Shelby Bradford, PhD

Shelby Bradford, PhD

Assistant editor at The Scientist

Shelby is an Assistant Editor at The Scientist. She earned her PhD in immunology and microbial pathogenesis from West Virginia University, where she studied neonatal responses to vaccination. She completed an AAAS Mass Media Fellowship at StateImpact Pennsylvania, and her writing has also appeared in Massive Science. Shelby participated in the 2023 flagship ComSciCon and volunteered with science outreach programs and Carnegie Science Center during graduate school. 

Articles by Shelby Bradford, PhD

Illustration of a transparent human torso with the respiratory tract and alveoli highlighted in light orange to indicate asthma.

Obesity-Associated Asthma Has a Dietary Source

Illustration showing several people’s arms raised and holding signs with faces that either depict neutral yellow faces, unhappy red faces, or happy green faces. This image is emphasizing mixed reactions to an announcement.

NIH’s Priorities Announcement Receives Mixed Responses from Researchers

Cartoon of eight people standing in front of three pages of paper with text indicated by grey lines holding up a magnifying glass to the middle one on a light blue background. The image is a representation of peer review.

Transparent Peer Review: A New Era for Scientific Publishing

3D illustration of spherical blue viruses with receptors sticking out surrounded by green, Y-shaped antibodies.

A Broadly Protective HIV Vaccine Shows Promising Results in Monkeys

3D illustration of a rod-shaped bacteria accumulating PFAS compounds intracellularly.

Some Gut Microbes Sequester PFAS Internally

3D illustration of fat cells surrounding a transparent cell with a red membrane and growing fat stores in its center. This is a representation of breast tumor using nearby adipocytes as a source of energy to proliferate.

Aggressive Breast Cancers Steal Energy from Nearby Fat Cells

Photograph of an up-close shot of a person’s face to focus on their eye, which is looking upward.

Electric Bursts Reshape the Cornea to Improve Eyesight Without LASIK

3D illustration of a neuron with the cell body highlighted in pink to represent damage from an amyloid β plaque on its axons to the left. An enlarged plaque bundle is shown in the top left corner of the image, with the fibrils highlighted in pink and yellow.

Amyloid Beta Impairs Microglia Function in Alzheimer’s Disease

3D illustration of a transparent human abdomen with the large and small intestine visible. The small intestine appears to have a light emanating from within it and is full of yellow, blue, and pink microbes. This image is highlighting the role of the gut microbiome in chronic pain.

Gut Microbes Cause Fibromyalgia-Like Symptoms in Mice

3D illustration of six paper airplanes flying in swirls, depicted by white dashed lines, on the left, and one red airplane flying straight across to the right on a blue background, used here as an indicator for leadership in academia.

An Academic’s Guide to Leadership in the Lab

Illustration of a person on a purple background wearing a VR headset. Images of plants, microbes, planets, and animals swirl around them, highlighting what they are learning on their headset.

Gamifying Science to Reach New Audiences

3D illustration of pink cancer cells on a blue background.

Respiratory Viruses Wake Up Dormant Cancer Cells

Image of a man in a laboratory looking frustrated with his failed experiment.
February 2026

A Stubborn Gene, a Failed Experiment, and a New Path

When experiments refuse to cooperate, you try again and again. For Rafael Najmanovich, the setbacks ultimately pushed him in a new direction.

View this Issue

Research Resources

Podcasts

Webinars

Videos

Infographics

eBooks

Human-Relevant In Vitro Models Enable Predictive Drug Discovery

Advancing Drug Discovery with Complex Human In Vitro Models

Stemcell Technologies
Redefining Immunology Through Advanced Technologies

Redefining Immunology Through Advanced Technologies

Ensuring Regulatory Compliance in AAV Manufacturing with Analytical Ultracentrifugation

Ensuring Regulatory Compliance in AAV Manufacturing with Analytical Ultracentrifugation

Beckman Coulter logo
Conceptual multicolored vector image of cancer research, depicting various biomedical approaches to cancer therapy

Maximizing Cancer Research Model Systems

bioxcell

Products

Product News

Sino Biological Logo

Sino Biological Pioneers Life Sciences Innovation with High-Quality Bioreagents on Inside Business Today with Bill and Guiliana Rancic

Sino Biological Logo

Sino Biological Expands Research Reagent Portfolio to Support Global Nipah Virus Vaccine and Diagnostic Development

Beckman Coulter

Beckman Coulter Life Sciences Partners with Automata to Accelerate AI-Ready Laboratory Automation

Graphic of amino acid chains folded into proteins

Expi293™ PRO Expression System: Higher Yields Across a Wider Variety of Proteins

Thermo Fisher Logo