Biologist biography playbook
Subfield, organism, and the questions you ask.
What the reader is hiring this bio to do
Biologists writing bios should make the system (organism, ecosystem, molecular pathway) immediately clear, then the question, then the methods. Readers — collaborators, funders, the press — calibrate by system first.
Credibility signals to include
- Study organism or system.
- Specific research questions, expressed as questions.
- Field or lab setting.
- Selected publications.
- Conservation, education, or policy roles.
Avoid in this industry
- Generic 'studying the natural world' language.
- Inflating descriptive work as discovery.
- Omitting the study organism.
Structure
Preferred structure for the bio
A reliable order that performs in this field. Adjust to the venue.
- 1Name, title, institution, subfield, system.
- 2Three sentences on the research questions and methods.
- 3Selected publications.
- 4Field stations, fellowships, or expedition affiliations.
- 5Education and personal sentence.
Tone
How this industry's bios should sound
Restrained, specific, and oriented around questions rather than answers.
Lengths
Recommended lengths by venue
Openings
Opening formulas that work in this field
Open with the study system and the central question.
Dr. Elena Marquez is a community ecologist at Stanford, studying how Pacific kelp forests recover after sea-otter recolonization.
Worked examples
One hundred words. Fifty words.
Dr. Elena Marquez is a community ecologist at Stanford, studying how Pacific kelp forests recover after sea-otter recolonization. Her work combines long-term ROV surveys at Año Nuevo with controlled mesocosm experiments at Hopkins Marine Station to ask whether trophic cascades restore canopy cover at decadal timescales. She is the lead author of three papers in Ecology and a co-author on the 2024 Science paper on otter-cascade thresholds in the California Current System. Dr. Marquez received her PhD from UC Santa Cruz in 2017 and currently advises the California Ocean Protection Council on kelp recovery prioritization. She lives in Pacific Grove.
Dr. Elena Marquez, community ecologist, Stanford. Studies Pacific kelp recovery after sea-otter recolonization (Año Nuevo ROV surveys; Hopkins mesocosms). Three Ecology papers; Science 2024 co-author. PhD UCSC 2017. Advises California Ocean Protection Council on kelp recovery prioritization.
Vocabulary
Words to reach for — and words to handle with care
Cross-references
Frameworks and voices this playbook pairs with
Ready to draft yours?
Open the matching generator with this playbook open in another tab.
Open the generator