Keith Veronese received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and is currently a freelance science writer. Veronese previously wrote for Gawker Media's io9, a science news website. His work has also appeared Wired, Paste and Gawker Media sites like Lifehacker, Gawker, Kotaku, and Jezebel, among others. He is the author of two books, Plugged In, which details the work of comic book creators moonlighting in the video game industry, and Rare: The High Stakes Race to Satisfy Our Need for the Scarcest Metals on Earth, which focuses on the use of rare earth metals in our daily lives and the geopolitical issues complicating their discovery.