Announcements

The Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT has selected Maryn McKenna as its 2013-2014 Journalism Project Fellow. She will carry out research on food science and food production and will produce a book-length text and a series of multimedia stories from the research.

She is a journalist and author who writes about public health, global health, medicine, and food policy. She has reported from a field hospital in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, a village on Thailand’s west coast that was erased by the Indian Ocean tsunami, a CDC team investigating the anthrax- letter attacks on Capitol Hill, a graveyard within the Arctic Circle that held victims of the 1918 flu, a malaria hospital in Malawi, an isolation ward for multi-drug resistant TB in Vietnam and a polio-eradication team in India. She is the author of SUPERBUG: The Fatal Menace of MRSA (Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2010), an investigation of the global epidemic of drug-resistant staph, which received the 2013 June Roth Memorial Book Award and the 2011 Science in Society Award; and BEATING BACK THE DEVIL: On the Front Lines with the Disease Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service (FP/S&S, 2004), which recounts a year she spent embedded with the CDC’s rapid- reaction force and which was named a Top Science Book by Amazon and an Outstanding Academic Title by the American Library Association. She is a columnist for Scientific American and blogs for Wired. She is a Senior Fellow of the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University.

Knight Science Journalism at MIT has selected twelve journalists working in six countries for its 31st class of Fellows. The journalists will study science, health, environment and technology at MIT during the academic year 2013-14.

Catalina Arevalo is an environment correspondent for the leading Spanish language news agency, EFE, based in Madrid, Spain.

Aleszu Bajak is a freelance journalist and founder of LatinAmericanScience.org, a weekly bilingual digest of science news out of Central and South America.

Julia Belluz is the senior editor at The Medical Post, a contributing writer at Maclean’s magazine, and creator of the blog Science-ish, based in Toronto, Canada.

Nick Clark is a Doha, Qatar-based anchor/correspondent with Al Jazeera English.

Rachel Ehrenberg is an interdisciplinary sciences/chemistry writer, with Science News, based in Washington, DC.

Mark Harris is a freelance writer for The Economist and The Sunday Times, among others, and a contributing editor at IEEE Spectrum. He is based in Seattle, WA.

Lynda Mapes of Seattle, WA is a staff writer at the Seattle Times, specializing in natural history, environmental topics and native cultures.

Jason Palmer is a science and technology reporter with BBC News, based in London.

Susan Phillips is an energy reporter and multi-media journalist with StateImpactPennsylvania, a joint project of NPR/WHYY/witf.

Jonathan Sahula is a freelance film and video editor and producer who frequently works for PBS’s NOVA. He is based in Boston, MA.

Yves Sciama is a freelance journalist from Grenoble, France. His work has appeared in Science et Vie, La Recherche, and Le Monde.

Tom Zeller is a senior reporter with the Huffington Post, primarily covering energy and the environment.

The new Knights were chosen by a committee composed of Philip J. Hilts, director, Knight Science Journalism at MIT; Charles Petit, science writer and KSJ Tracker; Susan Moran, freelance journalist; Joyce Murdoch, former Washington Post editor and reporter; and John Durant, director of the MIT Museum.

JoNel Aleccia

NBC News

Elizabeth Baier

Minnesota Public Radio

Tasha Eichenseher

Discover

Andre Gallant

Athens (Ga.) Banner-Herald

Katharine Gammon

Freelancer

Susan Heavey

Thomson Reuters

Karin Klein

Los Angeles Times

Renee Pellerin

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Catherine Price

Penguin Press

Luis Silvestre

Sabado Newsmagazine

Susan West

Food and Environment Reporting Network

Angela Yeoh

Independent / Wall Street Journal

The Knight Science Journalism program at MIT will offer a new kind of Fellowship during the 2013-2014 academic year to add to the traditional 12 Fellows who come to Cambridge to study for the academic year at MIT and Harvard. This new Fellowship is intended to produce a publishable product instead of coming only to study.

The proposed projects should combine in some way science journalism and digital media. The product at the end of the year should be something tangible such as a video, audio, or digital piece or a written work if the subject includes or can be published in some digital form. Collaborations with news organizations are strongly encouraged.

The requirements of the Fellowship will be to work at least partly in Cambridge, to attend some seminars of the Knight Fellowship, and to present updates on the project to the director and the other Knight Fellows. The final project should be completed by May 30, 2014.

The length of the Fellowship is up to nine months starting in August 2013. A stipend based on your proposed project, project expenses and the length on the project will be determined once the project is chosen.

In the application, each candidate will submit a detailed description of the project, a timetable for completion, a proposed budget of expenses, plans for publication, a biographical statement and three letters of recommendation.

The deadline for applications will be announced in a few weeks.

Knight Science Journalism at MIT has selected twelve journalists from five countries for its 30th class of Fellows. The journalists will study science, health, environment and technology at MIT during the academic year 2012-13.

Karen Brown is a reporter/producer for New England Public Radio in Amherst, Massachusetts who specializes in mental health journalism.

Pablo Correa is an editor for El Espectador newspaper, based in Bogota, Colombia.

Amanda Gefter is a freelance physics writer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts whose work appears primarily in New Scientist.

Cynthia Graber of Somerville, Massachusetts, is a freelance radio producer and print reporter whose work appears in PRI’s The World, Scientific American 60-Second Science podcast and a variety of regional and national magazines.

John Higgins is the K-12 education reporter for the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal.

John Muchangi Njiru of Nairobi, Kenya is a science features writer for the Star Newspaper.

Joe Rojas-Burke is a Portland-based science writer on staff at The Oregonian newspaper, and a contributing writer with Consumer Reports publications in New York.

Angela Saini is freelance journalist and author based in London, England, who also reports regularly for BBC radio shows.

Elana Schor is a staff reporter for Environment & Energy Daily / Greenwire and is based in Washington, DC.

Rochelle Sharpe is a freelance journalist in Brookline, Massachusetts, who has worked most recently with The Center for Public Integrity, The New England Center for Investigative Reporting and AARP Bulletin. Her work has appeared most recently in The Huffington Post, AARP Bulletin, and Kaiser Health News.

Heather Smith, a San Francisco Bay area freelance science writer who is currently working on a book Insects: A Human History.

Ying Yuan is a reporter for Southern Weekly based in Beijing, China, who specializes in climate change and energy.

The new Knights were chosen by a committee composed of Philip J. Hilts, director, Knight Science Journalism at MIT; Charles Petit, science writer and KSJ Tracker; Boyce Rensberger, former director, Knight Science Journalism Fellowships; Carey Goldberg health reporter for WBUR radio; Hanna Rose Shell, assistant professor, MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society; and John Durant, director of the MIT Museum.