 
Violent Crime Resource Specialist, FBI Kristen Ralph Beyer, PhD, describes her first six months researching violent crime for the FBI in one word: amazing. Beyer-whose official title is violent crime resource specialist at the FBI's Child Abduction and Serial Murder Investigative Resource Center near Washington, D.C.-works with specially trained agents to conduct a new research project on child abductors who murder and serial murders. The project involves interviewing 150 child abductors and 150 serial
murderers to glean demographic and epidemiological information, such as
a murderer's education, marital history, employment history and sexual
deviancy. Her job is to not only help agents conduct team interviews of
prisoners and corroborate their stories, but to also manage the study's
protocols and data. In her first six months, she's helped to hone
the 700-item questionnaire used in interviews as well as an additional
one for those who can't be interviewed in person for legal reasons.
"The goal is to be able to say, 'Look, we've talked with 300 inmates and 75 percent of them experienced this,' or maybe 'Only 20 percent experienced this.' And then to provide that information to law enforcement officers throughout the United States," Beyer explains. The research, she says, will assist in developing investigative strategies that can cut criminal careers short and ultimately save lives. While she spends most of her time on research, Beyer wears a few other hats at the FBI. She's in charge of continuing education for her center and is a volunteer counselor for the FBI's employee-assistance program. She's also beginning to learn the ropes of providing on-site consultations, where she and her colleagues look for behavioral aspects of a case and provide input based on their observations. In her first six months, she's also attended a half-dozen conferences, traveled to prisons to speak with officials about inmates joining her study and helped set up a live satellite interview with a serial murderer. Beyer, who earned her PhD at the University of Detroit in 1997, came to the FBI after spending three years as a neuropsychologist at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan, where she became frustrated with managed care. "Having to defend my treatment and fight for money for services rendered was disheartening," she explains. "I wanted to expand my options." An internship she'd had at the FBI's behavioral science unit lit the
way for that new career path. Remembering how interesting she had
found the work, Beyer watched for job openings at the bureau and jumped
when one appeared.
"What is this spongy thing inside my skull?" Laura Helmuth, PhD, mused as a child. That longing to understand her own mind propelled Helmuth’s career path. After extensive study and self-reflection, she now inspires wonder and understanding in others as a writer for Science Magazine, based in Washington, D.C. At Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla., Helmuth majored in biological psychology. She recalls performing a study that did not fulfill her predictions and learning "that things don't always turn out as expected." A telling lesson indeed, as Helmuth later opted not to pursue a tenure track after she finished her PhD at Berkeley and instead became a science writer. Midway through graduate school, Helmuth suspected that she would enjoy writing something other than the "stilted language of science." She tested her hypothesis, finding a summer job as a travel writer in Eastern Europe. Trekking from mountain to museum, Helmuth realized that writing "was a lot of fun and a great way to see the world." Her job at Science is her current passport-"a great way to keep up with what's going on in science." Helmuth has worked at Science, dividing her time
between writing for the magazine's news department and editing Science
Now online, since she completed the University of California Santa Cruz
science writing program and an internship at Science News in 1999.
Helmuth also worked as a general assignment reporter for a local newspaper,
the Salinas Californian, covering an environmental beat.
She finds freedom in writing, partly because the time commitment for each project is so brief. Actually, her greatest frustration is "there are just so many more cool things you'd like to write about without having space." Stories that "inform and entertain” is Helmuth’s standard. "You have to make the story fun enough and explain the concepts in an accessible, entertaining way so that even somebody from a different field will keep reading," she explains. She also makes a point of writing about psychology as much as possible, noting that behavioral and social sciences are often "drowned out by the sound of all the genetics that's happening." She finds many story ideas at APA’s Annual Convention, which she regularly covers for Science. To PhD candidates searching for leads to their
own stories, Helmuth says, "it is important to know there are so many options
out there. You're in grad school. You're smart enough and people
will be impressed enough that they'll hire you."
Paul EIRif's love of computers dates back to 1978, when at age 10 he got his first computer, an Apple 2 Plus that didn't even have a disk drive-it used a cassette player to store and run programs. Although he always enjoyed working with computers,
EIRif never considered making a career of his software hobby. That
changed while he was working toward his master's degree in experimental
psychology at the University of Dayton, where he was planning to work on
display technology for airplane cockpits. His roommate "came back
really jazzed" from an internship at Microsoft Corp., he says, and convinced
EiRif to try out the company himself.
"The Microsoft internship program is great," he
says. "Interns get a lot of opportunities to work on software as
if they were full time employees."
"In a nutshell," EIRif explains, "I'm responsible for making Windows Server easier to use." To do this, he works on a technical level with the product development teams, providing them with, and helping them to understand, empirical data about users' behaviors and needs. EIRif gathers that data by observing real users working with the software to complete tasks, both in the laboratory and in the field at customers' workplaces. And while EMf spends a lot of time in the lab, he says field research is just as valuable. He and other usability engineers often bring along program managers and software developers to draw on their expertise when collecting information. The visits not only help his colleagues to develop their site-visit and interviewing skills, but show them how real users work with their products. "On site visits, they learn a lot about how users work," explains EIRif. "So when I bring them usability data, they're a lot more likely to understand what I'm talking about." EIRif and his colleagues also conduct focus groups and customer round-tables. As they collect their data, the product team makes alterations to the program. When the program team thinks they've got another prototype, it goes back to the lab for more testing. While EiRif works on a daily basis with non-psychologist software developers, testers and writers, many of his fellow usability engineers have a psychology background. "Having the whole psychology experience-that makes a difference," he says.
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