MIT’s Knight Science Journalism Program and STAT, the nation’s must-read health, science, and medicine publication, have announced Anil Oza is the 2024-2025 recipient of the Sharon Begley Science Reporting Fellowship.
Named in honor of Sharon Begley, an award-winning science writer for STAT who died in January 2021, the one-year fellowship was established with the goal of diversifying the ranks of science and health journalists and fostering better coverage of science that is relevant to all people.
Oza was selected from a pool of nearly two dozen impressive candidates around the country. He earned a bachelor’s degree in science from Cornell University where he reported for the Cornell Daily Sun, the campus newspaper. Oza has interned at Nature, Science News, and NPR’s “Short Wave.” He also spent the summer of 2023 at STAT as an intern, helping produce the health-equity-focused podcast, “Color Code.”
“The passion and creativity Anil brought to his work on ‘Color Code’ showed us his potential. We’re confident that a full year of experience at STAT, combined with the opportunity to study science more deeply through KSJ, will set him on a course to become a first-rate health and science journalist,” said Gideon Gil, a managing editor at STAT.
The fellowship prepares early-career U.S. journalists from racial and ethnic groups underrepresented in the profession for a successful career in science journalism. It combines a paid reporting position at STAT with an educational component provided through the Knight Science Journalism program. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has provided funding for the program since its start in 2021.
Oza, who starts Sept. 3, will be the fifth Sharon Begley Fellow. Former fellows Isabella Cueto and Brittany Trang were hired by STAT after completing their fellowships. Former fellow Ambar Castillo works as a community health reporter for Epicenter-NYC, a hyperlocal newsroom that covers New York City. The current fellow, Deborah Balthazar, will finish her tenure in mid-July.
Begley, STAT’s senior science writer, was one of the nation’s finest science journalists and was known for her enthusiasm for mentoring and teaching the next generation. She was especially eager to help other women advance in a profession that, when she began as a researcher at Newsweek in 1977, was unwelcoming. She later worked at The Wall Street Journal and Reuters, before joining STAT at its founding in 2015. Her legacy includes her powerful advocacy for people of color, exemplified by a series she wrote in 2016 and 2017 about the neglect by scientists, government funders, drugmakers, and hospitals of patients with sickle cell disease, who in the U.S. are predominantly Black. This fellowship pays tribute to her outstanding career while paving the way for the next generation of science journalists.
Leave a Reply