Not Nerds
Scoping out Wisconsin's hip scientists

By Bill Andrews

We all know the common traits of your garden-variety, stereotypical scientist: bushy beard, wild hair, glasses, white lab coat and a general social ineptitude (poor hygiene optional).

But in fact, just as science itself includes an overwhelming variety of disciplines, so do its practitioners represent an astonishing array of human personality. Today’s modern, jet-setting scientist must be prepared to live in the limelight, in addition to simply knowing how to oxidize it.

Let us meet, then, some real-life scientists across the state of Wisconsin. While the nature of their work varies from geology to astronomy, their enthusiasm and passion is as constant as the laws and theories they study. Most don’t even wear lab coats! Let’s see what else we can learn about this mysterious species.

John Berges: Interdisciplinary guy, fun at parties

The second thing I notice about John A. Berges’ reasonably tidy office (after the surprisingly huge window on the back wall), is a row of colorful, stuffed … things dangling from the ceiling.

“Those,” he tells me, smiling and proud as if they were his own children hanging up there, “are microbes magnified a million times. That one’s the common cold, that one’s the flu, that one’s, well, I’m not sure which it is, but aren’t they great?” His enthusiasm for science is, ahem, infectious.

Berges, an ecophysiology and biochemistry assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, specializes in plankton, particularly from nearby Lake Michigan. But, he warns me before I get the wrong idea about plankton, he emphasizes his work is more than just water bugs. “We’re really quite interdisciplinary … it’s a lot of variety and a lot of fun.”

For instance, in studying two new species of plankton introduced into the lake (i.e., not native to the area) having to know biology makes sense. But, to understand where to find these species, he needs to understand water current flow, and thus physics. To be able to deduce what these new species eat, he needs to know enough chemistry to devise the chemical tags that, when exposed to the animals’ stomach lining, reveal its most likely diet.

“That’s ultimately the project that’s keeping us most busy right now,” he says, still smiling. It’s clear from his enthusiasm he doesn’t really mind being busy.

Always interested in science, he actually entered his current field serendipitously, when a then-girlfriend chose it. Even though she soon dropped the major, Berges was hooked, fascinated by the surprising gaps in scientific knowledge.

Berges quickly realized his ability to study the areas between fields left him in a unique position to answer these unanswered questions. “That interaction [between disciplines] was really exciting,” he says. Even though you don’t know as much as a specialist in either field, he emphasizes, you can figure out things neither could figure out alone.

What he can’t figure out, though, is just why science, and scientists, have such a bad rap. Far from the “eggheaded geeks” they’re commonly portrayed as, “some of the coolest people I know, and some of the most interesting and engaging people, who are a hell of a lot of fun at parties, are scientists. … You go to a party with a bunch of lawyers or stock brokers, that’s a deadly dull party.”

He does his part to change the stereotype, though, teaching biology classes at all levels, from graduate level to non-major. “I’d like to think I convert some students.”

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