Athena Andreadis is a scientist by day, a writer by night. She arrived in the US from Greece at 18 to pursue biochemistry and astrophysics as a scholarship student at Harvard, then MIT. In her research, Athena examines a fundamental gene regulatory mechanism, alternative splicing. Her model is the human tau gene, whose product is a scaffolding protein in neurons. Disturbances in tau splicing result in dementia and cognitive disabilities.

Combining her interests, Athena wrote To Seek Out New Life: The Biology of Star Trek (1998, Crown), a stealth science book that investigates biology, psychology and sociology through the lens of the popular eponymous series. For a decade she reviewed books for Harvard Review and writes speculative fiction and non-fiction on a wide swath of topics. In 2003 she won a National Education Award for her essay "The Double Helix: Why Science Needs Science Fiction."

Her work has appeared in Crossed Genres ("Planetfall," Issue 13, December 2009), Strange Horizons ("We Must Love One Another or Die: A Critique of Star Wars," October 2005), H+ Magazine ("Miranda Wrongs: Reading Too Much into the Genome," April 2010), The Huffington Post ("Science Fiction Goes McDonald's: Less Taste, More Gristle," December 2009), Science in My Fiction ("If I Can't Dance, I Don't Want to Be Part of Your Revolution!," March 2010). Excerpts of her longer fiction works, art inspired by her fiction and many articles cross-posted in other venues can be found on her website, Starship Reckless (http://www.starshipreckless.com/).

Athena cherishes all the time she gets to spend with her partner, Peter Cassidy. She reads voraciously, collects original art, has traveled extensively and would travel even more if her benchwork allowed it. She doesn't play an instrument, though she can sing on-key in the four languages she knows — all of which she speaks with a slight accent.