I’m Heather McSharry, and before I became a science writer, I was a virologist.

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I earned my PhD in Experimental Pathology from the University of Texas Medical Branch and worked in high-containment virology, including research with virulent Junín virus in a BSL-4 laboratory. I traded the positive-pressure suit for a keyboard and built a career in scientific and science writing, but I never lost my passion for infectious disease.

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I first started writing publicly about infectious diseases during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. I was struck by the enormous gap between what scientists understood about Ebola and what much of the public was hearing about it. I started a blog as a way to help bridge that gap, translating the science without stripping away the complexity that made it interesting in the first place.​ Eventually, that project became a podcast.

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Today, I approach Infectious Dose with both sides of my background: the scientist who wants to know exactly what the evidence says and the writer who knows that evidence matters more when people can understand it, remember it, and connect it to the world around them.

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My work as a science writer has also included contributing to The Conversation and Global Biodefense, along with years spent communicating complex scientific and medical research for audiences far beyond the laboratory.

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Infectious Dose gives me room to follow the questions that fascinate me most: Why did an outbreak happen there? How did anyone figure out what was causing it? What did physicians believe before they knew about germs? Why did one discovery change medicine while another was forgotten? What happens when the evidence doesn't fit the story everyone expects?

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Those are usually the places where the best stories begin.​ And sometimes it's personal.

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I had been studying, writing, and talking about infectious disease for years before COVID-19. But early in the pandemic I lost my mother to COVID. ​That experience deepened my conviction that accurate information matters. Behind case counts, mortality statistics, epidemiological curves, and arguments about public health are individual people and families whose lives can change completely because of an infection.

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I believe that science communication doesn't need to frighten people into paying attention, and that uncertainty shouldn't be hidden to make an answer sound more convincing. People deserve to know what the evidence shows, what it doesn't show, and what we're still trying to understand.​ That's the standard I try to bring to Infectious Dose.

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Beyond the Lab

My life isn't all pathogens.​ I love books and have always been drawn to stories, which probably explains why Infectious Dose so often wanders into history, mysteries, strange medical cases, and experimental narratives. I tended bar through college and grad school—a skill that has proven unexpectedly useful in podcasting—and actually started college as a music major. I played saxophone in a swing band for years, and was the vocalist in a rock band in California and then a country band in Texas. Apparently neither geography nor musical genre can be trusted to contain me.

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I was also more interested in adrenaline when I was younger. I've jumped out of perfectly good airplanes, gone bungee jumping, and scuba dived. These days, with a son...I'm more...aware...of risk.

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Science and storytelling may look like two different parts of my life, but I've never really experienced them that way. Both start with curiosity. You notice something interesting, start asking questions, follow where they lead, and try to turn what you find into something another person wants to hear.

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Mostly, that's still what I'm doing.