[1] After earning a BA in English literature from UCLA, Austad left academia for a number of years during which among other things, he drove a taxi cab in New York City, worked as a newspaper reporter, and trained lions for television and movies.
[4] Dr. Austad's research and teaching have won multiple local, national, and international awards, including the Fifth Nathan A.
In 2021, he was appointed Protective Life Endowed Chair of Health Aging Research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
[5] Until recently, he currently wrote a similar biweekly column on science for AL.com as well as occasional pieces for the Huffington Post.
These columns can be found at his website www.stevenaustad.com and a selection of them are available in a book titled To Err is Human, To Admit It is Not and other Essays (2022).