Michael Mechanic 

Michael Mechanic holds a master’s degree in cellular and developmental biology from Harvard and a master’s in journalism from UC Berkeley. He’s spent the past decade as a senior editor for Mother Jones, where he handles stories for both print and web, and writes occasionally on science and other topics. His latest piece involves an emerging dual-use technology known as gene drive. As a biochemistry major at Cal, he worked on synthesizing natural poisons from those tropical frogs people warn you not to lick because if you do you’ll go into histrionic convulsions and die.