Dr Gabrielle Samuel was formerly Genetics Editor at the Progress Educational Trust (PET) and at its free weekly email news digest, commentary service and website BioNews. She remains a Volunteer Writer at BioNews, and is also a Visiting Research Fellow at King's College London's Centre for Biomedicine and Society. She previously studied Biochemistry at the University of Birmingham, and was awarded an International Postgraduate Research Scholarship to complete a PhD in Molecular Genetics at the University of Adelaide. She then went on to work at the University of Sydney's Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine, initially under the auspices of a scholarship from the Australian Bone Marrow Donor Registry, then in research and postdoctoral posts awarded by the Australian Government's National Health and Medical Research Council.