Discover contributing editor David Ewing Duncan adapted the first chapter of his upcoming book, The Geneticist Who Played Hoops With My DNA (William Morrow, 2005), for “Doug Melton: Crossing Boundaries,” page 52. Melton, a Harvard University biologist who hopes to find a cure for juvenile diabetes, “embodies in a way everything that I’m writing about,” says Duncan. “The book is about what motivates these guys. They’re extraordinarily ambitious. These are people that could be the generals of great armies or leaders of countries.”

When KATHERINE WOLKOFF photographed “Doug Melton: Crossing Boundaries,” she and the Harvard biologist discovered they have a shared passion. “I’ve taught photography, and it’s invigorating the first time a student sees an image appear in the darkroom,” she says. “Melton talked about the feeling when you see a cell developing and how it is similarly fascinating and beautiful.” Wolkoff’s work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, New York, and W. She has an exhibition opening in September in New York City.

ERIC SCIGLIANO reports on using DNA tests to curb the illegal trade of ivory in “Tusk Tales,” page 46. “You can send these hungry park rangers to battle hungry poachers in the field forever,” he says. “But you have to break the network. DNA analysis gives them a really useful tool.” Scigliano’s latest book, Michelangelo’s Mountain: The Quest for Perfection in the Marble Quarries of Carrara  (Free Press, 2005), comes out this fall.

Photographing “MIT Nerds,” page 36, reminded GAIL ALBERT HALABAN of her days as an art history and psychology double major at Brown University. At MIT, she says, “I embraced my inner nerd.” She admired the MIT students’ lack of self-consciousness. “They had no shame about their geekiness,” she says. “They could be comfortable with it.” Halaban’s photographs have appeared in Fortune, LIFE, and W. She is working on a new book that charts the lives of women in New York, Mexico City, and Los Angeles.