NASW 2006 Science in Society

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CASW New Horizons in Science Briefing

NASW Science in Society

October 27-28, 2006
Tremont Grand Meeting Facility
at the
Tremont Plaza Hotel
Baltimore, MD

Speaker Biographies

Paul Aiken

Paul Aiken, a 1985 graduate of Cornell Law School, has been the executive director of the Authors Guild since 1996. Paul testified before the White House Task Force on Copyright and the Internet, participated in the Conference on Fair Use and, in the past year, testified on the topic of fair use before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and on the need for a small claims court for copyright infringement before a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. His commentary on the publishing industry has been published in Publishing Research Quarterly and the New York Times. The Authors Guild is the largest society of published book authors and freelance journalists in the U.S. The Guild advocates on behalf of writers' business interests in the areas of effective copyright, fair contracts and free expression. The Authors Guild also maintains a legal staff to review members' contracts and assist in disputes. Guild members elected Roy Blount Jr. as president of the Guild in 2006, and Judy Blume and James B. Stewart as vice presidents. The Guild was founded as the Authors League of America in 1912.

Susan Matthews Apgood

Susan Matthews Apgood started News Generation, Inc., an award-winning radio public relations agency that focuses on the powerful radio medium, in 1997. News Generation specializes in using techniques, such as radio media tours and audio news releases to get associations and corporations airtime, working directly with the organizations and through public relations firms. The company is headquartered in Bethesda, MD and has a southeastern regional office in Atlanta, GA. The company's clients include AARP, the American Bankers Association, the Discovery Networks, PBS, eBay, and the American Federation of Teachers. She has an MBA with a concentration in finance from American University and a BA in economics with a minor in political science from George Washington University.

Tim Appenzeller

Tim Appenzeller is the science editor at National Geographic. As a boy he played with rockets and a chemistry set; in college he was an English major, so science journalism felt like a calling when he first tried it 20 years ago, at Scientific American. Since then, he's been an editor at The Sciences, the news section of Science, and US News and World Report. Between editing assignments he likes to write stories, so he hasn't forgotten what it's like to be edited.

Ralph J. Cicerone

Ralph J. Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences, is a scientist whose research in atmospheric chemistry and climate change has involved him in shaping science and environmental policy at the highest levels nationally and internationally. His work with Richard Stolarski in 1973 led to the discovery of the C10X chain mechanism for depletion of stratospheric ozone, and Cicerone's research has continued since then in atmospheric chemistry and climate change. In 2001, he led a NAS study, requested by President Bush, of the current state of climate change and its impact on the environment and human health. Cicerone was the chancellor of the University of California, Irvine, before he began his term as Academy president in July 2005. Dr. Cicerone has received numerous awards for his research and public policy leadership, including recognition on the citation for the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry. He has published more than 100 research papers and worked at several universities as well as the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. He has a doctoral degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois and received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from MIT, where he was a varsity baseball player.

Roy Peter Clark

Roy Peter Clark, founding director of the National Writers Workshop, is perhaps the nation's premiere newspaper writing coach. For three decades, he has pioneered the effort to help journalists master the craft of clear, colorful and compelling prose. He says: "A simple blueprint for the writing process will have many uses over time. Not only will it give you confidence by demystifying the act of writing. Not only will it provide you with big boxes in which to store your [writing] tool collection. It will also help you diagnose problems in individual stories. It will help you account for your strengths and weaknesses over time. And it will build your critical vocabulary for talking about your craft, a language about language that will lead you to the next level." Roy Peter Clark is vice president and senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, where he has taught writing since 1979. Clark is also founding director of the Institute's National Writers Workshop. He came to Poynter after working as a writing coach at the St. Petersburg Times, for which he has written numerous feature and serial narratives. He has written or co-edited five books: Free to Write: A Journalist Teaches Young Writers, Coaching Writers: Editors and Reporters Working Together, America's Best Newspaper Writing, The Craft and Values of American Journalism and The Changing South of Gene Patterson: The Journalism of Civil Rights, 1960-1968. Clark is a Distinguished Service Member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Links: "If I Were a Carpenter: The tools of the writer"; "Three Little Words," St. Petersburg Times

Chris Condayan

Chris Condayan serves as the manager for the American Society for Microbiology's public education outreach initiative in which he oversees the production of the society's nationally and internationally syndicated MicrobeWorld Radio program. In addition to terrestrial radio, Condayan has spearheaded ASM's efforts in podcasting, establishing the organization as the first scientific society to have a daily audio podcast and a weekly video podcast. Prior to his work with ASM, Condayan served as the director of communications for the National Mental Health Association where he developed and implemented communications strategies for the oldest and largest mental health organization in the nation. Previously, Condayan produced his own weekly alternative music radio show, Capitol Radio, on CBS Radio's 106.7 WJFK in Washington, D.C. Contact Chris Condayan at 202-230-6400 or via email,

Terry Devitt

Terry Devitt is Director of Research Communications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he covers the basic and applied sciences. He is a co-founder, project coordinator and editor of The Why Files, a popular and award-winning site about science and technology published on the World Wide Web. Devitt is also an active freelance science writer and has contributed to such publications as Astronomy, Orion, the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, the Milwaukee Journal and the children's science magazine Muse, and to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Juliet Eilperin

Juliet Eilperin covers the science and politics of global warming as the national environmental reporter for The Washington Post. Previously, she was a longtime political reporter who covered Capitol Hill for the Post and earlier for other news agencies. A Washington, D.C. native, Eilperin graduated from Princeton University in 1992. On a Luce Scholarship, she wrote about politics and economics for an English-language magazine in Seoul, South Korea, She has also been a media fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. In a talk there last year, "Searching for Clarity in the Midst of a Spin Storm: Covering the Environment in the Nation's Capitol," she said that reporting on the environment is just as controversial as covering national politics.

Ruth Faden, PhD, MPH

Ruth R. Faden, Ph.D., M.P.H. is the Philip Franklin Wagley Professor of Biomedical Ethics and Executive Director of The Phoebe R. Berman Bioethics Institute at Johns Hopkins University. She is also a Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University. Dr. Faden is the author and editor of numerous books and articles on biomedical ethics and health policy including Social Justice: The Moral Foundations of Public Health and Health Policy (with Madison Powers), A History and Theory of Informed Consent (with Tom Beauchamp), AIDS, Women and the Next Generation (Ruth Faden, Gail Geller and Madison Powers, eds.), HIV, AIDS and Childbearing: Public Policy, Private Lives (Ruth Faden and Nancy Kass, eds.). Dr. Faden is a member of the Institute of Medicine and a Fellow of the Hastings Center and the American Psychological Association. She has served on several national advisory committees and commissions, including the President's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, which she chaired. Dr. Faden holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in General Studies in Humanities from the University of Chicago and an MPH and Ph.D. (Program in Attitudes and Behavior) from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dan Ferber, Ph.D.

Dan Ferber is an award-winning freelance journalist who writes frequently about science, health and the environment. He is a contributing correspondent for Science, and his articles have also appeared in Reader's Digest, Popular Science, Audubon, Nature Conservancy and other magazines. His article "Will Artificial Muscle Make You Stronger?" from Popular Science will be reprinted in The Best of Technology Writing 2006. He has received two grants from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, and in 2004, he won the American Society of Journalists and Authors' Outstanding Article Award for magazine profile writing.

Cynthia Frank

Cynthia Frank is President of Cypress House, an award-winning independent publishing company and book packager in Fort Bragg, California. She is on the education committee for the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, and has presented workshops for Publishers Marketing Association University, the University of Denver Publishing Institute, the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association. She recently received an IPPY Award as one of Ten Outstanding Women in Independent Publishing.

Denise Graveline

Denise Graveline is president of don't get caught, an independent communications consultancy. She has directed communications for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; the two largest scientific societies, the American Chemical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and a major philanthropy, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. A journalism graduate of Boston University, a book contributor and co-author, and a former national magazine journalist, Graveline's writing appears in three college textbooks on effective writing. Today, her clients include book authors, major corporations, federal agencies, universities, nonprofits, and would-be bloggers.

Mary Elizabeth Hamel, MD, MPH

Mary Beth Hamel, MD, MPH has served as a Deputy Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine since 2002. She is Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a faculty member in the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where she cares for patients, teaches, and conducts research. She has authored more than fifty original research articles. Her research interests include end-of-life care, cost-effectiveness analysis, and decision-making and outcomes for elderly patients with serious illness or surgical problems.

Tim Harper

Timothy Harper is a freelance journalist, author and editorial/publishing consultant. His 12 books and many magazine and newspaper articles cover a broad range of topics, and he has helped many individuals and institutions produce their own books. A member of the adjunct faculty at Columbia and NYU, he is a partner in Long Dash Publishing, a print-on-demand self-publishing company.

Earle Holland

As assistant vice president for research communications, Earle Holland has headed research communications at Ohio State University for 28 years. As such, he is the senior communications official at OSU dealing with areas of research risks. He's served multiple terms on the board of the National Association of Science Writers as well as on the board of the Society of Environmental Journalists and on the national advisory committee for EurekAlert!. For 20 years, he also taught a graduate science-reporting course at OSU's School of Journalism. For 18 years, he wrote a weekly science and medicine column for the Columbus Dispatch and for seven years wrote the national weekly column GeoWeek distributed by the New York Times Syndicate. He wrote the chapter on communicating research from universities in NASW's A Field Guide for Science Writers, and a similar chapter (in press) on working with science information specialists for the book Handbook on Communicating and Disseminating Behavioral Science. A former reporter for the Birmingham (AL) News, his OSU science writing programs have won more than 65 national awards while under his direction, including CASE's 2005 gold medal in research, medical and science news writing, the 10th such award in the last 25 years.

Sheryl Kelsey, Ph.D.

Sheryl F. Kelsey, is Professor of Epidemiology and Director of the Epidemiology Data Center at the Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh. She received a PhD in statistics from Carnegie Mellon University. She has over twenty-five years of experience in the design, coordination and analyses of clinical trials and registries. Her research has been primarily in cardiology, but she has also collaborated on trials in neurology, ophthalmology and rehabilitation. She directs the BARI 2D study, a randomized clinical trial of patients with diabetes and heart disease testing two strategies for treating diabetes and testing whether coronary bypass surgery or percutaneous coronary intervention added to medical therapy is better than medical therapy alone with regard to preventing death and heart attacks. To ensure that randomized clinical trials are being carried out safely, Dr. Kelsey has served on numerous Data and Safety Monitoring Boards for the National Institutes of Health, the Veterans Administration, and industry.

David Kestenbaum

David Kestenbaum comes to radio through the traditional route of a PhD in particle physics. He believes that radio is way better than print and that anybody can be made to say something interesting if you poke them enough times. When there is no scene in a story he thinks you should make one. Radio should make you cry and think and be narrative where possible but the best way to heroically save a boring story is to really come up with a better idea. David has been at NPR since 1999; he loves his job. He took a short break in 2003 to fill in as a producer at the radio documentary program This American Life.

Lynne Lamberg

Lynne Lamberg spends many of her waking hours thinking about sleep. She writes frequently on sleep medicine, biological rhythms, and psychiatry for JAMA, Psychiatric News, medical websites, and the popular press. A Baltimore-based independent medical journalist and editor, Lynne has written five books on sleep, biological rhythms, and dreams. Her most recent book, The Body Clock Guide to Better Health: How to Use Your Body's Natural Clock to Fight Illness and Achieve Maximum Health, co-authored with Michael Smolensky, PhD (Henry Holt & Company, 2000) received the American Society of Journalists and Authors, Inc. 2001 Outstanding Book Award. She has republished two of her books via the ASJA Press imprint of iUniverse. Lynne also writes book reviews and edits NASW's New Books by Members online column.

A'ndrea Elyse Messer

A'ndrea Elyse Messer is the Senior Science & Research Information Officer at Penn State. She writes about engineering, the earth sciences, physical sciences, agriculture and very occasionally on other life sciences. She will write medical stories only under duress. A science writer for 30 years and a PIO for the past 25 years, she has also edited 11 quarterly review journals (all at once), edited agricultural book translations, written technical documentation for Bell Labs (when Ma bell was Queen) and been a newspaper reporter (oh my!). She has also been an on and off freelance writer when time permits. She has a B.A. in Science & Culture (chemistry) from Purdue, an M.S. in Journalism: Science Communications from Boston University and an M.A. in Anthropology from Penn State. She is currently an A.B.D. Ph.D. candidate in anthropology/archaeology, studying settlement pattern distribution in late 13th century puebloan societies using advanced computer applications. (In other words, she is somewhat crazy and crazed most of the time, but very, very interesting and a self described borderline geek) In her spare time (?) she writes unpublished (but not unsubmitted) science fiction and plans to write a Harlequin romance when she finds time. Her seven nieces and nephews still make her sit at the kids table on holidays.

Chris Mooney

Chris Mooney is Washington correspondent for Seed magazine and a senior correspondent for the American Prospect. He focuses on issues at the intersection of science and politics, and is author of the bestselling book The Republican War on Science, which was named a finalist for the 2005 Los Angeles Times book prize in the category of "Science and Technology," and Chris's 2005 Mother Jones feature story about ExxonMobil, conservative think tanks, and climate change was nominated for a National Magazine Award in the "public interest". Chris has contributed to a variety of other publications in recent years, including Wired, Seed, New Scientist, Slate, Salon, Mother Jones, Legal Affairs, Reason, The American Scholar, The New Republic, The Washington Monthly, Columbia Journalism Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe. In addition, Chris's blog, "The Intersection," was a recipient of Scientific American's 2005 Science and Technology web award.

Matthew C. Nisbet

Matthew C. Nisbet recently joined the faculty at American University, where he is an assistant professor in the School of Communication. His research focuses on the intersections between science, media, and politics. He has studied coverage of science-related controversies, including the debates over stem cell research, plant biotechnology, climate change, and intelligent design, and published widely in leading communication journals. He writes the monthly "Science and the Media" column for Skeptical Inquirer Online, as well as a blog on science writing. Nisbet taught at the Ohio State University School of Communication and holds a PhD and MS in Communication from Cornell University and an AB in Government from Dartmouth College.

Alan Packer

Alan Packer is Senior Editor at Nature Genetics, the most frequently cited professional journal devoted solely to genetics. He joined the journal in 2000, following completion of a Ph.D. in cell biology and genetics at Cornell University, and a postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University. He served as Acting Editor of the journal in 2002-2003. In addition to Nature Genetics, his writing has appeared in Nature and Nature Reviews Genetics, and he is the primary author of the Nature Genetics blog, Free Association.

Cristine Russell

Cristine Russell is a freelance journalist who has written about science, health and the environment for more than three decades. She is currently a fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and was a spring 2006 fellow at Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. She is President of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing and a past president of the National Association of Science Writers. Russell is a former national science reporter for the Washington Post and The Washington Star. She serves on the boards of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. She is an honorary member of Sigma Xi, the scientific research society, and has a biology degree from Mills College.

Ivan Semeniuk

Ivan Semeniuk is the U.S. Bureau Chief for New Scientist magazine. He also writes, co-hosts and oversees production of the New Scientist podcast "Sci-Pod". Prior to coming to New Scientist in 2005, Ivan worked for twelve seasons with the award-winning science news magazine show "Daily Planet" (originally "@discovery.ca") on Discovery Channel, Canada. He began in 1994 as one of the show's original columnists and its summer host. In 1999 he became a field producer for the show. Prior to working in television he spent more than ten years on staff at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto, producing planetarium shows, developing exhibits and public programs. He earned his undergraduate degree in physics and astronomy from the University of Toronto and a Masters in science journalism from Boston University.

Tom Siegfried

Tom Siegfried is a science journalist who lives in Los Angeles. From 1985 to 2004, he was science editor of The Dallas Morning News, where he trained some of the nation's top science and medical writers. He is currently on the board of directors of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing. Tom began his journalism career as a business and science writer for the Fort Worth Press and later served time on the journalism faculty at Texas Christian University before joining the Morning News. He is the author of The Bit and the Pendulum, from John Wiley & Sons (2000), and Strange Matters, from the Joseph Henry Press of the National Academy of Sciences (2002). He is also a contributor to the National Association of Science Writers' Field Guide for Science Writers. His next book, A Beautiful Math, will be published by the Joseph Henry Press in the fall of 2006. Tom's work has earned various awards, most recently the American Geophysical Union's Robert C. Cowen Award for Sustained Achievement in Science Journalism. Other awards include the Science-in Society award from the National Association of Science Writers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science-Westinghouse Award, and the American Chemical Society's James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public. He has also received awards from the Associated Press Managing Editors Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the Texas Headliners club. He is among the writers whose work was included in The Best American Science Writing 2004. Currently Tom's science column appears regularly on The Why Files. His free-lance work has appeared in several publications, including Astronomy, New Scientist and Science.

Rebecca Skloot

Rebecca Skloot is a freelance writer, a contributing editor at Popular Science magazine, and a correspondent for PBS's Nova ScienceNOW series. She writes for The New York Times Magazine, Discover Magazine, New York Magazine and others, and is the author of "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," which is forthcoming from Crown. Skloot designed, launched and runs Critical Mass, the blog of the National Book Critics Circle; she also maintains her own blog, Culture Dish, where she blogs about science and writing. More information.

Robert J. Temple, M.D.

Dr. Robert Temple is Director of the Office of Medical Policy of FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research and is also Acting Director of the Office of Drug Evaluation I (ODE-I). ODE-I is responsible for the regulation of cardio-renal, neuropharmacologic and psychopharmacologic drug products. The Office of Medical Policy is responsible for regulation of promotion though the Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising, and Communication, for assessing quality of clinical trials through the Division of Scientific Investigations, and for a variety of other policy initiatives.

Nicholas Thompson

Nicholas Thompson is an editor at Wired Magazine focusing on long feature stories. Before Wired, he was a features editor at Legal Affairs and The Washington Monthly. He is also a fellow at the New America Foundation and has written for The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New Republic, Slate, Newsweek and many other publications. When not working at Wired, he is writing a dual biography of Paul Nitze and George Kennan that will be published by Henry Holt.

Dan Vergano

Dan Vergano is a science reporter at USA Today, where he has been on staff for seven years. He has degrees in aerospace engineering (B.A., Penn State) and Science, Technology and Public Policy (M.A., George Washington University), and has completed graduate coursework in astronautics (JIAFS, NASA-Langley) and science and environmental reporting (New York University.) Previous reporting stints were at Medical Tribune and HealthWeek (PBS) and the inevitable science intern slot at Science News, as well as freelance work for Men's Health, New Scientist, Science and others. Dan worked as a space policy analyst for a government contract research organization before his reporting career. He won the 2006 David Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Journalism from the American Geophysical Union for a USA Today cover story on climate change. He was part of the paper's reporting team for a recent four-part series on climate change.

Julie Wakefield

Julie Wakefield is the author of Halley's Quest, a biography of Edmond Halley of comet fame told through his sea adventures. Now an editor at Where magazine in Washington, she has been published in Smithsonian, Washingtonian, Scientific American, New Scientist, and Wired among others.

Chelsea Wald

Chelsea Wald is Producer of AAAS's Science Update, an award-winning, syndicated feature that airs weekdays on commercial stations nationwide. In late 2005, she also took on producing the weekly Science Update podcast, which she helped develop and launch. Prior to joining AAAS, Chelsea was involved with a variety of new media projects, including a Web community for young scientists and Quantum Diaries, a blog site for physicists. She also worked as a news reporter and science writer for WFIU, a public radio station in Bloomington, Indiana. Wald holds a bachelor's in astronomy from Columbia University and a master's in journalism from Indiana University.

Donald Wulfinghoff

Donald Wulfinghoff is a professional engineer in mechanical and electrical engineering and a licensed operating engineer who has taught and lectured widely on energy conservation and energy management. He has developed efficiency improvement programs for hundreds of facilities and serves on panels of the National Academy of Sciences for improving engineering practice. Wulfinghoff devoted twenty years to writing the Energy Efficiency Manual, the exhaustive primary reference and how-to guide for energy conservation and reducing utility costs. He set up the Energy Institute Press and self-published the Manual through it.

Carl Zimmer

Carl Zimmer is the author of five books about science and blogs on The Loom, The New York Times Book Review calls Carl Zimmer "as fine a science essayist as we have." His books include: At the Water's Edge (1999), which followed scientists as they tackled two of the most intriguing evolutionary puzzles of all: how fish walked ashore, and how whales returned to the sea; Parasite Rex, which explores the bizarre world of nature's most successful life forms; Evolution: The Triumph of An Idea, the companion volume to a PBS television series; Soul Made Flesh, which chronicled the dawn of neurology in the 1600s; and most recently, Smithsonian Intimate Guide to Human Evolution. He is now writing a book about E. coli and the meaning of life. Zimmer writes regularly about science for The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Science, Newsweek, Natural History, and Discover, where he is a contributing editor. His honors include a AAAS Science Journalism Award and the NASW Everett Clark Award.

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