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The deeper your idea cuts into the heart of a field, the more your peers are likely to challenge you, and only time will reveal whether your work is transformative, incremental, or wrong.

Is it a good idea to propose a safe research project to NIH or NSF, then use the money for riskier work?

What are the best strategies for funding high-risk, high-reward research?

To do breakthrough science, you need passion, a supportive institution and mentor, and a suitable problem.

What do paradigm-shifting scientists have in common? The first in a series.

Between them, Terrill Tops and Dorkina Myrick have two careers, three doctoral degrees, and one life together.

Gina Wingood, a black Catholic woman raised in a white suburb, found love and her calling in San Francisco's ghettos talking condoms, sex, and ethnic pride.

"Betty got it right away. You've got to do the work. And I really think that's Betty. She's willing to make the sacrifices necessary to reach her goals." --Eric Grotzinger

Incoming African-American students express interest in the sciences, but their rate of attrition is high.

"For her, that's the ultimate goal, not just for the status of a cover image on a sexy, high-profile journal but rather that this is a beautiful image that people are going to see." --Rebecca Heald

"I explained what I wanted to do. I warned that it would be different from what they were used to. Then I asked if they could help me. And they all agreed." --Rita Thornton

"Suzanne is one of the hardest working scientists I know." --Patrick Phillips

"I had no idea that there were other African-American woman astronomers until I hooked up with the National Society of Black Physicists during my master's degree." --Jarita Holbrook

"This idea of research was foreign to me. I'm sure that had it not been for that opportunity, I would not be a scientist today." --Wilfredo Colón

"I produce 10 data points that completely undermine what everybody thinks they know about the archaeological record here. It was really important and really interesting, and almost nobody believed me." -Joan Brenner Coltrain

“My interest has always been in language structure, the grammar of language,” Axelrod says. “So many different ways to talk about the world, it just makes you think how brilliant we are as human beings.”

"I think that looking at the observable effects of diversity on a group’s performance is a really fruitful way to get a sense of what diversity really means." --Samuel R. Sommers

Jennifer Zimbroff (pictured above) wanted to understand why qualified high school students, especially minority students coming from disadvantaged backgrounds, fail to take advantage of the college opportunities that are available to them.

The first step to realizing this vision, says Ridgway, is for students to take a basic geology class and find out what geologists actually do.

“Our goal is to begin to influence the new crop of African academics that can then engage with colleagues here to develop long-lived collaborative relationships.”—Michael Adewumi