Lomax is a  scientist com­mit­ted to unpack­ing the process and peo­ple of our sci­en­tific cul­ture. He believes the sci­ence nar­ra­tive should be an inte­gral part of our broader sci­en­tific cul­ture, both inside and out­side the laboratory.

His research — evo­lu­tion­ary neu­ro­science — lives between the evo­lu­tion­ary, devel­op­men­tal, and neu­ro­bi­o­log­i­cal spheres of biol­ogy. He searches for genes — the exact DNAsequences - that dis­tin­guish our species from the chim­panzees. You know that lobed struc­ture sit­ting between your shoul­ders — the neo­cor­tex — the evo­lu­tion of that struc­ture is the bio­log­i­cal sub­tract of our cul­ture. But how did this uniquely large organ emerge from the pri­mor­dial soup? He’s try­ing to find out. And the answer to that ques­tion is our ulti­mate story as a uniquely self-aware primate.

Sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tion takes on many forms from the schol­arly prose of aca­d­e­mic jour­nals to the witty comedics of the pop­u­lar show Big Bang The­ory. Regard­less, almost every form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion is mov­ing toward the web, which has some extra­or­di­nary affor­dances for com­mu­ni­cat­ing sci­ence; namely, the inte­gra­tion of media forms and data visu­al­iza­tion. The dig­i­tal prog­eny of these legacy for­mats can be won­der­fully inte­grated in a web-based world. Lomax’s pas­sion is to seek out how dif­fer­ent media tra­di­tions, espe­cially the doc­u­men­tary form, can be used to share sci­ence with the world. To this end, he is a stu­dent at Duke’s Cen­ter for Doc­u­men­tary Stud­ies where he is learn­ing the art of storytelling.

He is also a con­tribut­ing mem­ber of the Sci­en­tists with Sto­ries Project.