Jeff Berkwits

Background

About Jeff Berkwits

I love both science and science fiction. I was that kid in grammar and high school who participated in science fairs. In eighth grade I tried (and failed) to make a working model of a rocket propelled by ions. A couple of years later I'd moved on to studying MHD, an at-the-time revolutionary process of generating power (drop me a line or watch the movie "The Hunt For Red October"​ to find out more), and thought I was headed for a career in physics. Then I discovered science fiction. Tales penned by authors like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ray Bradbury opened new worlds, and I realized that science could be much more than simply dealing with problems of the here and now. I relished immersing myself in otherworldly realms and ultramodern ideas just as much as I enjoyed exploring real-world science. Time-travel forward a few decades, and I'm working at Thermo Fisher Scientific. Growing up, concepts like cloning, personalized medicine, and synthetic foods were genuinely speculative fiction—notions as far off and far out as hovercars and faster-than-light spaceflight. Except that, unlike those futuristic travel conceits, these biotech advances are happening now. And I get to play a part in their development. I never became a scientist—I ended up a marketer, writer, and editor. Yet in those roles I know I'm helping in some minuscule manner to turn science fiction into real-life science. Whether writing an email offering a price break on secondary antibodies or introducing the latest PCR innovation, I hope that, through my efforts, a researcher is enticed to purchase a product or attempt a procedure that yields valuable data for solving cancer, vanquishing a neurodegenerative disease, overcoming hunger, or some other yet-to-be-imagined innovation. I'm happy to say I've come full circle. I truly am living and working in—as well as helping to bring to fruition—a sci-fi future. For a science buff and a science fiction fan, it's the best of both worlds.