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by Knight Science Journalism / April 4th 2023 / Alumni News

Fellowships, Books, and … a Musical? KSJ Alumni Make Their Mark.

In 2017, a year when Americans were transfixed by a solar eclipse that spanned the U.S. from the Pacific to the Atlantic, David Baron (’90) published a tantalizing account of a different eclipse that captured the nation’s imagination more than a century earlier. “American Eclipse: A Nation’s Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World,” recounted the Great American Eclipse of 1878 and was widely praised by critics, winning the American Institute of Physics’ 2018 Science Writing Award and making the short list for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize, National Academies Communication Awards, and Colorado Book Award.

Now, six years later, the book is being adapted into a musical. Baron attended the first workshop production, in New York, last November, and describes it as “a glorious, operatic piece — with a cast of twenty-five — created by the Tony-nominated composer/lyricist Michael John LaChiusa.”

Among the leading characters are Thomas Edison, who witnessed the 1878 solar eclipse from Wyoming right before he invented his light bulb, and Maria Mitchell, a pioneering Vassar College astronomer who headed an all-female eclipse expedition to Denver, to show what women could do in science.

The musical’s producers are now looking for a theater to stage a full production, Baron says, ideally near the time when the next total solar eclipse crosses the U.S., on April 8, 2024.

A trio of KSJ Alumni have won prestigious journalism fellowships.

Duy Linh Tu (‘21) was selected as a 2023 fellow in the Marine Biological Laboratory’s Logan Science Journalism Program. Tu will spend a week and a half diving into hands-on laboratory training at the fabled research campus in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Virginia Gewin (‘22) was one of five journalists selected by the University of Southern California’s Center for Health Journalism to receive a reporting and engagement grant from its 2023 California Health Equity Impact Fund. The grants support journalists “as they undertake ambitious explanatory and investigative reporting projects about California’s health challenges and opportunities for change.” Gewin’s project will highlight how toxic dust from the Salton Sea affects the health of migrant farmworker families in the Imperial and Coachella valleys. It is a continuation of a project she worked on as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow in 2022.

Jyoti Madhusoodanan (‘21) was named a 2023 Alicia Patterson Fellow, and will use the award to do reporting on clinical trials – a continuation of work she began as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. The Alicia Patterson Fellowships, established in 1965, award $40,000 for a 12-month grant and $20,000 for a six-month grant, and support journalists as they travel, research and write articles for the APF Reporter, an online magazine.

In March, Richard Fisher (’20) published his debut book “The Long View,” a wide-ranging exploration of the importance of long-term thinking.

From the publisher’s page: “Richard Fisher takes us from the boardrooms of Japan – home to some of the world’s oldest businesses – to an Australian laboratory where an experiment started a century ago is still going strong. He examines the psychological biases that discourage the long view, and talks to the growing number of people from the worlds of philosophy, technology, science and the arts who are exploring smart ways to overcome them. How can we learn to widen our perception of time and honour our obligations to the lives of those not yet born?”

The book is already receiving glowing reviews and high praise. Ian McEwan called it “a beautifully turned, calmly persuasive but urgent book.”

If you missed former fellow Anil Ananthaswamy (‘20) on the TED main stage last year, you can now watch a video recording of his deeply insightful talk. Ananthaswamy, author of several acclaimed books about physics, presents a scientific take on the question, Where does your sense of self come from? He shares how the experiences of ‘altered selves’ — resulting from schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, foreign limb syndrome or other conditions — shed light on the constructed nature of identity. The talk was originally given at the TED2022 conference last April in Vancouver.

The prolific Jason Bittel (‘21) is now out with his latest book, “The Frozen Worlds: The Astonishing Nature of the Arctic and Antarctic,” published by DK Children, a part of Penguin Random House. Described by its publisher as “a gorgeously illustrated book for young animal and conservation enthusiasts,” the book takes children on a sub-zero journey of the amazing Earth’s poles. “Polar bears and penguins glide and whales and walruses dive across the pages of this colorful book.”

Bittel also remains at work on his upcoming, “Sort of Funny Field Guide,” a project he began as a KSJ Project Fellow that will explore “the secret lives and oddball behaviors of iconic North American species from the lightning bug to the bison.”

The Undark magazine special series “Long Division: The Persistence of Race Science,” a package of stories that explores science’s long, troubled relationship with race, was named a finalist in the National Magazine Awards’ Single-Topic Issue category. The project included contributions from an array of KSJ alumni: Jyoti Madhusoodanan (’21), Angela Saini (‘13), Ashley Smart (’16), Duy Linh Tu (’21), Undark Editor-in-Chief Tom Zeller (‘14), and KSJ Director Deborah Blum. You can read the full series here.

The Knight Science Journalism community mourns the loss of Cordula Klemm (‘93), who passed away on March 9, 2023. Klemm is remembered by fellow KSJ alum Monika Weiner (‘92) as “a wonderful person who had the ability always to look on the bright side of life and to cheer people up with her positive perspective.”

From Thomas Müller (’93), a member of Klemm’s fellowship class:

Always she was around when help was needed, always she was in for the bigger whole, her personal wishes and hopes came after. That was true for her professional life at the Helmholtz Center in Munich, where at the end of her career, she was responsible for crossmedia- and print-projects. And even more in her private life in Bellenberg in Western Bavaria, where she lived with her family.

One thing I especially cherished about Cordula was her writing. Most often the texts I read from her were private emails. But these weren’t just emails, Cordula wrote real letters, in a carefully drafted language, with a lot of wit and humor. They were full of precisely described details, and told what was going on in the family, with the mill, in the village, at work, in German politics. Mostly I was too lazy to write back and phoned instead. I will miss this often hour long conversations.

Klemm will be dearly missed by all who knew her.

Here’s what KSJ alumni are writing, a compendium by Federico Kukso (’16):

Anil Ananthaswamy (‘20): “Is Our Universe a Hologram? Physicists Debate Famous Idea on Its 25th Anniversary,” Scientific American.

Pam Belluck (‘08): “The Father of the Abortion Pill,” New York Times.

Bethany Brookshire (’20): “In mice, anxiety isn’t all in the head. It can start in the heart,” Science News.

Kimani Chege (’09): “Can plastic bricks pave a road out of Kenya’s plastic waste problem?” Unbias the News.

Zack Colman (’16): “US, EU search for climate truce — and a united front against China,” Politico (with Karl Mathiesen).

Isabella Cueto (’21): “‘That is my dream’: Scientist who uncovered likely leading cause of MS wants to tackle ALS next,” STAT.

Herton Escobar (‘07): “Chagas disease shaped the genome of native peoples of the Amazon,” Jornal da USP (in Portuguese).

Dan Falk (‘12): “Scientists Attempt to Map the Multiverse,” Discovery.

Andrada Fiscutean (‘20): “Cybersecurity in wartime: how Ukraine’s infosec community is coping,” CSO.

Amanda Gefter (‘13): “What Plants Are Saying About Us,” Nautilus.

Virginia Gewin (‘22): “How a dangerous stew of air pollution is choking the United States,” Nature.

Rachel E. Gross (‘19): “Please Don’t Call My Cervix Incompetent,” The Atlantic.

Melanie Kaplan (‘22): “Coprolite Happens,” National Parks Conservation Association.

Eli Kintisch (‘12): “How is artificial intelligence changing education?” Scripps News. (with Maya Rodriguez)

Federico Kukso (‘16): “Living and dying online: the Internet has forever changed our relationship with death,” Agencia Sinc (in Spanish).

Lynda Mapes (‘14): “Salmon Parks: Inside a movement to conserve Pacific Northwest old growth,” Seattle Times (with Erika Schultz, Lauren Frohne).

Usha Lee McFarling (‘93): “National Academies calls for transforming use of racial and ethnic labels in genetics research,” STAT.

Lourdes Medrano (’21): “The deep roots of Mexico’s trade dispute with U.S. over GMO corn,” Food & Environment Reporting Network.

John Muchangi (‘13): “Dangerous new malaria parasite discovered in Kenya,” The Star.

Valeria Román (‘06): “For the first time, a superbacteria resistant to 30 antibiotics was detected in patients in Argentina,” Infobae (in Spanish).

Fabio Turone (‘17): “Sapienza to lead ‘digital twins for health’ project,” Research Professional News.

Jared Whitlock (‘22): “Rare disease trials can’t find enough patients. It’s forcing the FDA to rethink its approach” Endpoints News (subscription required).

Eva Wolfangel (‘20): “In bad company: Tens of thousands are on the US terror lists and are not allowed to enter the country,” Die Zeitgeist (in German, with Kai Biermann).

by Elizabeth Gamillo / March 15th 2023 / KSJ News & Events

KSJ Alum Bethany Brookshire Shares the Backstory Behind ‘Pests’

Bethany Brookshire can recall planting tomato seeds in her garden one spring, with the full intention of harvesting them for a beautiful pasta sauce or a salad. And she can recall her arch nemesis, a scheming and slick squirrel she refers to as F***ing Kevin, taking a bite out of each one before they ever made it to her plate.

Some might look at F***ing Kevin and see a mere garden pest. For Brookshire, a former Knight Science Journalism fellow, the rodent was the inspiration for her debut book, “Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains.”

Rats, pigeons, mice, snakes, deer, coyotes and sparrows are just a few of the pesky creatures that make up the book’s cast of characters. Split into five major sections, “Pests” takes readers on a journey from the Karni Mata Temple in India, where rats are worshipped, to python hunts in the everglades of Florida, where snakes are killed as soon as caught. It is as much about what our relationships with pests can tell us about ourselves as it is about the maligned animals themselves. “They are a reflection of who we are [and] what we want,” Brookshire told an audience of Knight Science Journalism Fellows and guests in a seminar at the KSJ offices in February.

At the event, Brookshire gave the audience an insider’s look at the structural and stylistic choices she made in writing the book, from the book’s five-part structure, which she calls “The Daisy,” to the technical tricks she deployed to ensure the book would be briskly paced. Inspired by Michael Pollan and his book, “The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World,” Brookshire said carefully mapped the rising and falling of the narrative before ever striking the keyboard, alternating between heavier and lighter material to make sure the narrative didn’t sag like soggy clothes on a flimsy clothesline.

Late in the talk, Brookshire turned to the topic of the anxieties that can weigh on writers when they compare themselves to their peers. She has come to think of science writers like blacksmiths, she said: Some blacksmiths create intricate iron fences, others create breathtaking sculptures, and others forge swords.

“I make horseshoes,” she said, drawing a round of laughter. “But it’s a damn good horseshoe.”

The message in the metaphor, Brookshire explained, was that writers should take pride in writing in their own unique way, and avoid measuring their successes by others’ accomplishments.

Said Brookshire, “Know yourself, not who you wish you were.”

Elizabeth Gamillo is a student in the MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing. She was previously a daily correspondent for Smithsonian and wrote for Science magazine as their 2018 AAAS Diverse Voices in Science Journalism Intern.

by Knight Science Journalism / December 21st 2022 / Alumni News

Alumni Notes: Books, Books, and More Books (and Awards!)

This October, Erich Hoyt (’86) published his latest book, “Planktonia: The nightly migration of the ocean’s smallest creatures.” Hoyt describes it as a story of “pioneer researchers, citizen scientists and diver-photographers who venture in the middle of the night into the open ocean to try to capture this great vertical migration that happens all over the ocean.”

The large format book, published by Firefly books, displays a carefully curated selection of about 150 state-of-the-art, high resolution macro-photographic images, many of creatures never photographed before and some previously unknown to science, says Hoyt. “The planktonic larval forms are subject to different evolutionary pressures and looking nothing like the adults they will become.”

Excerpts from Planktonia were published in the October issue of Natural History Magazine and in Geographical magazine, and the book was recently selected by BBC Wildlife as one of the best popular science books on marine and coastal wildlife.

Hoyt lives in Dorset, England, where he is research fellow with Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC) and co-chairs the IUCN Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force which works with scientists to Important Marine Mammal Areas.

In other book news, Jason Bittel (‘21) has inked a deal to write a “Sort of Funny Field Guide,” described by Publishers Marketplace as a “wry take on the traditional field guide, featuring the secret lives and oddball behaviors of iconic North American species from the lightning bug to the bison.” The book is slated to be published in spring 2025 by National Geographic.

The deal comes on the heels of Bittel publishing a children’s book, “Animals Lost and Found: Stories of Extinction, Conservation, and Survival,” with DK/Penguin. “It’s about extinct, endangered, rediscovered, and recovering species,” said Bittel, “and is meant for ages 7 and up.” Illustrated by Jonathan Woodward, the book teaches kids “about how natural and unnatural extinction relates to the world we live in today, in a clear and easy way.”

The debut book from Kathleen McLaughlin ( ’15), “Blood Money: The Story of Life, Death, and Profit Inside America’s Blood Industry,” will hit bookshelves this January, courtesy of Simon & Schuster. On Twitter, McLaughlin described the book as a personal story about “the economic precarity that drives millions of people to sell their blood in the U.S., and how that giant pool flows around the world.”

Wrote McLaughlin, “The most surprising thing in all this reporting over the course of several years? When I tell you it’s millions of people who sell their blood in America, I’m not exaggerating. Millions.”

“Blood Money” is currently available for preorder.

Roberta Kwok (’21) has signed a deal with Sourcebooks to publish her first book, “Minutiae: The Tiny Details That Scientists Pursue to Illuminate Big Questions.” Kwok developed the proposal for the book during her time as a KSJ Project Fellow. Publishers Marketplace describes it as a book that will reveal “the unseen labor behind scientific progress, focusing not on the results of research often seen in the news but on the painstaking and messy process of obtaining them.”

Aleszu Bajak (‘14) took home the National Press Foundation’s 2022 Innovative Storytelling Award, along with collaborator Ramon Padilla, for their USA Today story, “‘Hope’ is out, ‘fight’ is in,” which revealed trends in congressional partisanship on Twitter. From the foundation’s press release, “Bajak analyzed more than 2.8 million Tweets from members of Congress to create an engrossing interactive report on the rise of partisanship on Twitter since 2011.”

For Bajak, the honor marks a successful close to his stint as a senior data reporter at the storied newspaper. In TK, he left that post to become director of data visualization at the Urban institute.

Ambiental, the Brazilian news startup founded by former KSJ fellow Thiago Medaglia (’20), won yet another grant from the Google News Initiative, this one as part of the Innovation Challenge program. The new funding will allow Medaglia and his colleagues to pursue a project to create a web app that will provide environmental data on the Amazon to Brazilian journalists.

“Ambiental Media will use the web app to publish our own Amazon-wide analyses, such as the Amazon Water Impact Index, and to document new APIs for accessing our data,” writes Medaglia. “We will also democratize access to existing information, by fact-checking and hosting the most trustworthy environmental datasets, including international datasets that could be relevant to our national context, like satellite data.”

The announcement caps a successful year that saw Ambiental bring home several journalism awards, including Open Knowledge Brasil’s Cláudio Weber Data Journalism Award and third place in the data visualization category of the World Association of News Publishers’ Digital Media Awards.

Tasmiha Khan (‘22) was selected as one of 15 Ferris – UC Berkeley Psychedelic Journalism Fellows. The fellowship offers $10,000 reporting grants to journalists reporting in-depth print and audio stories on the science, policy, business and culture of psychedelics. Tasmiha is working on a story about psychedelics and American Muslims.

Here’s what other alumni are writing, a compendium from Federico Kukso (‘16):

Jared Whitlock (‘22): “Father starts lab after intellectual property issues stymie rare disease drug development”; “A biotech paused a gene therapy hatched by families. Now they want control,” Endpoints News.

Andrada Fiscutean (‘20): “3 ways China’s access to TikTok data is a security risk,” CSO.

Pakinam Amer (‘19): “‘Chatty Turtles’ Flip the Script on the Evolutionary Origins of Vocalization in Animals,” Scientific American.

Teresa Carr (‘18): “Researchers Ask: Does Enforcing Civility Stifle Online Debate?” Undark.

Fabio Turone (‘17): “Italy’s researchers fear ministry merger,” Research Professional News.

Federico Kukso (’16): “How truffles took root around the world,” Knowable Magazine.

Betsy Mason (’16): “Shy Raccoons Are Better Learners Than Bold Ones, Study Finds,” The New York Times.

Olga Dobrovidova (‘15): “In disrupted Russian academy election, researchers find signs of state meddling,” Science.

Giovana Girardi (‘15): “For the Amazon, Bolsonaro’s government had the devastating effect of an El Niño,” Piauí (in Portuguese).

Maryn McKenna (‘14): “The UK Is Enduring an Onslaught of Scarlet Fever. Is the US Next?” Wired.

Yves Sciama (‘14): “‘Frankenviruses’ at the heart of the debates, after the emergence of Covid-19,” Le Monde (in French).

Pablo Correa (‘13): “A new history for the tropical forests of the Americas,” Knowable Magazine.

Daniela Hirschfeld (‘11): “The two sides of the science coin,” Montevideo Portal (in Spanish).

Valeria Román (‘06): “When did humans populate South America? A study opens the door to a new hypothesis,” Infobae (in Spanish).

Annalee Newitz (‘03): “Why the tech apocalypse of 2022 was largely a good thing,” New Scientist.

Robin Lloyd (‘99): “A Growing Drinking Water Crisis Threatens American Cities and Towns,” Scientific American.

Usha Lee McFarliing (‘93): “On the Texas-Mexico border, a bold plan to diversify Alzheimer’s research takes shape,” STAT.

by Knight Science Journalism / September 7th 2022 / Alumni News

Alumni Notes: A Media Start-Up Soars, ‘Pests’ Get Their Due

Ambiental, the Brazilian media start-up company founded by former Knight Science Journalism Fellow Thiago Medaglia (’20), has established a reputation for producing captivating data visualizations, interactive infographics, and rigorous science journalism investigations. But in recent months, Medaglia and his team have been on an especially impressive run.

In July, Ambiental’s data-driven reported feature “Amazonia: The Water Rainforest,” which charts the impacts that predatory human activities are having on the Amazon’s aquatic ecosystems, won not one but two top honors in the World Association of News Publishers’ Latin America Digital Media Awards. The piece was named best data visualization in both the small newsroom and general categories. The dual recognitions are “extremely exciting,” says Medaglia, who notes that Ambiental spent months working with a researcher from Sao Paulo University to develop a new “Amazon Water Impact Index” for the project. The original reporting made national news in Brazil and was also republished in English by Mongabay.

Last month, Ambiental earned yet another major recognition. The company was one of 16 Brazilian media outlets selected for the Google News Initiative Startups Lab, a program that seeks to help new media companies innovate and develop more inclusive and sustainable business models . Medaglia sees it as an opportunity to develop a sustainable business plan that will allow Ambiental to generate more frequent content, grow its audience, and increase its impact. “In my opinion, science journalism startups like Ambiental Media need to incorporate the ‘spirit’ of tech startups: ‘Think’ product, solve problems, serve a community or group that will be willing to pay for what you have to offer,” says Medaglia. “All that, of course, as a way to sustain a high quality journalistic operation.”

To top it all off, an infographic that Ambiental developed with Brazilian startup Grande Circular and National Geographic, called “Igapó, the forest made of water,” recently won a 2022 Latin American Design Award. Says Medaglia, “We couldn’t be more thrilled!”

The debut book from Bethany Brookshire (‘20), “Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains,” is set to hit bookshelves on 6 December. Published by Harper Collins’ Ecco imprint, the book sprang from research Brookshire carried out during her Knight Science Journalism Fellowship. It is described as “an engrossing and revealing study of why we deem certain animals ‘pests’ and others not — from cats to rats, elephants to pigeons — and what this tells us about our own perceptions, beliefs, and actions, as well as our place in the natural world.”

“It’s not a compendium of animals we hate,” writes Brookshire. “Instead, it’s about us. When animals annoy us, when we call an animal a pest, what does it say about us?”

“Pests” is available for pre-order now. Find more details here.

Tasmiha Khan (’22) has been named a recipient of the Pulitzer Center’s 2022-23 Richard C. Longworth Media Fellowships. The program provides $10,000 annually to support international reporting by Chicago and Midwestern journalists. For her project, Khan will report on religious communities in the Midwest and South Asia, looking at how the expression of religious faith in immigrant communities is influenced by their families back home. Khan is the recipient of one of just two fellowships awarded this year; the other went to a team of journalists from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

In KSJ career moves…

After more than two years as The World’s global health reporter, covering the pandemic, health equity, and more, Elana Gordon (’19) is now joining The Washington Post as an audio producer. She’ll be part of the team working to grow the outlet’s daily podcast, “Post Reports.”

After an award-winning stint as a reporter at Nature, Amy Maxmen (‘21) is leaving to take a position as a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her parting feature at Nature, like so many of the stories she’s reported over the years, tackles one of the biggest questions in infectious disease policy: Why does a global inequality in the distribution of life-saving drugs and vaccines persist? “The Radical Plan for Vaccine Equity” traces that imbalance to its colonial beginnings, explores how it has become entrenched with new policies and practices, and describes a new initiative aimed at leveling the playing field.

Here’s what other alumni are writing, a compendium from Federico Kukso (’16):

Melanie Kaplan (’22): “4,000 beagles just got a gift from the Justice Department,” CNN.

Julia Rosen (’22): “Trees Are Overrated,” The Atlantic.

Jared Whitlock (’22): “Nursing home chain’s tangled corporate structure and bankruptcy threats stymied litigation,” STAT; “An MIT professor’s rare disease quest ripples throughout biotech,” Endpoints (Subscription required).

Anil Ananthaswamy (‘20): “Self-Taught AI Shows Similarities to How the Brain Works,” Quanta.

Andrada Fiscutean (‘20): “Romania’s communist-era abortion ban harmed hundreds of thousands of children. Is history repeating itself?” GRID.

Teresa Carr (‘18): “Researchers Ask: Does Enforcing Civility Stifle Online Debate?” Undark.

Jane Qiu (‘18): “Debate deepens over Wuhan wet market’s role in kickstarting the pandemic,” National Geographic.

Federico Kukso (‘16): “What if your dog could live a hundred years?” Agencia SINC (in Spanish).

Betsy Mason (’16): “Spiders Seem to Have REM-like Sleep and May Even Dream,” Scientific American.

Rod McCullom (’16): “Has the BLM Movement Influenced Police Use of Lethal Force?” Undark.

Olga Dobrovidova (‘15): “Russian scientist facing treason charges dies in custody,” Science.

Dan Falk (‘12): “When Will the Next Supernova in Our Galaxy Occur?” Smithsonian Magazine.

Pam Belluck (’08): “Abortion Pill Providers Experiment with Ways to Broaden Access.” The New Work Times

Herton Escobar (‘07): “Falling Star: Brazil space research institute struggles for survival,” Science (with Sofia Moutinho).

Richard Friebe (‘07): “Satellite data shows algal blooms migrating down the river,”Der Tagesspiegel (in German).

Valeria Román (‘05): “The surprising relationship between diet and the appearance of multiple sclerosis,” Infobae (in Spanish).

Annalee Newitz (‘03): “What hackers get up to when left on an island in the Pacific,” New Scientist.

Clive Thompson (‘03): “When Coal First Arrived, Americans Said ‘No Thanks’,” Smithsonian Magazine.

by Knight Science Journalism / June 28th 2022 / Alumni News

Alumni Notes: A TED Talk, A Book Deal, Career Moves, and More

The TED conference, held annually in Vancouver, Canada, has become synonymous with bold, inspiring talks by the world’s foremost intellectuals. Among this year’s start-studded slate of speakers — which included such luminaries as former Vice President Al Gore, chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, and Olympic gold medalist Allyson Felix — was Knight Science Journalism’s very own Anil Ananthaswamy (’20).

During a session themed “Imagination,” Ananthaswamy spoke about how experiences of “altered selves” — such as schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, and foreign limb syndrome — can challenge our assumptions about the self. As the TED Blog reports:

“The self is a slippery subject, says science writer Anil Ananthaswamy. If you ask yourself, ‘Who am I?’ you’ll most likely answer in the form of a story. Yet people with Alzheimer’s disease lose the capacity to tell accurate stories about themselves, and still their sense of self remains. What about the body? Surely, our embodied selves are integral to who we are. But people with foreign limb syndrome often see their own body parts as horrendous and unfamiliar, and they retain a sense of self.”

In light of these and other diverse human experiences, Ananthaswamy called for empathy for people experiencing “altered selves,” the TED Blog reports.

The author of three books, Ananthaswamy is currently working on a book that will cover the mathematics of modern machine learning.

The film “Last Holdouts,” by Duy Linh Tu (’21) and Julian Lim, was named a finalist for a 2022 Covering Climate Now Journalism Award in the short feature video category. The video, which grew out of Tu’s work as a Knight Science Journalism Project Fellow, documents Louisiana’s Pointe-Au-Chien Indigenous community, who are at risk of losing their homeland to rising seas. Judges lauded the project, calling it a “cinematic portrait of the Pointe-Au-Chien Indigenous community.”

“Beautiful aerials and satellite photos reveal how much of the land has disappeared under the rising seas,” wrote the judges. “Intimate interviews with community members share the tribe’s connection to the land and the heartbreak of having to decide to stay, or to go.”

“Last Holdouts” was produced in partnership with Jeff DelViscio (’19) and Scientific American and was also supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. You can watch the full documentary short here.

In March, Angela Saini (’13) was named one of 12 spring fellows of the prestigious Logan Nonfiction Program. The fellowship supports nonfiction writers, filmmakers, photojournalists, and podcasters, providing workspace, mentoring, workshopping, and networking opportunities. For the first time in two years, the program hosted fellows in person at its campus in Rensselaerville, New York. Saini is currently at work on her fourth book, a sweeping history of the origins of patriarchy from the Neolithic onward, tentatively titled “The Patriarchs: In Search of the Origins of Male Domination.” The book is set to be published by HarperCollins UK in early 2023.

Lisa De Bode (’19) was nominated — along with her colleagues Jef Poppelmonde, Stijn Cools, and Maxie Eckert at De Standaard — for the Belfius Press Prize, Belgium’s most prestigious journalism award. The team was nominated for reporting that exposed 3M’s role in polluting local communities with a toxic chemical known as perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS. The award ceremony for the Belfius Prize will take place in June. [Update: On June 22nd, De Bode and her colleagues were announced as the winners of the Belfius Prize in the Print/Web category.]

Eva Wolfangel (’20) has inked a deal to write a new book, “Ein Falscher Klick: Hackern auf der Spur” (“A Wrong Click: On the trail of hackers”). From the publisher’s page:

“Hacked power plants, failed satellite communications, paralyzed hospitals: Cyberwar is spiraling out of control. This book explains in a gripping, understandable way and with many concrete examples the dangers of online crime that we are currently exposed to. Eva Wolfangel brings us to the scene of the action: we are there up close when hackers attack companies and individuals, accompany investigators on the search for clues and those affected in their attempts to limit the damage.”

“Ein Falscher Klick,” set to be published by Penguin Random House, is expected to appear in paperback in November of this year.

Melanie Kaplan (’22) was awarded a media fellowship at Vermont Law School, where she will be an animal law fellow. For two weeks, Kaplan will take a course on the Animal Welfare Act and have access to leading legal educators and experts at one of the nation’s top environmental law schools. Kaplan is currently working on a book about the use of animals in research, testing, and education.

Tasmiha Khan (’22) was named a fellow of the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism. As part of the fellowship, Khan will spend 8 months collaborating with the institute to create a toolkit for journalists covering Muslims and Islam in the media. “I want to change the narrative about Muslims in the media,” Khan said in the announcement released by the institute. “9/11 was more than 20 years ago, but it is still part of the public consciousness, and it’s not difficult to pick up a newspaper and find harmful language and stereotypes.”

Earlier this month, Khan was also named a member of the inaugural cohort of Altavoz Lab, a program affiliated with the National Association of Hispanic Journalists that seeks to strengthen reporting serving communities of color. The program’s first cohort includes seven reporters, each of who will be paired with a mentor to work on an accountability reporting project. Khan will be reporting for Chicago’s Borderless Magazine.

This summer, Aleszu Bajak (’14) will be a journalist in residence at the Complexity Science Hub Vienna, where he will be working on a project to “develop, select, and apply the most appropriate data science methods and social science questions to a self-collected dataset from U.S. 2022 election candidate messaging.” Bajak, a senior data reporter at USA Today, will be learning new methods and approaches from experts in network science, social science, and political communication.

And in other alumni career moves… Jared Whitlock (’22) has been hired as features editor of Endpoints News, a leading outlet covering the biopharma sector… After a stint at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Emily Mullin (’22) will be joining Wired Magazine as a staff writer covering biotechnology… Tim De Chant (’19) is leaving Ars Technica to join Tech Crunch, as their senior climate writer covering climate and clean tech from the lab to the marketplace… Ashley Belanger (’21) has joined Ars Technica as senior technology reporter, innovation, where she’ll be covering tech policy news.

Here’s what other alumni are writing, a compendium from Federico Kukso:

Jason Bittel (’21): “The Shakespearean Tall Tale That Shaped How We See Starlings,” The New York Times.

Andrada Fiscutean (’20): “Conflict Complicates Energy Policy Shift in Eastern Europe,” Foreign Policy (with Ashira Morris); “Ukrainian tractors vs. Russian tanks: The hundred-year history behind the meme,” GRID.

Maryn McKenna (’14): “The Post-Roe Battleground for Abortion Pills Will Be Your Mailbox,” Wired.

Herton Escobar (’07): “Scientists complete global list of endangered reptiles,” Jornal da USP (in Portuguese).

Federico Kukso (’16): “Steve Brusatte, science advisor for ‘Jurassic World Dominion’: ‘If the dinosaurs became extinct during a period of climate change, the same thing can happen to us’,” Agencia SINC (in Spanish).

Valeria Román (’05): “‘We warned that the cases could grow, but we did not think it would be so immediate,’ said the expert who warned about the monkeypox outbreak,” Infobae (in Spanish).

Sujata Gupta (’18): “How having health care workers handle nonviolent police calls may impact crime,” Science News.

Teresa Carr (’18): “For Online News Association, the Thorny Ethics of Partnering with 3M,” Undark.

Zack Colman (’16): “Climate goes missing in action in Russia’s war,” POLITICO (with Karl Mathiesen and Zia Weise).

Yves Sciama (’14): “Gulf Stream: What if the North Atlantic Current stopped?” Science et Vie (in French).

Chris Mooney (’10): “A megafire raged for 3 months. No one’s on the hook for its emissions,” The Washington Post (with Amanda Coletta, Brady Dennis, Naema Ahmed and John Muyskens).

Teresa Firmino (’09) and Aline Flor: “Luís Ceríaco, explorer of nature and history of science,” Publico (in Portuguese).

Richard Friebe (’07): “How contagious is the pathogen? What we do and don’t know about monkeypox,” Der Tagesspiegel (in German).

by Shafaq Zia / April 29th 2022 / Alumni News

With ‘Vagina Obscura,’ KSJ Alum Rachel Gross Rewrites the Narrative of the Female Anatomy

How much do we really know about the vagina? In her book, “Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage,” published last month by W. W. Norton, former Knight Science Journalism (KSJ) Fellow Rachel E. Gross makes a compelling case that we don’t know nearly as much as we should.

“Vagina Obscura” is, in many ways, a corrective to that knowledge gap, laying bare the vast disparity between our understanding of the male and the female anatomy. In medicine, the male anatomy has long been used as a standard to understand all bodies. As Gross writes, it was only about 30 years ago that the federal government, pressured by the women’s health movement, required researchers to include women and minorities in clinical research. The female body is still shrouded in mystery because science, a profession that historically excluded women from its ranks, has neglected to ask questions about it.

For her book, Gross set out to ask those questions. She spoke with scientists like Marci Bowers — the first trans women to perform gender affirmation surgery and an innovator who has elevated this science to an artform that helps create beautiful and sensitive vaginas and vulvas. Gross challenged science’s assumptions and biases and told deeply personal stories of scientists who are at the forefront of the shift in the way we think about female anatomy.

KSJ recently spoke with Gross about the inspiration behind her new book, and about the challenges of covering a sensitive, complex topic that scientists still know relatively little about. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

KSJ@MIT: When did you first start thinking about the lack of science on women’s bodies?

Rachel E. Gross: I was the digital science editor for Smithsonian Magazine in 2018, and I was doing a lot of coverage around women in science. I had launched a column on unsung women who shaped science and the history of science. At the same time, I was covering a lot of reproductive health, reproductive biology, and animal sex. And I started to realize that there was an intersection between these two areas of coverage, where there was clearly this dearth of women in the history of science. And once they got into the field, they were asking all these new questions that nobody had thought to ask. Meanwhile, on the reproductive biology and health side, it was clearly behind in many ways and we were still learning this very basic science [of female anatomy], and so I realized that the two things were part of the same problem: The lack of good science on women’s bodies had a lot to do with the lack of women in the history of science.

I like to talk about my body and other bodies. And I definitely like to talk about topics that make other people uncomfortable, which — unfortunately — includes vaginas.

KSJ: Why are you personally drawn to this issue?

RG: I’m the daughter of scientists. My mom is a medical doctor, my dad’s a theoretical physicist, and my step-mom’s a molecular geneticist. So I’ve always been very outspoken, nerdy, and shameless. I like to talk about my body and other bodies. And I definitely like to talk about topics that make other people uncomfortable, which — unfortunately — includes vaginas. So I do think that made me the right person to try and illuminate some of these issues that people get really squeamish about and don’t want to talk directly about.

KSJ: Your book is about the inclusion of female bodies in science. How did you make this book inclusive for people who do not identify with the gender binary?

RG: It did start out as a book about the science of vaginas. But it quickly became apparent that I was talking about a larger constellation of body parts—what we might call the sexual and the reproductive system. And there are so many types of people with so many types of bodies who have these body parts, who resonate with these stories, and who are also part of this narrative. Trans-men, trans-women, non-binary people, intersex people, all of these groups came into the story at some point, and it was really important to me that they felt themselves reflected in its pages. So it really became more about looking at all bodies through the lens of what we’ve historically thought of as a female body.

For instance, there’s a whole chapter on the the history of gender affirmation surgery, and it’s about how a growing understanding of male and female anatomy — and really all the shared anatomy between them — is pushing the advancement of gender affirmation surgery and the surgical creation of vaginas that are aesthetically pleasing, feel pleasure, and have the same sensory qualities as any other vagina. I also talk a lot about the history of endometriosis and how historically it has been seen as a disease that affects career minded, neurotic white women who aren’t having children. And so I made a lot of effort to include how the experience is different for Black and Brown women and for trans-men who have endometriosis, and the stereotyping that affects diagnosis and treatment.

KSJ: What were some of the biggest challenges you faced while reporting on this issue?

RG: Well, there were a lot of challenges. I set a really broad mandate for myself in trying to cover most of the organs in the female reproductive system. Each chapter is essentially an entirely different field of science. So it’s not just anatomy, it’s the science of hormones, bioengineering, micro-dissection, and surgery. And having to wrap my head around each of these fields was massively challenging.

Another huge challenge is that, as the title suggests, there is a huge dearth of knowledge about the body parts I’m talking about. So to write a book on the science that we know about these body parts was always going to be difficult. It actually turned out that one of the hardest chapters to structure was the vagina chapter, which was completely ironic because, again, this book was about the science of vaginas, and vaginas are very central [to the book] in more ways than one. I assumed that would actually kind of be the easy chapter… but it turns out that all these very basic questions I had about vagina science have not been answered by anyone. So things as basic as what is the size and shape of the vagina? What is the spectrum of vagina shapes and sizes? How does the vagina change as we age, hit puberty, give birth?

KSJ: What was the most rewarding experience in this process?

RG: Oh my gosh. It’s already been so rewarding. I don’t even know where to start. I have a small example. Patty Brennan, the animal vagina researcher, we’d been talking for a year over zoom because of the pandemic. Together, we spent so many hours delving into her childhood in an all-girls Catholic school in Columbia and how she first came across duck penises and got so involved in illuminating female genitalia and the experiences she’d had with older male colleagues who were so taken aback by her work. So we had all these like really intimate conversations, but I’d never met her. And just as I finished the book and the pandemic restrictions lifted, I was able to go visit her in person at Mount Holyoke University and we dissected some snake vaginas together. So, I got to actually connect with her in person and see her lab, which is fantastic and full of vaginas and clitorises, and have this experience with her. And I just felt that it kind of made the experience [of writing the book] feel so much more whole and complete for me. It also made me more confident in my reporting, in that I had captured the essence of what drives her in her work and what she’s trying to do.

KSJ: Why did you choose to call your book “Vagina Obscura”?

RG: I’ve always been fascinated by the camera obscura. So these are the early pinhole cameras that will take an image and project it onto a wall. But in doing so, it kind of distorts the image. It gets a lot dimmer and it’s often turned upside down. And I always thought that was really interesting because it’s doing something really important. It is capturing and reflecting the outside world in a way that wasn’t possible before the advent of this technology. But it’s still giving you a very specific lens, a narrow lens, that is kind of blocking out other interpretations and other ways of seeing the same world. And that’s how I saw early anatomists mapping the female body. They absolutely gathered information and came up with names that help us talk about these parts and think of them concretely. But what’s often overlooked is that they came from this specific narrow viewpoint. There is so much more to learn and to know about this landscape. And it took new types of thinkers and explorers to reveal that and to kind of broaden out this pinhole camera to full, wide-lens perspective.

Shafaq Zia is a research associate with the Knight Science Journalism Program and a student in the MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing.