Matthew Maenner headshot

Matthew Maenner

Surveillance team lead
National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities

Matthew Maenner is surveillance team lead for the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

From this contributor

Explore more from The Transmitter

Illustration of scientists climbing over a barrier to reach publications.

Scientific talent is global. Access to the world’s scientific stage is not.

Neuroscience in Chile, and across Latin America, does not lack talent or ideas, but the systems that make science visible—prestigious journals, conferences and networks—increasingly price its researchers out.

By Vicente Medel
3 August 2026 | 8 min read
Ground squirrel.

How thirteen-lined ground squirrels illuminate retinal development

In most mammalian retinas, rods outnumber cones. But that ratio is flipped in ground squirrels, a quirk that helps Seth Blackshaw explore how retinal cells develop their identities.

By Sarah Thau
31 July 2026 | 5 min read