By Nina Adelman Stolar

The newest member in the office of communications, Kelen Tuttle, arrived at SLAC last December. She will manage the SLAC Today website, write for various publications at the Lab and generally assist the communications office. In the next few months, she will help re-launch SLAC Today as a daily on-line newsletter, complete with articles, weekly columns and information for everyone at SLAC.

“It’s a challenge to create a publication that comes out so often yet is still relevant and useful,” she said. “but I’m confident of our success and excited about the possibilities.”

The new format will build from the success of publications like Fermilab Today and Today at Berkeley Lab. By combining lab-wide announcements and events with human interest stories and descriptions of science from around the Lab, Tuttle hopes to increase the sense of community at SLAC.

Tuttle recently earned a masters degree in science journalism from Boston University and holds a bachelors degree in English and physics/astronomy from Carleton College in Minnesota. She once thought she wanted to be an astrophysicist, but after sitting in front of a computer monitor for three months straight, analyzing data from a telescope 800 miles away, she decided that research wasn’t for her. She now enjoys delving into research projects just long enough to learn the details and intricacies of the science, and to explain it to others in SLAC publications.

“It has been fabulous to sit down to lunch with Nobel Prize winners,” Tuttle said. “I have been very impressed by the people who work at SLAC—especially with their friendliness.”