Ulli Hain

Ulli Hain

Freelance Science Writer & Editor


I've been a senior science writer at Palladian Partners for about 5 years. Through this work I write features, write and edit plain language health information, and write technical pieces such as literature reviews for the NIH and other government agencies. I also enjoy writing blog articles and creative nonfiction in my spare time.

I received a PhD in molecular biology from Johns Hopkins in 2014. Since then, I pivoted to science writing for the general public, patients, and policymakers/advocates. I love writing about a range of science topics and issues related to science, including ethics and health disparities.

NIMHD •

Barbershops Bring Health Services to African American Men

As a young kid training to be an amateur boxer, Michael Brown wanted to look good. His father grew tired of Michael asking for money for haircuts, eventually buying him a pair of scissors and clippers. The first time did not go so well, but he just kept going and going until he got better. By the time Mr. Brown finished high school, he had a passion for cutting hair. Now he is a barber at a shop on a busy road in Hyattsville, Maryland, with a roster of loyal customers. “You’re not just a barber. You’re a fashion consultant, you’re a marriage counselor, and any number of things,” says Mr. Brown.
NIMHD •

Sharing Messages of Health in the Crow Nation to Fight Chronic Disease

When her young daughter died of the rare cancer neuroblastoma, Alma McCormick, M.A., wanted to channel her pain and experience toward helping others. She started working with a small project, encouraging other women in the Apsáalooke (Crow) Nation to get screened for cancer. Through this work, she met Suzanne Held, Ph.D., a researcher from Montana State University. That meeting in 1996 sparked a longstanding comm
NIMHD •

Teaming Up to Improve Access to Kidney Transplants for Dialysis Patients

Patients with kidney failure have two options to stay alive: a kidney transplant or lifelong dialysis. With dialysis, people spend hours hooked up to a machine that cleans their blood, which needs to be done several times a week. Most people do much better and live longer if they get a transplant—and it’s more cost-effective. But a patient’s likelihood of getting a transplant depends on where they live and other factors.
NIMHD •

Herbal Probiotics | Feature Story

Juzen-taiho-to (JTT) is a mixture of medicinal plants used in Japan to help cancer patients rebuild their immune system after chemo and radiation therapy. Studies have shown that it improves the number and functioning of white blood cells, which help fight off infections, such as bacterial infections. But while JTT has been used for centuries, its immune-boosting ingredient has eluded scientists. NIMHD-supported researchers from Hunter College of the City University of New York recently discove
NIH COVID-19 Research •

COVID-19 Vaccine Development: Behind the Scenes

What you need to know Developing a vaccine and bringing it to market often takes many years. But because of work that NIH was already doing when the COVID-19 pandemic began, researchers were able to come up with vaccines for this new virus much faster. What did this research do? There are many different coronaviruses. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is just one; others can cause illnesses like the common cold. Years before the COVID-19 pandemic began, experts at the NIH Vaccine R
ASBMB Today •

Special section: Getting over the Ph.D. hump

I’d spent more than two and a half years and countless reagents tying to crystallize a protein in order to determine its three-dimensional structure. I needed the structure so I could design anti-malarial drugs that would stem the deadly scourge in Africa and, you know, graduate. X-ray crystallography appeared to be a mix of science, magic, luck and persistence — or maybe masochism. One crystallization guidebook even suggested a beard might be useful, since facial hair can seed crystallization.
ASBMB Today •

Journal News: JBC: Compartmentalizing the complex system of acyl-CoA metabolism

A recent minireview in the Journal of Biological Chemistry dives into the complexity of the metabolism of fatty acids, important biomolecules used for energy storage and production, formation of membrane phospholipids, and signaling. Fatty acids derived from a fatty meal, synthesized de novo within the cell or hydrolyzed from triacylglycerol, or TAG, must be linked to Coenzyme A, or CoA, to form acyl-CoAs before the cell can use them. From here, an acyl-CoA molecule faces many possible fates in
The Next Regeneration •

“She’s strong for a girl”: The Negative Impact of Stereotypes About Women

This is a guest blog post by Ulli Hain (Twitter: @ulli_hain, Email: hain.ulli[at]gmail.com). Ulli is a postdoctoral researcher in the field of autophagy and also a science writer/blogger. Her blog Bench and Beyond reports on interesting scientific studies and explores life as a scientist including issues of gender and science. Boy and Girl at School - Stereotypes about favorites subjects. Via Shutterstock. While previous studies have supported the idea that negative stereotypes hinder women’s
UIC News Center •

A liking for lipids, an area of study scorned by other scientists | UIC News Center

The Researcher of the Year Award recognizes 10 UIC scientists who are advancing knowledge in their fields. The Distinguished Researcher Award honors five researchers with a record of outstanding achievement. The Rising Star Award honors early-career researchers who show promise as future leaders. Lipids are often considered boring, even by other scientists. Not Wonhwa Cho, distinguished professor of chemistry. Lipids form the cell membrane that acts as a barrier between the cell and the surrou
UIC Science Blog •

The matrix rules: researchers identify a molecular pathway in stem cells that regulates the formation of blood vessel cells

Just as we take cues from our environment, so too, do our cells, which have their own unique environment called the extracellular matrix. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago discovered a new matrix protein that directs stem cells to differentiate into endothelial cells. Endothelial cells form our blood vessels and line the heart. Their results, published online in the journal Stem Cells, have implications in tissue repair and tissue engineering.