alumni notes

A trio of KSJ alumni took home honors in the National Association of Science Writer’s Science and Society awards, announced earlier this week. Maryn McKenna (2013-14) won in the Book category for Big Chicken, which tells the eye-opening story of how antibiotics birthed modern agriculture and revolutionized the way we eat. Judges called it a “meticulously researched and beautifully written volume.”

Hillary Rosner (2010-11) and Rod McCullom (2015-16) were finalists in the Commentary and Opinion category. Rosner was cited for her New York Times piece, “The Climate Lab That Sits Empty,” an insightful rebuke of proposed funding cutbacks to greenhouse gas monitoring. McCullom was honored for his Undark essay “Facial Recognition Technology Is Both Biased and Understudied,” which sounded the alarm on the use of the poorly understood — and racially biased — technology in law enforcement.

Congratulations all around!

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For the past several years, Marcia Bartusiak (1994-95) has been writing a column for Natural History magazine that combines two of her loves – cutting edge astrophysics and the history of astronomy. Her latest book, Dispatches from Planet 3, published this month, puts all those stories in one place. Each chapter stands alone, allowing the reader to wander from our solar system out to the Big Bang.

Bartusiak’s armchair investigations whisked her off in spirit to exotic locales: from ancient Mars, when liquid water once flowed freely on its surface, to the tiniest speck of cosmic real estate, where space and time allegedly come unglued. “I’d take a current discovery and dip into the archives to provide its backstory,” she says. “The controversial demotion of Pluto, for example, reminded me when another solar system member was similarly downgraded in the 19th century.”

Bartusiak says the biggest thrill of assembling the book — her seventh so far — was finding the appreciable number of women she had portrayed over the years. “Lo and behold, there they were: Vera Rubin brings dark matter to the forefront of astronomical concerns; Jocelyn Bell keenly spots a bizarre new star; Henrietta Leavitt ingeniously devises a revolutionary cosmic yardstick. Many of the names are not found in textbooks, so it was gratifying to bring them into the spotlight.”

The week of its publication, Dispatches from Planet 3 topped the list of new releases in astronomy on Amazon.com.

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Ask multimedia reporter Ibby Caputo (2014-15) how she spent her fellowship year in Cambridge, and she’ll tell you about memorable classes on women, leadership, and the behavioral science of negotiation. As it turns out, that course load sowed the seed for her newly released audio documentary, “More Than Paper Cuts,” about gender discrimination in the workplace. The piece is part five of the Scene on Radio podcast series “MEN,” an exploration of patriarchy, sexism and misogyny out of Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies.

“I’ve worked with Scene on Radio’s John Biewen before,” Caputo says, “and after he told me he was working on a series exploring patriarchy, we started a robust email exchange on the subject, which led to my pitch.” Caputo says her goal for the documentary was to include stories of subtle and explicit gender discrimination from as many women as possible—from the farm to Silicon Valley. “I included one of my own stories as well—the life experience that propelled me to study and report on the problem in the first place.”

Caputo is currently working on a sexual harassment story for PRI’s The World, and her piece on a Hiroshima survivor who spent his life searching for families of American POWs aired at The World in August.

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Anja Krieger (2015-16) is finally getting to do what she always wanted: make her own podcast on plastic pollution. Krieger, a veteran radio reporter, describes her Plastisphere podcast as a research and interview project on our relationship to plastic, the pollution it causes, and where it will all go in the future. Episodes will explore waste management in Vietnam, ocean cleanup, a trash intercepting device that became a social media star, and more. Listen to the first two episodes here, or subscribe at iTunes.

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And in other alumni news …

Lila Guterman (2006-07) joined Science as Deputy News Editor this month.

Marjorie Kruvand (1987-88) contributed a chapter, “Journalists, Expert Sources and Ethical Issues in Science Communication,” to the book Ethics and Practice in Science Communication.

Mićo Tatalović (2017-18) took over as Nature‘s Europe News Editor in London.

Esther Nakkazi (2007-08) began contributing to The Lancet.

Judy Foreman (1989-90) submitted her third book, on the science of aging and physical activity, to her publisher, Oxford U. Press. She’s now working on a novel!

Here’s what alumni are writing: a compendium from Federico Kukso (2015-16).

Debbie Ponchner (2003-04): “Rescuing Ancient Art from Microbes,” Scientific American.

Lauren Whaley (2016-17): “The hidden social factors driving disparities in childhood cancer survival rates,” Center for Health Journalism.

Marcin Rotkiewicz (2008-09). “Judgment for gene editing,” Polityka (in Polish).

Federico Kukso (2015-16): “Carlo Rovelli: ‘Ignoring science in political and social decisions leads to disaster’,” La Nación (in Spanish).

Ángela Posada-Swafford (2000-01): “Underwater mining: a race to the abyss,” El Tiempo (in Spanish).

Ehsan Masood (2017-18): “The battle for the soul of biodiversity,” Nature.

Zack Colman (2015-16): “Trump kills climate plan, then celebrates with coal miners,” E&E News.

Giovana Girardi (2014-15): “,” Estadao, (in Portuguese).

Sasha Chapman (2015-16): “Can you get meat without dead animals? Why farmers are wrong to say no,” New Scientist (subscription required).

Mark Harris (2013-14): “Ready for liftoff? Two flying taxi startups got Pentagon funding,” The Guardian.

Cynthia Graber (2012-13): “How Jell-O Got Its Bounce,” The Atlantic.

Eli Kintisch (2011-12): “Project lifts the veil on life in the ocean’s twilight zone,” Science.

Chris Mooney (2009-10): “Sea level rise is eroding home value, and owners might not even know it,” The Washington Post.

Valeria Román (2004-05): “The era of rejection of ultra-thin silhouettes: XS bodies arouse concern and not enchantment in social networks,” Infobae (in Spanish). Rachel Zimmerman (2008-09) “How soon after widowhood can you feel good again?” The Cut, and “Picking up the pieces as a newly single mother,” Vogue.

A collaboration about a collaboration: Pagan Kennedy, left, and Karen Brown.

“The Great God of Depression,” the gripping story of the improbable collaboration between a brain scientist and an acclaimed author to come to terms with their shared mental illness, is a five-part podcast that can be found at Radiotopia’s Showcase page (or wherever you get your podcasts).

The series is itself a collaboration between two KSJ alumnae: Pagan Kennedy (2010-11), the main writer and narrator; and Karen Brown (2012-13), producer and editor. Here’s Karen’s account of how the story came together:

“Pagan and I met at a Knight-MIT food boot camp during her fellowship year, and then stayed in touch through my fellowship year and beyond. Pagan is a print journalist, nonfiction book author, and occasional novelist, while I’m mostly a radio reporter and audio documentarian. But I’ve done a lot of print freelancing and she is a voracious audio consumer. So it seemed natural that we’d eventually stumble on a joint project that would make use of our complementary skills and interests: a long-form narrative podcast.

“Pagan came up with the story idea itself, based on the experience of a neurologist in her book group named Alice Flaherty. Alice was a newly minted doctor at Mass General in 2004 when William Styron became her patient; he was suffering from a depression relapse, 15 years after the episode he wrote about in ‘Darkness Visible’ [a memoir that became the classic book about depression]. At the time, Alice was herself recovering from a psychotic break, sparked by the devastating loss of a twin pregnancy. Styron and Alice developed an intense friendship and doctor-patient relationship that lasted until Styron’s death from pneumonia in 2006. Before he died, Styron gave Alice permission to talk and write about his case publicly. As she never got around to publishing the story herself, she decided to trust Pagan with it — and fully participated in the podcast.

“When Pagan asked if I wanted to collaborate on the project as the audio expert, I was thrilled. We put together a podcast proposal to shop around different audio networks, and got a hit with Radiotopia at PRX; we signed a contract with the Radiotopia Showcase series. The executive producer put us in touch with a sound designer and studio assistants.

“From that point, we gathered archival sound of Styron and doing interviews with his surviving family, professional connections, and others to weigh in on the intersection of creativity and depression and Styron’s legacy around the stigma of mental illness.”

Karen is a longtime public radio reporter, print journalist, essayist, and audio documentarian, with a specialty in mental health issues. In addition to two decades at New England Public Radio, she has contributed to NPR, The New York Times, American RadioWorks, and other national outlets. Besides “The Great God of Depression,” her recent work has focused on the biology of stress and resilience, trauma-informed communities, and dying well.

Pagan is a contributing writer at The New York Times and the author of 11 books. She has been a columnist for the The New York Times Magazine, The Boston Globe, and The Village Voice.  She has won numerous awards including an NEA fellowship, a Smithsonian fellowship, and two Massachusetts Cultural Council fellowships.

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Rebecca Perry (2001-02) has been awarded a 2018-19 Fellowship in Aerospace History from the Society for the History of Technology and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

“Energized after the Knight fellowship,” she writes, “I entered MIT’s program in History | Anthropology | Science, Technology, and Society, and in 2014 received a Ph.D. in the history of technology, with a focus on the history of computing and computer graphics.” A researcher at the University of Virginia, she’s writing a book on computer graphics researchers at NASA/JPL, and co-editing The Handbook of the History of Technology for Oxford University Press.

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Here’s what alumni are writing: a compendium from Federico Kukso (2015-16).

Aleszu Bajak (2013-14): “The Dangerous Belief That Extreme Technology Will Fix Climate Change,” HuffPost.

Dan Falk (2011-12): “Why Some Scientists Say Physics Has Gone Off the Rails,” NBC News; “Enrico Fermi and the Chain Reaction That Changed Everything,” Undark.

Teresa Firmino (2008-09): “Portuguese Physicist Advances Explanation For Two of the Great Mysteries of the Universe,” Publico (in Portuguese).

Gideon Gil (2014-15): “Pioneering Surgery Makes a Prosthetic Foot Feel Like the Real Thing,” STAT.

Courtney Humphries (2015-16): “The ‘Global Chemical Experiment,'” Harvard Magazine.

Sascha Karberg (2008-09): “Lucrative Prostheses: Kneeling in Front of the Shop,” Der Tagesspiegel (in German).

Eli Kintisch (2011-12): “Why Atlantic Fish Are Invading the Arctic,” Vox.

Federico Kukso (2015-16): “200 years of ‘Frankenstein’: A Myth That Reflects Very Current Fears,” La Nación (in Spanish).

George Musser (2014-15): “What Is Spacetime?” Nature.

Valeria Román (2004-05): “The Argentine Scientist Who Studied the Brain of Albert Einstein: ‘Geniuses Do Not Exist, We All Have Some Talent,’” Infobae (in Spanish).

Angela Saini (2012-13): “Racism Is Creeping Back Into Mainstream Science — We Have to Stop It,” The Guardian.

Fabio Turone (2016-17): “Italian Research ‘Condemned to Steer by Sight,’” Research Europe.

Lauren Whaley (2016-17): “Q&A: Dr. Emily Dossett on the Disturbing Lack of Mental Health Care for Moms in the Safety Net,” Center for Health Journalism.

Mark Wolverton (2016-17): “Before Launching Probes to Venus, NASA Had to Figure Out Exactly Where It Was,” Air & Space Magazine; “The General Is a Robot: Artificial Intelligence Goes to War,” Undark.