Martha Silverspring works at Varian Medical Systems in Palo Alto, and writes about how to use radiation therapy equipment.

Susan Becker is working by contract at SLAC (the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center), where she writes procedures for testing the hardware and electronics of GLAST, the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2007.

Wren Withers has worked as a writer at a medical device company, at a chemical company that manufactured DNA and peptides for biotech use, and for 7 years at Chiron Corp. (She currently manages a team of 9 writers at Siebel Systems.)

Mark Evans is the documentation manager for Velocity11. He also writes and does all of the print and online help development. Velocity11, located in Menlo Park, designs and manufactures robotics equipment used for automated sample preparation and drug screening by big pharmaceuticals companies.

Sharon Tellyer works at Scios, Inc., a pharmaceutical company in Fremont, that develops treatments for cardiovascular disease, inflammatory disease, and cancer. She writes documents used in clinical trials and FDA submissions and is standardizing writing processes and templates.

Linda Urban (Moderator) is a technical communications consultant at Linda Urban Communications, LLC. She also teaches in the Technical Communication programs at UC Berkeley Extension and UC Santa Cruz Extension, where students frequently ask her about breaking into medical and scientific writing. Her company website is www.urbancreations.com.