Hey there, I’m Elise.
I write about science.
If you made it this far, you’ve probably realized that I’m a pretty big nerd.
Luckily for me, I’m a science writer. So being a big nerd is actually a professional qualification.
I love learning things. I hoard facts like some kind of fact-hoarding dragon. I geek out over etymology and rocks and birds and beautiful shapes. I once convinced an editor to let me compare a galaxy to the Eye of Sauron (no, really). My initials spell out the terms in E=mC2. And then there was that time I was a chorus girl in a Star Trek parody musical…
If you need someone who can make science simple, I could be just the nerd you’re looking for.
I’m here to help journalistic publications, institutions, companies, and nonprofits tell stories about science, math, and tech that teach people things, satisfy curiosity, and spark wonder.
As a science journalist, I cover an interdisciplinary mix of physical science, math, and fundamental biology with a focus squarely on Austria and its geographic neighborhood. My favorite stories touch on themes of emergence, form, and scale — and I probably write more about planets than anything else. My writing appears in magazines like Quanta, National Geographic, Science News, and more.
I also work with institutions, nonprofits, and companies with educational missions to help them simplify and share complex ideas in science, math, and tech. I edit scripts for TED-Ed, write for the magazines and websites of universities like Caltech, and support projects like Academianet. I especially love helping organizations in German-speaking countries reach the world through English content.
I’m science-savvy: I studied geoscience and biology at Caltech and MIT.
Like many science writers, I was a researcher before I realized that writing about science is a lot more fun than doing it myself. In 2019, I earned my M.S. in Earth Science at MIT, where I studied how bacteria snot transforms into rock. Before that, I earned my B.S. in Geobiology at Caltech and spent a Fulbright at the University of Southern Denmark in 2020. I started writing for magazines as a grad student at MIT. After graduating, I wrote for Voice of America for a summer thanks to a AAAS Mass Media Fellowship.
Somewhere in all that, I taught myself German. So after wrapping up at Voice of America, I hopped on a plane, moved to Austria, and I’ve been freelancing from my new home in Graz ever since.
And I love my home in Graz, Austria.
I’ve lived in Graz since 2022 and love working in my adoptive home and its geographic neighborhood. Whenever I can, I feature Austrian and central European research in English-language magazines that reach wide audiences around the world. And I love nothing more than working with local clients. I support German-speaking institutions, nonprofits, and companies who want to reach international audiences through English content — from press releases to website copy, I can help!
My personal, nerdy mission in life is to learn the majority languages of all of Austria’s neighbors, or at least as many of them as I can squeeze into a lifetime. So when I’m not hunting down researcher emails or re-re-re-writing a lede, you’ll probably find me brushing up my German or nose-deep in an Italian textbook.