From UCSF Magazine, June 12, 2018 I loved working on this story about incredible UCSF scientist Wendell Lim, who is figuring out how to program cells in ways that may help cure many diseases. By Dan Fost Scientists working on the molecular and cellular level know that big things happen in small systems. In 2007, […]
Category: My Writing
Swiftdine Speeds Up Dining Out: Gigster blog, July 13, 2016
Swiftdine Speeds Up Dining Out July 13, 2016 By Dan Fost Like so many other innovations in technology today, Swiftdine has its roots in an everyday problem that someone wanted to solve. The Azeez family of Lima, Ohio, enjoyed eating together in restaurants, but the father, Kemi Azeez, was a busy doctor who couldn’t afford […]
Scientists in Clinical Departments Foster Collaborations: UCSF, December 16, 2014
I wrote three stories for the UCSF School of Medicine home page in December about how clinical departments are increasingly hiring scientists who conduct basic research, and this collaboration is leading to greater discoveries. This story is the mainbar, looking at some particularly fruitful collaborations. One sidebar focuses on the hiring process, and another sidebar […]
Mark Ansel Takes Helm at BMS: UCSF, December 16, 2014
I wrote three stories for the UCSF School of Medicine home page in December about how clinical departments are increasingly hiring scientists who conduct basic research, and this collaboration is leading to greater discoveries. This story is a profile of Mark Ansel, the new director of UCSF’s Biomedical Sciences Program (BMS). The mainbar looks at […]
Basic Scientists & Clinicians Find Shared Interests As Partners: UCSF, December 16, 2014
I wrote three stories for the UCSF School of Medicine home page in December about how clinical departments are increasingly hiring scientists who conduct basic research, and this collaboration is leading to greater discoveries. This story is a sidebar about the hiring process. The mainbar looks at some particularly fruitful collaborations, and another sidebar profiles […]
“San Francisco: The Leading Center of Health, Healing and Hope”: Hospital Council of Northern and Central California
SAN FRANCISCO: THE LEADING CENTER OF HEALTH, HEALING AND HOPE I wrote this report for the Hospital Council of Northern and Central California in the fall of 2014 and it was presented at the Silver Spur Luncheon on Nov. 18, 2014. I include the summary here, as well as links to the full report and […]
Hana El-Samad: ‘A Star in Her Field’: UCSF, March 26, 2013
Hana El-Samad: ‘A Star in Her Field’ To explain her research into the workings of cells, UCSF scientist Hana El-Samad offers an analogy from the world of machines. “Imagine a telephone or Internet network,” she says. “Despite their staggering complexity, packets of information find their destination on these networks and are interpreted correctly.” Cells work […]
The Wizard of O.co: San Francisco magazine, September 2014
The Wizard of O.co A decade after Moneyball, the cult of Billy Beane is alive and well—perhaps nowhere more than in Silicon Valley. By Dan Fost Sept. 26, 2014 Billy Beane is so over Moneyball. “I’m sort of sick of me,” the Oakland A’s general manager tells me over the phone in early August. You […]
UCSF Public Mission
In June 2012, I wrote an extensive report on all the ways that UCSF fulfills its mission of public service. One of the ways UCSF fulfills its public mission is providing access to pioneering care to patients with complex cases. Here, David Rowitch, MD, PhD, professor and chief of neonatology, and Sonia Bonifacio, MD, assistant […]
The IPO Shopping Cart: San Francisco magazine, May 2012
The IPO Shopping Cart Yes, it feels like 1999 all over again. But will the newly minted millionaires from Zynga, LinkedIn, Yelp, and Facebook burn through their cash the way many did in the bubblicious days of the dot-com boom? We talked to financial advisers, luxury sales folks, and people who survived the first bust […]