advisory Board to ensure the project remains aligned with the standards of Science.  Dr. Hines brings extensive experience at assessing quality and interest of science research papers, and working to improve the research as well as the presentation.  Her interactions with professional colleagues have resulted in a network of scientists and organizations that are interested in science education.  She has led development of the education-related content at Science, including special issues, research content, the Education Forum, the Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE), the Science Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction (IBI), and the Science Controversies: Online Partnerships in Education (SCOPE) project. 

Shelby Lake

Shelby Lake was the Director of Content and Strategy for Science in the Classroom in the STEM Education Program at AAAS. Shelby studied biology and English literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and went on to earn his MA in Language and Communication from Georgetown University. He began working in education at the Duke University Center for Science Education and continued this interest abroad in Japan as a member of the Saga Prefecture Board of Education before joining the SitC team in 2016. Through his position at SitC, Shelby worked to improve the communication of scientific information to student and public audiences by combating misinformation and increasing the representation of scientists from marginalized groups.

Michael Crabtree

Michael Crabtree, an editorial intern at Science in Fall 2014, worked on annotating research papers for Science in the Classroom, in addition to updating and maintaining the website. Michael was a PhD student at the University of Cambridge (Cambridge, UK), where he studied the role of residual structure in intrinsically disordered proteins. Before moving into the field of biophysics, Michael developed a broad scientific background, attaining his undergraduate degree in Medical Science at the University of Birmingham followed by his Masters in Drug Discovery at King’s College London.