News from Those Nerdy Girls

We are an all-female team of PhD researchers and clinicians whose mission is to educate and empower individuals to successfully navigate science and health information.

Oxford Professor of Demography and Population Health. Data nerd. I break down the science of health and longevity (and occasionally demography) with the rigor of a researcher, but without the impenetrable prose.

Lauren Hale, PhD (Stony Brook University) studies the social patterning of sleep health. Dr. Hale is the Immediate Past Chair of the National Sleep Foundation and founding Editor-in-Chief of Sleep Health.

I'm a public health and behavioral science expert with experience writing about misinformation and science denial.

Rebecca Raskin-Wish is a former nonfiction book editor. She currently attends medical school at Drexel Univeristy College of Medicine and researches the impact of medical misinformation.

Sandy Laping is a clinician, science communicator and contributor to Those Nerdy Girls. She has a Masters in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Views are my own.

Emergency Medicine physician and creator of You Can Know Things and The Public Health Roundup.

Messy, honest, and unmistakably Gen X—I share stories and real conversations at Daphne Discloses. As a pharmacist writer, I contribute to News from Those Nerdy Girls and Meet Me at the MedCart.

Sleep Medicine

Elisabeth Marnik, PhD, is a science communicator and immunologist. Drawing on personal experience growing up anti-science, she launched Science Whiz Liz in 2020 and now serves as Executive Director of The Evidence Collective.

MacKenzie (Kenzie) is a health educator currently studying at the University of Oxford. She is passionate about positive youth development and culturally sustaining health communication and promotion.

MK is a nurse practitioner and executive director of Those Nerdy Girls. Interests are reproductive health, care of LGBTQ+ families & health equity for people marginalized due to intersecting identities.

Ilana Gerjuoy, MPH, works on health policy and communications for a community coalition in Western Massachusetts.

Kelly Valentin’s research focuses on PTSD, intimate partner violence, and substance use. She works with the conviction that science can reveal what survival already knows: trauma is complex, recovery is nonlinear, and change is possible.