Baby on Board

Many scientific conferences offer child care options that allow researchers to bring their families along for the trip.

Written byKerry Grens

| 8 min read

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Back in February, biomechanics researcher Eva-Maria Collins brought her husband, three-year-old son, and infant daughter to the Biophysical Society’s annual meeting in New Orleans. Collins, whose lab is based at the University of California, San Diego, was being honored for the 2016 paper of the year in Biophysical Journal—a study describing how Hydra open their mouths (apparently, it involves ripping through epithelial tissue).

The night before, no one in the Collins family had slept much. “The kids had a very rough night,” she recalls. Given the subsequent crankiness, Collins and her husband decided to divide and conquer; he would take their son and she would handle the baby. Later that day, Collins took the stage, daughter strapped to her torso in a baby carrier, and ...

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Meet the Author

Kerry Grens
Kerry served as The Scientist’s news director until 2021. Before joining The Scientist in 2013, she was a stringer for Reuters Health, the senior health and science reporter at WHYY in Philadelphia, and the health and science reporter at New Hampshire Public Radio. Kerry got her start in journalism as a AAAS Mass Media fellow at KUNC in Colorado. She has a master’s in biological sciences from Stanford University and a biology degree from Loyola University Chicago.
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