The winner of the 2015 Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award, an annual prize for young science journalists, is Madhumita Venkataramanan, now head of technology coverage for the Telegraph in London. Venkataramanan received the award and its $1,000 prize for two stories in Wired (“My Identity for Sale” and “Welcome to BrainGate”) and one story for the BBC (“The Superpower Police Now Use to Tackle Crime.”)
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In A River Runs Again: India’s Natural World in Crisis, Meera Subramanian explores India’s efforts to address environmental and social challenges through five focused reports: the Rainman of Rajasthan’s quest to bring water back to a rural community, an engineer-turned farmer’s determination to promote growth and consumption of organic foods, local manufacturers’ struggles to develop and market smokeless cook stoves, scientists’ race to keep native vultures from becoming extinct, and a young woman’s dedication to teaching teenage girls about reproductive health.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel science and medical reporter Mark Johnson, a career newspaper journalist whose work is marked by its scientific breadth, human impact and storytelling verve, is the recipient of the 2015 Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting.
"We moved three times the first 10 years, and, honestly, it posed no hardship because two moves brought us to the vicinity of Washington, D.C., where there’s a large science writing community, as well as lots of writing jobs that generally pay well," Brittany Moya del Pino writes. "However, when we moved to the Hawaiian island of Oahu last summer, the situation was quite different. This is the story of how I’ve been dealing with that difference, which at times was so great that it felt as if I had moved to a foreign country."
Matt Shipman, a university public information officer, wrote the book he wished he’d had when he started his career.
Several types of travel fellowships are available to ScienceWriters2015. In addition, NASW's travel fellowships have been consolidated and are open to any science writer, editor, publication information officer, or journalism instructor with financial need. Applications due August 25.
What happens when you cross a beloved and compelling theory, a bevy of intensely competitive experiments on a highly technical subject, with a top-secret press conference, tight deadlines, and the desire to tell an exciting story? Perhaps you get the ascent and fall of BICEP2.
Cambridge, Mass., isn’t simply the home of top research universities like MIT and Harvard. Acre for acre, the Kendall Square area around MIT boasts the highest density of academic, corporate, and startup R&D activity in the world. The Brookings Institution calls Kendall Square “today’s iconic innovation district.” All of which makes it the perfect setting for ScienceWriters2015, coming to MIT Oct. 9-13. Also, NASW and the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing will host the 10th World Conference of Science Journalists (WCSJ) in fall 2017 in San Francisco.
In Networking for Nerds, Alaina Levine offers tips on why and how to network to both early-career and established scientists and engineers.