GRAM Featured Writers

MICHELLE MARTIN

Michelle Martin is a freelance journalist who considers herself lucky to live in Seattle, WA where, on occasion, she can see two mountain ranges and salmon spawning all in one short bike ride. Her work has appeared in The Denver Post, Alaska Beyond, and on Bellevue College’s radio station KBCS among other places. She has a degree in biology and once envisioned a romantic career studying primates in the jungle. Then, a three-week stint planted in one steamy spot spying on howler monkeys left her with a crick in her neck and a suspicion that reporting on the science was more her calling than doing the science.

Michelle clings to the idea of a free press that shares stories with heart and investigates solutions. She has reported on topics ranging from citizen science to healthy habits to solutions to the opioid epidemic. She volunteers in habitat restoration projects and on the STEM committee of a local elementary school. She likes to eat blueberries, cherries, and strawberries from her yard and has been known to attempt to grow vegetables as well. She lived in Belgium for a year as a Rotary Exchange Student and found traveling to be one of the easiest ways to gain new perspectives on the world and how others experience life.

MATT JACKSON, PHD

Matt Jackson is a PhD analytical chemist specializing in translational research, where research moves out of the lab and turns into real products that can be used in the clinic. Matt has developed microscale devices—similar in size to computer processors—that can process fluids instead of electricity and extract the rarest of cancer markers from a tube of blood. This can tell clinicians how well cancer therapies are working in real-time and, for those critical patients, if a different treatment may prevent relapse.

Matt has worked closely with oncologists and has learned many different “scientific languages.” He uses this to delve deep into different areas of scientific research, pull out key concepts, and explain it in a way that (hopefully) everyone can understand. He has also been on the other side of treatment and has helped his family through battles with cancer. He knows how overwhelming it can be to make decisions about your health and life, especially when information from doctors is compressed into a few chaotic minutes of rushed conversation. So, when it comes to medical writing, Matt strives to absorb and fact-check as much as information as possible, and then serve as an interpreter for those on the front lines of healthcare.

In his free time, Matt advocates for mental health awareness and is a volunteer counselor on the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. He is also an avid abstract painter using all mediums.