Selected Awards
2008-2010—National and State History Day, Winning Coach for student Web sites. Coached 4 middle school projects to state and national History Day medals, including an 11th place medal at National History Day in College Park, Maryland.
2008—American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1st Place Award for essay on “Teaching Phylogeny With the Great Halloween Faunal Assemblage”, focusing on engaging ways to teach science to young learners.
2006—American Association for the Advancement of Science Winner of national science curriculum-writing award meeting Project 2061 standards. Winning lesson for 3rd and 4th graders: “Buboes and Blotches: From Bubonic Plague to Bird Flu.”
2004—American Association for the Advancement of Science Winner of national science curriculum-writing award meeting Project 2061 standards. Winning lesson for 1st and 2nd graders: “The Placoderm Club”.
2000—University of Minnesota President’s Citation of Merit for Cancer Center Web page.
1998—Minnesota Page One Award for newspaper spot-news team coverage of 1997 Red River Valley floods and natural history piece on Glacial Lake Agassiz.
1997—Merit Citation, Minnesota Book Awards, for book of nature essays, North Country Almanac (Andrews and McMeel, 1996).
1993—Archibald Bush Foundation Leadership Fellow. Awarded 15-month grant to complete zoology master’s degree and begin Ph.D.
1990—Pulitzer Prize nominee for coverage of daily life in former Soviet Union during home stay, February to March 1989, for Saint Paul Pioneer Press.
North Country Almanac: A Seasonal Guide to the Great Outdoors
© 1996 Andrews McMeel Publishing, Kansas City
This award-winning collection of Anne Brataas’ natural history newspaper columns was honored with the 1996 Minnesota Book Awards Merit Citation. It offers some 70 short essays on Minnesota’s wild heritage, arranged by seasons and informed by Anne’s skills as a historian of science and her graduate degrees in zoology and environmental science.
Minnesota Foundation Quarterly, newsletter
© 2000 The Minnesota Foundation
To make an enduring impact, corporate and nonprofit organizations need strong and strategic communication vehicles. The Story Laboratory excels in conceptualizing, designing, writing and editing targeted newsletters, brochures and Web pages that powerfully deliver core messages to target audiences.
University of Minnesota Masonic Cancer Center, medical center website
© 2006-2008 Regents of the University of Minnesota
Whether interviewing surgeons, researchers or families and patients, The Story Laboratory writers are adept at managing varying levels of complexity and synthesizing it into smooth, effective narrative that readers find compelling and helpful. We show the human side, the scientific essence, and the institutional prowess.
Partners in Discovery, research magazine
© 2003 Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research
Scientists need to translate laboratory discoveries into cures and preventions, and into understanding that generates support for public science funding. Translational science writing is a Story Laboratory specialty. To do it right and well requires advanced degrees, mastery of narrative and a passion for clarity—all defining traits of a Story Lab project.
Mayo Clinic Clinical Update, physicians’ newsletter
© 2007 Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research
We help busy physicians communicate their best-practices knowledge quickly and easily by consistently following the literature and conducting focused, efficient, data-dense interviews. We then draft stories for physicians in a tone appropriate for professional peer-to-peer medical publications. We write and illustrate; they edit. Done.
Mayo Medical School, website and print brochure
© 2007 Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research
Telling students’ stories and highlighting visionary curriculum requires knowledge of medical education, and a deft command of multiple writing styles. The Story Laboratory provides both. The result: Vital institutional elements come alive in multiple media, from the energetic optimism of students, to the depth of faculty teaching commitment.
Dark Times Tribune, 4th grade history magazine
© 2006 Anne Brataas
Fourth graders at the public Capitol Hill Magnet School in St. Paul, Minn., moved into the Middle Ages for several weeks with the help of The Story Laboratory’s classroom writing mentors. They named their magazine, researched topics, wrote stories and drew illustrations, helped design pages. Their reaction to the printed results: Huzzah, dude!
The Many Me’s of Mory McMammal, children’s science storybook
© 2008 Anne Brataas
Mory McMammal feels deep kinship with all animals, vertebrates and invertebrates alike. He wonders what it is that makes him his essential self. Richly illustrated with watercolors, this book was written by The Story Laboratory’s founder, Anne Brataas, as curriculum for a course in evolution for children in grades 1 through 4.
Minnesota Institute for Talented Youth, curricula creation
© 2002-2008 Anne Brataas
We design and teach engaging, active, inquiry-based science curricula that support state and national educational standards. Our expertise includes many subfields in geology, zoology, environmental science, history of medicine, science and technology, medicine and health—from the biology of addiction to limnology (the study of lakes).
Scholarly Writing and Institutional Histories
© 2006-2008 Anne Brataas
Bringing rich archival texts and images to modern readers adds perspective, deepens insight and commands attention. Historian of medicine, science and technology Anne Brataas revives topics that speak volumes to us today. This service adds distinction to clients’ journal pieces, editorials, policy papers and institutional legacies.
Visualizing a Public Health Crisis: Vulnerable Plaque and Heart Disease
© 2008-2011 The Society for Cardiac Angiography and Interventions
Story Lab drew this graphic to help communicate the changing understanding of the No. 1 cause of death, disease and disability in first world countries, heart disease. This is true for both men and women. The disease is progressive. It begins as early as the 10th year of life when the biochemistry of certain fats and hormones circulating in the blood changes and can begin to invade the lining of blood vessels. A particularly dangerous stage in the heart disease process occurs after the vessel lining has been invaded, and a fat deposit called “vulnerable plaque” develops. It is vulnerable to eruption. If it erupts, it releases more chemicals into the blood that can further damage vessels and even lead to a heart attack. Understanding the formation of vulnerable plaque is the first step to preventing or reversing it to protect people from the devastating effects of heart disease.
Visualizing Biomedical Research
© 2008-2011 Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research
This informational graphic created by The Story Laboratory, LLC, helps outline 4 means to control a virus used to fight cancer so it targets only cancer cells—and that way can help kill cancer by delivering therapeutic genes it is armed with. Oncolytic cancer viruses have a natural ability to fight some kinds of tumors, and are an emerging new anti-cancer strategy when they are reprogrammed to enhance their natural anti-tumor abilities. For most of history, the main therapies for cancer have been surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. Consider that no widely available new treatment has been added to this “trinity” since World War II, despite the demonstrable patient need that exists for improved and gentler treatments to increase their ability to tolerate it. The fact that there is still so much morbidity and mortality from cancers is testament that medicine needs to devise new strategies to counter cancer biology.
Work Samples
For more work samples, contact Anne Brataas. To view samples, mouseover image for details; click on image to enlarge.
- Nature writing
- Corporate communications
- Patient-centered medical stories for print and Web
- Biomedical research translations for general readership
- Physicians’ newsletters and websites
- Medical school websites
- Children’s history and science publications
- Science picture books
- Science curriculum
- Scholarly writing in history of science
