Alumni Profiles Series: Brian Mossop

Brian Mossop received his B.S. in electrical engineering with a minor in mathematics from Lafayette College and his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Duke working on electrophysiology and computational modeling of biological systems. He completed his postdoc training at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Genentech in neuroscience. Brian went on to become a science and technology journalist and freelanced for Scientific American and The New Yorker. He became a staff editor and was in charge of digital analytics at Wired where he organized a team to generate a three-fold increase in traffic coming from social media to the magazine website. From there, Brian was a senior leader at marketing and public relations (PR) agencies for nearly a decade, working with Fortune 500 companies to make strategic, data-driven decisions. Inspired by his experience in digital analytics, Brian formed Bregma Intelligence to bring his expertise in artificial intelligence and analytics to the public relations, marketing, and business strategy industries. 

What has your career path looked like in your first years after graduation?

During my Ph.D., I did computational modeling around electrophoresis and electroporation for cancer treatment. I developed a strong grounding in electrophysiology and wanted to continue this work as a postdoc. After graduating, I ended up at UCSF in a systems neuroscience lab where I did more experimental work. I learned very quickly that the experimental side of research was not a great career match for me. I thought I would have more success in industry, so I went to Genentech and was hired as a senior research associate. I realized that these roles were not fulfilling for me. After reflecting with my wife on what I liked most about grad school, I realized I enjoyed writing my thesis the most, so I decided to enter the field of scientific journalism. 

Tell me how you got into scientific journalism.

I really liked writing, but I had never written an article for the general public before in my life up to that point. I still believe that for the future of science, the public has to become more excited and educated about it, and we need journalists to translate the science. I decided to email Thomas Goetz, then the executive editor at Wired magazine, whom I’d met earlier in San Francisco. We ended up meeting up for coffee. There, he offered to help me get my foot in. I was still working full-time, so I would get up early, around five o’clock in the morning, and practice writing blog posts to send over to him for editing. I did this for about a year and had a lot of fun doing it. He truly taught me how to write for the general public.

I decided to pitch a story to Scientific American for their ‘Mind Matters’ column made specifically for people with advanced degrees who wanted to write about scientific studies they found interesting. I already had a story in mind related to my brother-in-law and my newborn nephew. The first time I saw him with his son, his personality and attentiveness had completely changed, and I was fascinated by this. The neuroscientist in me wondered what was going on in my brother-in-law’s brain. I found an interesting animal study where male rodents developed new brain cells after they have children, which are specifically tuned to the smells of their babies, as well as a human study where parents’ brains respond differently to a crying baby if the baby is biologically related. It clicked to me; maybe that’s what is going on with my brother-in-law!

Writing and trying to pitch this story, though, was an intimidating process. My first editor there was Gareth Cook, who won the Pulitzer Prize. I could not get him excited about it at first, but through a lot of revisions and patience from Gareth, the story eventually published online, and Scientific American called me saying it was getting a lot of traction online. They wanted to run this as a cover story of the Scientific MIND magazine, and that really gave me the confidence to make a go at scientific journalism.

From there, I started freelancing for Scientific American and Wired. It was very rewarding. I wouldn’t go after mainstream studies; I would try to find something a little bit more niche. After running these stories, the researchers I interviewed would be so happy that I was getting the word out there about their work. Not long afterwards, Wired had an editor position open up, and I went for it. This was a dream job for me. The nerdy little kid in me looked up to that magazine.

I got there right when social media started to come into its own, and the editorial staff was spending a ton of time on Twitter. I wondered how effective these efforts were in truly bringing in traffic to the magazine, so I learned digital analytics. After putting the first traffic system in place at Wired, I sat down with the editor-in-chief and was asked to lead a team and double the amount of traffic that is coming into the magazine website within twelve months. We ended up tripling the amount of traffic. This was a huge thing for us back then; we created a data-driven newsroom. 

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Tell me more about your current job.

After leaving Wired, I continued freelancing. I started getting calls from people for help in digital analytics, and little by little, I started focusing on analytics rather than writing. I soon got burned out from the freelancing business; I was too early in my career and did not have the network I needed to be successful. However, I found out that PR and marketing agencies were hiring for this type of work and became the head of analytics at Text100 [now Archetype] and later went to FleishmanHillard, one of the largest global PR firms. 

I realized there was something unique here. After spending the past decade of my career in agencies, I decided to leave the ancillary components in agencies and build my own consulting company. I started Bregma Intelligence in late 2023 where we help businesses, including Fortune 500 companies, with digital intelligence, business strategies, and AI integration. 

What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?

I wouldn’t be able to do what I am doing right now if I did not have both the engineering experience and the journalism experience. At the end of the day, I tell stories with data, and data is only as good as the story you can tell with it.

I was also very fortunate that my advisor Dr. Fan Yuan, and co-advisor Dr. Roger Barr, were very supportive towards my nontraditional path and encouraged me to follow my heart. I would advise you to follow your passions, wherever they lead you. There is so much of the world that gets opened by having a Ph.D. that a lot of people don’t think of. Typically, the options that are presented to you after graduation are either academia or industry, but there are so many more opportunities out there.

What is one of your favorite memories of Duke?

One thing that stuck out to me while at Duke was the camaraderie within my lab. I am still in touch with some of the people from my lab and the department I met twenty years ago. I was surrounded by great people.

However, the number one thing that happened to me at Duke was that I met my wife! She was also in the biomedical engineering department.  We are both scientists and engineers at heart, and we usually have a lot of nerdy conversations at dinner. Having a Ph.D. opens a world of opportunity to you. My advice would be to take that training, embrace the ways a Ph.D. allows you to think critically and differently about things, and follow your passions.

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AUTHOR

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Sophia Colmenares

Ph.D. student, Biomedical Engineering

Sophia Colmenares is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Duke. She is a member of the Reker Lab, which focuses on active machine learning and molecular medicine. In her free time, Sophia likes to weightlift and try out new coffee shops.