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ScienceWriters 2008: NASW Workshops

Oct. 24-29, 2008
Cabana Hotel
Palo Alto, CA

Speaker biographies

Tom Abate

Tom Abate is a business reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. In 1991, he received his Master's Degree in Journalism from Columbia University, where he won the school's top honor, a Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship. He has worked in the San Francisco newspaper community since 1992, covering science, high-tech, biotech and, more recently, economics. Journalism is his second career. From 1980 through 1990, Tom was a small press publisher in Northern California, where he founded the Northcoast Journal, an alternative periodical that continues to be published under new ownership. A native of Brooklyn and a veteran of the U.S. Navy, Tom obtained his undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley, where he majored in political science and minored in Mandarin Chinese. He lives in the East Bay with his wife Mia Ousley, their sons, Julius and Aeneas, and daughter, AnaSofia.

Christie Aschwanden

Christie Aschwanden has been a freelance writer since 1998. She is contributing editor to Health and her essays and articles have appeared in more than 50 publications, including Science, New Scientist, National Wildlife, Cell, Men's Journal, High Country News and O, the Oprah Magazine. In 2007 she received a grant from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting to travel to Vietnam. Her report on Agent Orange's legacy appeared on PBS and her New York Times article about an Agent Orange remediation project in Vietnam's central highlands received the Arlene Award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA). She has also received an Outstanding Essay Award from the ASJA and an honorable mention for print journalism from the American Institute of Biological Sciences. In her spare time she pursues mountain adventures and raises exotic poultry on her farm in rural western Colorado. Find her online at www.christieaschwanden.com

Andy Boyles

Andy Boyles has been science editor at Highlights for Children magazine for 14 years and an acquiring editor at Boyds Mills Press (trade books for young readers) for three years. In the past, he worked as a writer or editor for the Greensburg, Pennsylvania, Tribune-Review, The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Between Highlights and Boyds Mills Press, he has edited works by accomplished science writers such as Jack Myers, Ken Croswell, Dougal Dixon, "Dino Don" Lessem, Sandra Markle, and Pamela Turner.

Curtis Brainard

Curtis Brainard has covered science, environment, and medical news for Columbia Journalism Review since 2006. In January 2008, he launched The Observatory (cjr.org), CJR's first fulltime department dedicated to critically analyzing science coverage in the media and the challenges facing science journalists today. The online site includes regular commentary by Brainard and other contributors on how the media covers science, the environment, medicine, and technology. Brainard's CJR work has been cited in The New York Times, The New Republic, Wired, The Houston Chronicle, Grist, Plenty, Framing Science, The Intersection, The Society of Professional Journalists, and the Committee of Concerned Journalists, among others. He has also discussed science journalism on Al-Jazeera English, Greenwire, Sirius satellite radio and local radio stations. Before joining CJR, he completed dual masters degrees in environmental science and journalism at Columbia University.

Siri Carpenter

Siri Carpenter is a freelance science writer in Madison, Wisconsin. She specializes in covering behavioral science topics and has written for Science, Science Careers, Prevention, Scientific American Mind, the HHMI Bulletin, ScienceNOW, Science News, World Book Encyclopedia Science Year, Reuters Health, and others. She is first author of Visualizing Psychology, published in 2007 by John Wiley & Sons. She has a Ph.D. in social psychology from Yale University. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers and the American Society of Journalists and Authors. Her website is www.siricarpenter.com.

Andy Fell

Andy Fell grew up in England and got his undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He carried out postdoctoral research on malaria at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Brisbane, Australia before switching careers into science communications. He worked in medical and pharmaceutical communications before joining UC Davis in 2000. Andy covers biological sciences, physical sciences and engineering research for the UC Davis News Service. He works with faculty to publicize their research, and with reporters trying to find experts for their stories. He also provides communications support and advice to campus units and administration.

Erika Check Hayden

Erika Check Hayden is senior reporter for the journal Nature. Before joining Nature's staff in late 2001, Erika worked for Newsweek magazine, reporting on science, health and news events, including the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York. She now writes on a variety of subjects in biomedical research, including genetics, infectious diseases, research ethics and policy. In 2006 she moved from Nature's Washington, D.C., office to San Francisco, where she covers biology and Bay Area science. Erika earned her undergraduate degree in biology from Stanford University in California. She has taught science journalism through a masters program at Johns Hopkins University and at the Science Communications workshop at The Banff Centre, in the Canadian Rockies. She also writes freelance stories for publications such as Wired and Discover.

Earle Holland

As assistant vice president for research communications, Earle Holland has headed research communications at Ohio State University for 30 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 an additional chapter on working with science information specialists for the book Handbook on Communicating and Disseminating Behavioral Science. He was appointed to the board of directors of Americans for Medical Progress in 2006. 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.

Catherine Hughes

Catherine Hughes is the science editor for National Geographic KIDS magazine (NGK), where she assigns writers and edits stories covering wildlife, natural history, science, and technology. (She's also a senior editor for the new preschool magazine, National Geographic Little Kids, which is written entirely in-house.) Before becoming an editor in 1995 she was a researcher, first at the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) and then at the National Geographic Society, working on both books and magazines. Combining her interests in wildlife biology, writing, and children, she graduated with a B.S. in resource development/wildlife biology from Michigan State University (1977), an M.Ed. in early childhood development from the University of Maryland (1995), and took a variety of writing and editing classes along the way. Catherine is also the co-manager of the annual Hands-On Explorer Challenge (HOEC), an essay and photo contest sponsored by NGK. Since the HOEC's inception in 2005, she has accompanied and mentored 15 winners — ages 9 to 14 — in the Galapagos, South Africa, and Australia, and next year heads to Peru, helping them with various writing projects about their trips. Keeping up with kids outside of work as well, she has an 18-year-old son, volunteers at a home for children entering the foster care system, and has volunteered as a tutor. She designed and taught nature classes for children and families for the Smithsonian Institution and led family nature walks for the NWF and the National Zoo. Interest in science, kids, and writing, along with growing up in five countries in a Foreign Service family, led to the perfect fit of a lifelong career at the National Geographic Society.

Patricia Janes

Patricia Janes is the executive editor of Scholastic Inc.'s Science World and SuperScience classroom magazines. Science World goes out to readers in grades 6 to 10, and SuperScience's readers are in grades 3 to 6. Patricia has been at Scholastic for nine years. Prior to that, she taught high school math and physics in South Carolina. She has a degree in math and physics from the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Patricia also has a certificate in conservation biology from Columbia University in New York, and she is currently pursuing a master's degree in environmental studies from Vermont's Green Mountain College. Patricia's interests span all areas of science, but she is particularly interested in Earth's polar regions. In 2005, she joined scientists for one month aboard an icebreaker in the Bering Sea to report on climate change to Scholastic magazine readers.

Karen Kreeger

Karen Kreeger is senior science communication manager at the University of Pennsyvania School of Medicine & Health System, responsible for disseminating information on basic science research discoveries in areas that include cancer biology, cell & developmental biology, biological aspects of infectious diseases, neurosciences, pathology and laboratory medicine, pharmacology, and biostatistics and epidemiology. Karen previously held this position in the late 1990s. Karen has held positions in both public affairs and science and medical writing. She was senior editor at The Scientist, as well as maintained a freelance communications business for several years, writing for such clients as Nature, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, and the Wistar Institute. She holds an MS in Scientific and Technical Communication from Oregon State University (1992) and an MS in Marine Studies from the University of Delaware (1985). She is also an author of a book on non-traditional careers in science.

Betsy Mason

Betsy Mason is the science editor for Wired.com where she has recently taken refuge from the troubled newspaper industry. She was the science reporter for the Contra Costa Times (and Oakland Tribune) for four years where she covered a broad range of topics with a focus on earthquakes and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She has a master's degree in geology from Stanford University and is a graduate of the UC Santa Cruz Science Communication Program. Following an internship at the Dallas Morning News, and before landing her first staff position at the Times, she freelanced for publications including Nature, New Scientist, ScienceNOW and Discover. In 2007, she won the David Perlman Award for Breaking News from the American Geophysical Union.

A'ndrea Messer

When A'ndrea Messer joined the Penn State Public Information Office 20 years ago, she was the first science writer in the office in 17 years. Over the past two decades, her efforts and those of the other science writers in the Science, Engineering and Research Unit have established Penn State as a solid source for research information. She writes about engineering, the earth sciences, physical sciences and very occasionally on the life sciences. She writes medical stories only under duress. A PIO for the past 27 years, she has been a science writer for 32 years. She edited 11 quarterly review journals on chemistry, environmental science and pharmacology (all at once), agricultural book translations, wrote technical documentation for Bell Labs (when Ma bell was Queen) and was a reporter for the Attleboro Sun Chronicle. 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 expecting to receive her Ph.D. in anthropology/archaeology, based on studies of settlement pattern distribution in late 13th century Puebloan societies, in December.

Jerry Monti

Jerry Monti is an award-winning multimedia producer with more than 20 years experience in digital media. He has served as Executive Producer at AOL, coordinator for the largest computer training program in Washington state, helped found one of the first venture capital-funded video sites on the web, and has consulted for Adobe and Corbis. Monti holds a BA in journalism from California State University at Northridge and a M.Ed. from the University of the Philippines, Diliman. He is a former Peace Corps volunteer and is an Apple Certified Consultant. Jerry lives at the beach in Pacifica and says he enjoys trail hikes in the fog, watching storms, and listening to Miles Davis.

Jeff Nesbit

Mr. Jeff Nesbit, a senior communications strategist with 25 years of experience working in the national media, Congress, the Food and Drug Administration, the White House and Private Industry, was appointed director of the Office of Legislative and Public Affairs at the National Science Foundation (NSF). Nesbit oversees the agency's communication activities with the public, Congress, the news media, states and governors and various scientific, engineering and education organizations. He began his duties at NSF on June 12, 2006. Nesbit has managed a successful strategic communications consulting business for more than a decade. His clients and projects have included dozens of national nonprofit, trade associations, media companies, Fortune 500 companies, major health foundations, public relations agencies and advocacy organizations such as the Discovery Health Channel, the American Heart Association, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the American Red Cross, Porter-Novelli, CTIAthe Wireless Association, the Koop-Kessler Committee on Tobacco Policy and Public Health, Burson-Marsteller, the Kaiser Family Foundation and a number of major pharmaceutical companies. Prior to forming his own communications consulting business in 1992, Nesbit was the Director of Communications to former Vice President Dan Quayle at the White House; Associate Commissioner for Public Affairs at the FDA for David Kessler, M.D.; a U.S. Senate press secretary and a national journalist with media organizations such as Knight-Ridder Newspapers. In addition, Nesbit is the author of 17 novels for children and adults.

Annalee Newitz

Annalee Newitz writes about science and popular culture. She is the editor-in-chief of io9.com, a blog about science fiction and science owned by Gawker Media Network. She's a contributor to Wired magazine, New Scientist and Popular Science; and she's the author of "Pretend We're Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture", as well as co-editor of "She's Such a Geek", a collection of essays about female nerds. Learn more at www.techsploitation.com. writes about science and popular culture. She is the editor-in-chief of io9.com, a blog about science fiction and science owned by Gawker Media Network. She's a contributor to Wired magazine, New Scientist and Popular Science; and she's the author of "Pretend We're Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture", as well as co-editor of "She's Such a Geek", a collection of essays about female nerds. Learn more at www.techsploitation.com.

Peggy Peck

NASW member Peggy Peck is Executive Editor of MedPage Today, the online medical news service for physicians. MedPage Today [http://www.medpagetoday.com/#] makes heavy use of multimedia techniques [http://www.medpagetoday.com/Multimedia/], providing brief summaries and bulletins of breaking medical news and also video coverage of talks at scientific meetings. Peggy began her journalism career in 1980 at The Record, a New Jersey daily newspaper, and soon began writing for the medical trade press with a column in Physician's Management. Her byline has been ubiquitous, appearing in Modern Medicine, Medical Tribune, Medical World News, Physician's Weekly, Internal Medicine News, Family Practice News, Pediatric News, Clinical Psychiatry News, Skin and Allergy News and ObGyn News. As a freelancer, she has contributed to WebMD, Medscape, Reuters Health, UPI, Oncology Times, Neurology Today, Neurology Now, and AMNews.

Charles Petit

Charles Petit is a freelance science writer who has been tracking daily science news in the US and international English language press — including wires, newspapers, and broadcast — for a web site maintained by the Knight Science Journalism Fellowships at MIT (ksjtracker.mit.edu). His distinguished career includes 26 years as a science reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle and six years for US News & World Report. Recent freelance stories have run in such publications as National Geographic, Smithsonian, Nature and the New York Times. A former president of NASW, and now vice president of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, he is a past winner of the NASW's Science-in-Society award, of prizes from the American Institute of Physics and the American Geophysical Union, and is a two-time winner of the AAAS prize in science writing. He is a former president of the Northern California Science Writers Association and has been an instructor at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. He graduated from Cal with a bachelor's degree in astronomy.

Susanne Rockwell

Susanne Rockwell has been in the communication field for 34 years, including 15 years as a reporter and editor at various California newspapers, and 19 years with UC Davis University Communications. At the university, she has served as the faculty-staff newspaper editor, a public information representative representing the humanities and social sciences (including psychology and anthropology), and, for the past eight years as the unit's Web editor. Susanne has transitioned from print to the Web by picking up skills in multimedia (slideshows, sound slideshows, video), not to mention in Web communication and promotion. She is the content editor for the campus's home pages, news pages and its social media pages. She holds a Bachelor of Art degree in International Relations and a Master of Art degree in Rhetoric and Communication, both from UC Davis.

Joann Rodgers

An award-winning science journalist and author of seven books, Joann Rodgers' latest book, Sex: A Natural History, was published by Times Books (Henry Holt and Company, NY). Her previous books include Cancer and You (Chelsea House), Raising Sons (NAL Books), Psychosurgery: Damaging the Brain to Save the Mind (Harper-Collins) and Media Guide for Academics (FACS). She has contributed chapters to books on institutional branding and science communications and written the chapter on crisis communications for the new edition of Field Guide for Science Writers. As a freelance, she has written on chemistry, medicine, public health, and psychology as well as life sciences and has contributed scores of articles to popular periodicals and publications, including Encyclopedia Britannica, World Book Science Year, CASE Currents, Spectrum, New York Times Magazine, Psychology Today, The Los Angeles Times, Ladies Home Journal, American Health, Mosaic, Mademoiselle, Seventeen and Parade. Rodgers joined Johns Hopkins Medicine after 18 years as a science writer and columnist for the Hearst Newspapers, where she won a Lasker Award for medical journalism, as well as prizes from the American Medical Association, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society and the National Council for Medical Research. At Hopkins, she is Executive Director of Marketing & Communications, and Director of Media Relations and Public Affairs. A graduate of Boston University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she is immediate past president of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing; past president of the National Association of Science Writers; a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and one of only a few dozen non-scientist members elected to Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society. She also serves on the Advisory Board of EurekAlert, an online press service created by the American Association for the Advancement of Science; as Program Advisor to the Foundation for American Communications (FACS) and on the Public Understanding of Science Committee of Sigma Xi. She has contributed to NIH-funded communications research published in Social Science and Medicine, Genetics in Medicine and Science Communications, and holds a faculty appointment at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is a frequent lecturer on institutional crisis communications and media relations. At Johns Hopkins Medicine, her portfolio includes management and editing of basic and clinical news, crisis and executive communications and strategic media relations. She also serves on the JHH Management Committee, Patient Safety Committee, Quality Improvement Council, Stem Cell Communications Working Group and Task Force on Use of Name and Conflict of Interest. She is the mother of two grown sons, Adam, a screenwriter in Los Angeles and Jared, a veterinarian and musician.

Adam Rogers

Adam Rogers edits feature stories about science, politics, military and law-enforcement technology, and nerdy goodness like comic books and science fiction. Before Wired, he spent eight years as a reporter for Newsweek, focusing primarily on science, technology and medicine. Rogers worked in the magazine's New York, Boston and Washington bureaus, and also covered the 2000 presidential campaign. In 2002 and 2003, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied the intersection of urban theory, ecology and public health. A native of Los Angeles, Rogers earned a master's degree from the Boston University graduate program in science writing and an undergraduate degree from Pomona College in Claremont, California. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and son.

Lisa Rossi

Lisa Rossi is director of communications and external relations for the Microbicide Trials Network (MTN), a National Institutes of Health HIV/AIDS clinical trials network based at the University of Pittsburgh that focuses on developing and evaluating methods for preventing the sexual transmission of HIV. Prior to joining the MTN in 2007, Ms. Rossi spent 23 years with the News Bureau for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences, the last 13 as associate director. Her tenure with the News Bureau included 15 years covering the University of Pittsburgh's internationally renowned organ transplant programs. In 2005, Rossi was named a Marine Biological Laboratory Science Journalism Fellow, the only public information officer in a class of 12 fellows and one of only a few ever chosen in the program's 22-year history.

Cristine Russell

Cristine Russell, who has covered science, health, and the environment for more than 35 years, is currently writing about the future of science journalism and how the media cover controversial science. She is a senior fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government at the 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 NASW president. She is a regular contributor to Columbia Journalism Review's online site, "The Observatory" (CJR.org), and wrote a recent piece for the magazine on media coverage of climate change. She is a former national science reporter for The Washington Post and The Washington Star. She is a board member of USC's Annenberg School for Communication and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. She has won numerous science-writing awards and is an honorary member of Sigma Xi, the scientific research society. Russell has a biology degree from Mills College.

Emily Sohn

Emily Sohn is a freelance journalist in Minneapolis. Her stories, mostly about health and science, have appeared in a variety of publications for both kids and adults, including Backpacker, Eating Well, Health, the Los Angeles Times, Science News, Science News for Kids, Self, Smithsonian, and U.S. News & World Report. For five years, she wrote weekly articles for Science News magazine's website for kids (www.sciencenewsforkids.org), which is aimed at a middle school audience. She has also written a handful of books and graphic novels about science topics for young people. Previously, she worked with a company called Classroom Connect, which sent her on extended expeditions to exotic locations around the world, where she helped produce an interactive, educational website, viewed by hundreds of thousands of students in classrooms around the world. Destinations included Cuba, Turkey, and the Peruvian Amazon.

Norm Sperling

Norm Sperling published his first humor in JIR in 1976, and became editor in 2004. In between, he was a planetarium director, assistant editor of Sky & Telescope Magazine, and Science Editor of AltaVista.com. He teaches freshman astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and wrote a book to supplement conventional textbooks, What Your Astronomy Textbook Won't Tell You (2002). His latest, This Book Warps Space and Time, is a JIR anthology published by Andrews McMeel, 2008.

Craig Stoltz

Craig Stoltz has served as editor of The Washington Post Health section and editorial director of Revolution Health. He is a reviewer for HealthNewsReview.org, which evaluates popular media coverage of health and medical stories. As a web consultant, Stoltz helps health and media companies make wise use of 2.0 technologies and the social web. He teaches and coaches bloggers. He contributes to The Health Care Blog and his personal blog, Web 2.0h. . .really?, which takes a skeptical view of emerging uses of the web, was named one of Time.com's Top 25 blogs in the U.S. He recently launched a project at PBS designed to help the network use social media strategically. Stoltz frequently speaks on the uses and abuses of social media in health and other fields.

Lisa Strong-Aufhauser

Lisa Strong-Aufhauser is a video producer, cinematographer, sound recordist, and editor. She runs Strong Mountain Productions, a small media production company specializing in nature, science and history stories for museum exhibits, web multimedia, and DVDs. Recently, she's worked for National Geographic's Crittercam, Yosemite National Park, and the African American Museum and Library at Oakland. Lisa is also a nationally published writer and still photographer. She's currently working for the Exploratorium as a video producer on Ice Stories — a web project with original multimedia reporting on polar science for the International Polar Year going on now. A '93 UCSC Science Communication slug, she returned to campus to help develop and teach part of the new multimedia class added to the curriculum.

Michelle Thatcher

Michelle Thatcher has been reviewing technology products for nearly a decade and has been an editor at CNET [http://www.cnet.com/] since 2005. Her buying recommendations have appeared in Business Week, The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Computer Shopper, and CNN.com. She also regularly provides expert commentary about laptops and other technologies for local and national media outlets. Michelle says her personal laptop of choice changes frequently, but she's always willing to share some of her favorites (michelle.thatcher@cnet.com).

Rabiya Tuma

Rabiya Tuma is a freelance journalist specializing in cancer and neurobiology. She is a regular contributor to The Economist, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, and Oncology Times. Her work has appeared in Discover, Yoga + Joyful Living, CURE, O The Oprah Magazine, HHMI Bulletin, SELF, New York Times and several Dana Foundation publications, including BrainWork. Prior to launching her writing career in 2000, Rabiya earned her doctorate at the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and worked at a biotechnology firm in Eugene, Oregon.

Ron Winslow

Ron Winslow is deputy editor, health and science and a senior medical writer for The Wall Street Journal. In the past 18 years, he has written more than 1,100 articles describing new medical and health care research and chronicling the economic forces transforming the nation's health care system. He is a recipient of the Howard Lewis Award for career achievement from the American Heart Association and his work has been honored by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons and other groups. He is a member of the National Association of Science Writers and was a founding board member of the Association of Health Care Journalists.

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