He’s Not Broken

As an autistic man working in a non-STEM, empathy-driven field — a quality society often wrongly assumes autistic people lack — Eric Garcia recognized how little neurotypicals grasped autism’s diversity. … More He’s Not Broken

Relevance Rediscovered

At 49, Greg Michie gave it all up. His tenure-track position. His flexible schedule. His unhurried lunch hour. (His lunch hour, period.) In 2012, as a citywide teacher’s strike loomed, Michie left the relative comforts of higher education. He returned to the undervalued but indispensable work of public school teaching in America. … More Relevance Rediscovered

Shades of Gray

Jake Lawler came to UNC in 2017 with a football scholarship, a passion for movies and a talent for writing. A longtime foe followed him there, one that he had known since middle school — when he wore crooked glasses and ill-fitting clothes and was teased for being a mixed-race kid. … More Shades of Gray

Weaponized Cells: A Sobering Message About the Virus

Lung researcher Dr. Camille Ehre felt like she was flying a drone over a dense forest, looking for poisonous apples on the ground or in the swaying trees. For more than a month, she piloted her powerful microscope over an area 12 millimeters in diameter populated by cells from the lungs’ airways. Zooming in and out, she hunted between and below their hairlike protrusions for the infectious, spiky orbs of COVID-19. … More Weaponized Cells: A Sobering Message About the Virus