Abi (Nighthill) Knopp is a freelance science writer based in Northampton, MA. Abi grew up just outside of Portland, Oregon. There, most of her skies were obscured by branches, clouds, or both. After wandering aimlessly around Portland State University for a few years, she moved to Chicago and earned a B.A. in Poetry with a minor in Environmental Studies. Her thesis focused on haiku poetics and the behavior of jumping spiders, and other major works exhumed the science from Emily Dickinson’s works or followed the story of DARPA’s HI-MEMS (cyborg moths) project. She has since developed and taught a course at Portland State University that explores intersections of science and poetry, and worked on a memoir in hypertext that focuses on uncertainty, poetry, and new media.

Thesis: Taking Nature’s Pulse