fellowships Archives - Knight Science Journalism @MIT

by Knight Science Journalism / August 5th 2021 / KSJ News & Events

Isabella Cueto Awarded First Annual Sharon Begley-STAT Science Reporting Fellowship

Via STAT (Media Contact: Olivia Durr | stat@skdknick.com)

Boston, MA (August 5, 2021) — STAT, the nation’s must-read health, science, and medicine publication, and the Knight Science Journalism Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), today announced Isabella Cueto as the first recipient of the Sharon Begley-STAT Science Reporting Fellowship. The nine-month fellowship was established earlier this year with the goal of diversifying the ranks of science and health journalists and fostering better coverage of science that is relevant to all people. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) is providing $225,000 to support the first two years of the program, named in honor of Begley, an award-winning science writer for STAT, who died in January 2021 at 64, from complications of lung cancer.

Ms. Cueto, a Cuban American journalist based in California, has worked as a reporter in South Florida, South Carolina, and California’s Bay Area. After graduating from the University of Miami, where she was editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, she worked at The State newspaper in Columbia, S.C., where she exposed secretive contractors’ gifts to local school officials, documented a mayor’s plagiarized speech, and investigated a toddler’s death from a head injury at daycare. After the police killing of George Floyd, she and a colleague led an initiative to change the way the newsroom covered crime. They reached out to criminal justice advocates, attorneys and vocal critics to learn how the newspaper’s reporting was contributing to injustice and made recommendations to top editors.

“I believe in the fellowship’s mission” to diversify journalism, she wrote in her application, “and I have tried to live it, bringing new voices into the fold at every stage of my career.”

Most recently, Ms. Cueto covered the impact of the COVID pandemic on health care employees and patients and their families, and in the process gained new appreciation for the importance of accurate and empathetic reporting about health and science.

“In her career thus far, Isabella’s in-depth reporting, leadership, and passion for her subjects has already made a positive impact on the world around her and makes her an ideal candidate to be our first fellow,” said Gideon Gil, a STAT managing editor. “We are thrilled to have her join the team and look forward to working with her in the months ahead.”

The nine-month fellowship is intended for early-career U.S. journalists from racial and ethnic groups underrepresented in the profession and will prepare them for a successful career in science journalism. It combines a paid reporting position at STAT with an educational component provided through the prestigious Knight Science Journalism program.

“We are delighted to welcome such a talented journalist as Isabella Cueto, the first Begley-STAT fellow, into our program and look forward to an exciting year ahead,” said Deborah Blum, director of the KSJ Program at MIT.

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, drug makers 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.

“I can visualize where I want to be — doing hard-hitting work that demonstrably improves the lives of those I cover,” Ms. Cueto wrote in her fellowship application. “The Begley-STAT fellowship would be the stepping stone I need to reach that next level and I can’t wait to get started on the work ahead.”

by Knight Science Journalism / July 26th 2021 / KSJ News & Events

Knight Science Journalism Program Names 2021-22 Project Fellows

The Knight Science Journalism Program (KSJ) is pleased to announce that it has selected a group of 21 distinguished science journalists for its 2021-22 project fellowship class — a cohort that ranges from award-winning freelance writers to staff reporters for outlets such as The Dallas Morning News, The New York Times, and MIT Technology Review.

It marks the second year that KSJ will offer the remote project fellowships, which were established in response to the unique challenges and public health concerns presented by the Covid-19 pandemic. The fellowships are designed to support journalists pursuing a diverse range of projects related to science, health, technology, and the environment. Each fellow will receive a stipend and a budget for project related expenses, as well as access to seminars, workshops, mentoring, and a large offering of online resources at MIT. (KSJ’s traditional in-person fellowships are expected to resume in the 2022-23 academic year.)

The newly selected fellows will pursue in-depth reporting projects probing issues such as globalization in the artificial intelligence industry, inequities in maternal health, animal lab testing, and environmental justice in the Deep South. “It’s an impressive array of projects that really embodies the multitude of ways our lives are touched by science.” said KSJ associate director Ashley Smart. “We’re proud to be able to support so much important work — and the talented journalists who are undertaking it.”

“The Knight Science Journalism Program is honored to contribute to the work being done by this talented group of science journalists,” said KSJ director Deborah Blum. “It’s a pleasure to see such innovative and insightful work across so many platforms – books, documentary films, podcasts, long-form investigative stories – all with such a promise of making a difference.”

Selected from a highly competitive pool of applicants, the 2021-22 fellowship class includes authors, reporters, documentary photographers, and multimedia journalists representing every time zone in the contiguous United States. Seven journalists will receive full-year fellowships supported by $40,000 stipends; fourteen will receive single semester fellowships supported by $20,000 stipends, with nine in the fall semester and five in the spring semester fellowships.

The Knight Science Journalism program, supported by a generous endowment from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, is recognized around the world as the premier mid-career fellowship program for science writers, editors, and multimedia journalists. The program’s goal is to foster professional growth among the world’s small but essential community of journalists covering science and technology, and encourage them to pursue that mission, first and foremost, in the public interest.

Since its founding in 1983, the program has hosted more than 350 fellows representing media outlets from The New York Times to Le Monde, from CNN to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and more. In addition to the fellowship program, KSJ publishes the award-winning digital magazine Undark and administers a national journalism prize, the Victor K. McElheny Award, honoring local and regional science reporting. KSJ’s academic home at MIT is the Department of Science, Technology and Society, which is part of the School of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences.

Below is a complete list of the 2021-22 KSJ Project Fellows.

Full-Year Project Fellows:

Jessica Camille Aguirre is an award-winning journalist and writer from California. She often covers climate, and is especially interested in how people make and experience extremes. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Harper’s Magazine, The New York Review of Books Daily, n+1 and many others. Aguirre will be researching and writing about the history of life support systems.

Rene Ebersole is an award-winning journalist specializing in investigative stories about science, health, and the environment. Ebersole has reported on six continents for publications ranging from National Geographic to Audubon magazine on topics including eel smuggling, health fraud, forensic science, and climate change to suspended animation, microbiomes, and Monsanto’s Big Tobacco moment. For her investigative project, Ebersole will examine the troubling legacy of junk science in the criminal justice system.

Lauren Gravitz is an award-winning, independent science journalist based in San Diego whose work has appeared in publications such as The Economist, The Washington Post, Nature, Aeon, and NPR. She writes about everything from cancer to car seats but is particularly interested in neuroscience and the brain, especially memory. For her project, she will be writing about the newly emerging science of forgetting – from molecular biology to cognitive science — and the vital role it plays in our everyday lives.

Karen Hao is the senior AI editor at MIT Technology Review, covering the field’s cutting-edge research and its impacts on society. Her work is regularly taught in universities, including Harvard, Stanford, and Yale, and cited in government reports and by Congress. For her fellowship project, Hao will investigate the global AI supply chain and how it often concentrates power into the hands of wealthy people, companies, and nations while leaving the less fortunate with little privacy, agency, or benefit.

Ferris Jabr is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and Scientific American. He has also written for The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Atlantic, Outside, Wired, Slate, and Foreign Policy, among other publications. Some of his work has been anthologized by the Best American Science and Nature Writing series. Currently, he is writing a book for Random House about the coevolution of Earth and life, which will be the focus of his KSJ fellowship.

Asha Stuart is a documentary filmmaker and photographer whose work focuses on sociocultural themes, with a focus on people living in marginalized communities and facing injustice in areas such as inequality, public health, and environmental threats. Her work has appeared on National Geographic, CNN, PBS, TIME, Politico, PBS, and many other news outlets. For her project, Stuart will undertake a documentary film project investigating the intersection of racial inequality and environmental injustice on African-American communities living in the deep south.

Emily Willingham is a science journalist and author of “Phallacy: Life Lessons From the Animal Penis” (Avery, 2020) and “The Tailored Brain: From Ketamine, to Keto, to Companionship, A User’s Guide to Feeling Better and Thinking Smarter” (Basic, 2021). Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Aeon and Undark, among others; she is a regular contributor to Scientific American and Medscape. She earned a PhD in biology and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in urology, both after taking a bachelor’s degree in English literature. Willingham’s project will focus on the science of adolescence.

Fall-Semester Fellows:

Nina Berman is a documentary photographer, filmmaker, author and professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Her books include “Purple Hearts – Back from Iraq,” (Trolley, 2004), “Homeland,” (Trolley, 2008) and “An autobiography of Miss Wish” (2017). Berman’s project, When the Jets Fly, is a multi-channel documentary film, photography and audio report investigating the environmental impact of USA military training focusing on Whidbey Island, WA, and the greater Puget Sound area.

Sam Bloch is a contributing writer at The Counter, where he covers business, environment and culture. He has written for The New York Times, L.A. Weekly, Places Journal, Bloomberg CityLab, and Art in America, among other publications. As a Knight Science Journalism fellow, he will be writing about shade, and its relationship to global warming and inequality, for a book to be published by Random House.

Virginia Gewin is a former soil scientist turned journalist. Based in Portland, Oregon, she writes about food security, land use, climate change, and biodiversity loss for a variety of publications, including Nature, Popular Science, Bloomberg, and Civil Eats. Her reporting has taken her to Malaysia, Peru, Iceland, Scotland, and all over the United States. Her MIT Knight Science Journalism fellowship project will focus on whether the United States is prepared for another Dust Bowl event.

Jeremy Hance is writer and freelance environmental journalist. He is the author of the 2020 award-winning travel memoir, “Baggage: Confessions of a Globe-Trotting Hypochondriac.” As a journalist, Hance cut his teeth at Mongabay as a lead writer and editor. A story on the Sumatran rhino for Mongabay was chosen for “Best American Science and Nature Writing” in 2019. Hance will be working on a book about the effort to save one of the world’s most endangered megafauna, the Sumatran rhino.

Melanie D.G. Kaplan is a freelance journalist in Washington, D.C. She writes about science, travel and animals and is a regular contributor to The Washington Post and National Parks Magazine. Kaplan will embark on a road trip with her beagle Hammy, who spent four years in a testing lab, to explore the use of dogs and other animals in testing across America—a journey that will take them to laboratories, universities, pharmaceutical companies and the homes of other former lab animals. She plans to share their story in a book.

Tasmiha Khan is a freelance writer from the Midwest. She champions marginalized communities, particularly the Muslim American population including women and children. Her work has appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times, Forbes, The Daily Beast, Vox, and VICE among others. Her project will be examining the science of ensuring cultural and religious competent care for pregnant and perinatal Muslim women.

Emily Mullin is an award-winning science journalist who writes about how biology is shaping our future. She’s held staff positions covering biotech at Medium’s OneZero and MIT Technology Review and her reporting has also appeared in The Washington Post, Scientific American and National Geographic. For her project, Mullin is working on a book on the quest to use animals as a source of organs for people who desperately need transplants.

Natasha Singer is a reporter at The New York Times whose work, focusing, on the intersection of business, technology and society, has received multiple national awards. She is currently writing a book for W.W. Norton examining the meteoric rise of computer science education in public schools. For her project, Singer will examine the historical parallels and differences between the Cold War push for physics education in U.S. high schools in the 1950s and current efforts by tech companies and nonprofits to normalize computer science education in American public schools.

Jared Whitlock is a freelance health reporter whose work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Wired Magazine, and Voice of San Diego, with support from USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism and Investigative Reporters and Editors. He previously covered biotech and health care as a staff reporter at the San Diego Business Journal; was the associate editor of the Encinitas Advocate; and a staff reporter at The Coast News. His project will cover drug development for rare diseases.

Spring-Semester Fellows:

Rebecca Boyle is an award-winning science journalist and author based in Colorado Springs, Colo. She is a frequent contributor to Scientific American, Quanta, and the New York Times, and is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. Boyle is a former newspaper reporter and now writes primarily about astronomy, astrophysics and astrobiology. She will use her fellowship to pursue a book on the history and biology of darkness, illuminating the nexus among human health, ecological health, and artificial light.

Anna Kuchment is a science reporter at The Dallas Morning News and contributing editor at Scientific American. Previously, she worked as a senior editor at Scientific American and as a staff writer at Newsweek. During her fellowship Kuchment will work on “Shaky Ground: The Untold Story of the Largest Earthquake Surge in Modern History” (University of Chicago Press), about earthquakes and the fracking boom. She is co-writing the book with Boston College historian of science Conevery Bolton Valencius.

Julia Rosen is an independent journalist covering science and the environment from Portland, Oregon. She writes about how the world works and how humans are changing it. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, National Geographic, Science, High Country News, and many other publications. Her feature on invasive earthworms was anthologized in the 2021 edition of “The Best American Science and Nature Writing.” Rosen’s project will explore the origins of Earth’s grasslands and the threats they face today.

Hilke Schellmann is an Emmy-award-winning reporter and journalism professor at New York University. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, MIT Technology Review, PBS/Frontline, HBO, VICE, National Geographic, and The Atlantic. For her fellowship project, Schellmann will report on artificial intelligence and health data in education, and employment for MIT Technology Review and for an upcoming book with Hachette.

Sushma Subramanian is a health and science journalist and author of “How to Feel: The Science and Meaning of Touch.” Her byline has appeared in Slate, The Atlantic, Elle, Scientific American, Discover and others. She has twice been a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists and won a Newswomen’s Club of New York Front Page Award. She will be writing about the ethics behind the commodification of breast milk.

by R.M. Davis / July 21st 2021 / Alumni News

‘It All Evolved That Quickly’: KSJ’s Class of ’20 Talks Life Since Covid

When the Knight Science Journalism Program’s 2019-20 fellowship class gathered in the KSJ offices on March 12, 2020, they had no way of knowing it would be the last time that year the group would meet face-to-face. News of the novel coronavirus had been circulating for weeks by that point — almost as quickly as the virus itself — but life in Cambridge, Massachusetts, remained mostly unchanged. Businesses were open. Kids were in school. President Trump had yet to declare a state of emergency, though he would do so the very next day. The pandemic still felt far away.

“I remember talking with the other KSJ fellows about the coronavirus as an interesting scientific issue, but not one that would directly affect our lives,” said Tony Leys, who spent more than 30 years as a reporter at the Des Moines Register before joining the fellowship program in the fall of 2019. “It quickly became clear that it would.”

Since 1983, the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT has welcomed hundreds of gifted science storytellers into its ranks. While the program has evolved a great deal over the decades, each of its alumni are forever connected by the shared experience of spending a year learning and honing their craft in Cambridge. However, the experience of the 2019-20 class stands apart from the rest: As the first — and hopefully last — fellowship class to have their year disrupted by a deadly pandemic, these 10 science journalists bore witness to an extraordinary moment in the Knight Science Journalism Program’s history.

Just days prior to that fateful meeting at KSJ headquarters, the fellows had assembled for what would turn out to be their final in-person seminar — a tour of STAT, a digital health and life sciences magazine based out of the Boston Globe’s offices in downtown Boston. Even then, for at least some of the fellows, the writing was on the wall.

“The pandemic had hit Boston and was growing exponentially,” said Molly Segal, an audio journalist and podcast producer. “After the visit, we all went out to a restaurant and sat around over food and drinks, I think knowing that it would be the last major in-person event together, yet not wanting to really acknowledge it.” Two days later, she says, “we were having a group discussion about how the rest of the fellowship would run,” Segal said. “It all evolved that quickly.”

Like many university programs around the country, KSJ was thrust into uncharted waters, confronted with a barrage of questions that had no easy answers or established precedents. International borders were closing fast; some U.S. cities were going into lockdown. And there were growing concerns about the personal safety of the fellows. MIT, in an effort to help stem the spread of the virus, had just asked its undergraduates not to return to campus at all after the upcoming spring break.

“We made a difficult decision to pivot to remote learning,” recalls KSJ associate director Ashley Smart. “And if fellows felt they needed to leave Cambridge early — to return home while they still could — we said we’d help cover the travel. We could tell they were experiencing a lot of anxiety. We all were.”

Members of the 2020 fellowship class — accompanied by KSJ staff and guests — at Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

The semester’s remaining seminars would take place over Zoom, rather than in the conference room the fellows had grown accustomed to. Courses the fellows were auditing at MIT, Harvard, and other universities in the Cambridge area also went remote.

According to Bethany Brookshire, who had taken leave from her post at Science News to join the fellowship, the days and weeks that followed were “surreal.” The fellows faced a gut-wrenching choice: stay or go. Soon, one by one, they began to depart.

“It was a rush, helping many of the international fellows leave the country,” Brookshire recalls. “Thiago [Medaglia], Sonali [Prasad], Molly. Everyone agonized over their decision. We were desperate to hug each other — and terrified it was the wrong thing to do.”

For Richard Fisher, now a senior journalist at BBC Future, the initial transition to online learning was a difficult one. Fisher had spent all year developing a fellowship project on the importance of long-term thinking, and the dangers of being trapped in the short term. However, he says that preparation was of little use as the pandemic took hold. “Like everyone, I was trapped in the short-term pressures of a burgeoning crisis, and for a while I found it very difficult to work, write and attend lectures.”

For some fellows, things seemed to calm down once they got past the onset of the crisis. “I soon realized that shifting gears because of the pandemic did not change much,” said Andrada Fiscutean, a technology journalist who made the difficult decision to return to her native Romania for the final months of the fellowship. “Yes, attending online classes was a different experience, but it brought us together. I ended up attending more classes than I registered for.”

German reporter Eva Wolfangel, who had spent her fellowship year exploring new uses for virtual reality, found that her project was tailor-made for the social distancing era. “The project grew a lot after the fellowship,” she said, “because people were very open towards meeting virtually, and everybody was tired of Zoom.”

Today, the pandemic continues to cast a pall over day-to-day life, and several of the fellows are in areas of the world where Covid-19 is still raging. Yet the group has managed to continue pursuing ambitious journalism projects. Anil Ananthaswamy, a freelance science journalist who had already published three books before joining the program, is now working on his fourth effort — a book on the mathematics of artificial intelligence. Fisher is currently writing a book on long-term thinking, and Brookshire inked a deal with Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins, to write a book about pests.

Meanwhile, Segal has been working with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on a climate-focused radio show and podcast called “What on Earth.” The program was recently named the winner of the new Canadian Journalism Foundation Award for Climate Solutions Reporting.

Although the fellows are now dispersed across the globe, they’ve kept in touch and hope to gather again one day.

“Every so often I daydream about how maybe someday we’ll be together again, have another big dinner,” said Brookshire. “All of us at a long table with plenty of wine, Molly’s excellent cheese plates, Thiago’s caipirinhas, Eva’s bread, Tony’s turkey, and those cheese rounds Andrada got us all addicted to. I know it’s very unlikely, but it gives me hope.”

by Knight Science Journalism / June 1st 2021 / Announcements

Knight Science Journalism and STAT Launch New Sharon Begley Fellowship

The Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT and STAT, the award-winning Boston-based health, science, and medicine publication, announced today a new partnership to launch the Sharon Begley-STAT Science Reporting Fellowship.

The fellowship’s goal is to better diversify the ranks of science and health journalists and to foster broader and more inclusive coverage of science. The Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) is providing $225,000 to support the first two years of the program, named in honor of Sharon Begley, an acclaimed science writer for STAT, who died in January 2021 at 64, from complications of lung cancer.

The nine-month fellowship is intended for early-career journalists from racial and ethnic groups underrepresented in the profession and will prepare them for a successful career in science journalism. It will combine a paid reporting apprenticeship at STAT with an educational component provided through MIT’s prestigious Knight Science Journalism (KSJ) Program. The fellowship is now accepting applications for the inaugural Begley Fellow to start in September 2021, with plans to select two additional fellows in 2022.

“KSJ is honored to be a partner in this pioneering fellowship that honors the exceptional work of Sharon Begley and offers a new opportunity to support outstanding and inclusive science and health journalism,” said Deborah Blum, Director of the KSJ Program at MIT. “We appreciate the commitment of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to improving racial and ethnic diversity in our community, which we believe is essential to smarter and more inclusive coverage of scientific research. And we are delighted to be working with STAT, one of the best health news publications available today, in assuring the success of this project.”

Science journalism reflects the structural and systemic inequities in our society, with Black, Hispanic/Latinx, and Indigenous reporters often not getting the same opportunities as white applicants to gain relevant experience. Roughly 80% of science journalists are white, according to the most recent membership data from two of the leading professional organizations, with 6% identifying as Asian or Pacific Islander, 1%-4% as Black, 3%-4% as Hispanic or Latinx, and 1% as Native American.

“The best way to make our profession and workplace more diverse and inclusive is for news organizations to grow their own talent — and that’s exactly what Sharon aimed to do,” Gideon Gil, a STAT managing editor, said in explaining why STAT decided to create the fellowship. “Sharon relished mentoring younger science journalists, and her professional progeny work at news organizations across the U.S. So we could think of no more fitting way to honor her.”

The funding from CZI will enable both KSJ and STAT to offer Begley fellows a stipend, with a combined total of $75,000 during each term. KSJ will also provide MIT-based health insurance for each fellow. In addition, STAT plans to raise additional funding to cover fellows’ reporting expenses and the program’s administrative costs, and to keep the fellowship operating in future years.

Fellows will work at STAT’s Boston office alongside its team of experienced science and health reporters and editors. The fellows will report and write articles, with additional opportunities for building connections, mentorship, and learning across publication teams. KSJ and MIT are providing support for the university-based part of the program, which offers opportunities ranging from training seminars and other fellowship community events, university library access, and the chance to audit classes at MIT and Harvard. The Sharon Begley-STAT Science Reporting Fellowship aims to serve as a model for expanding racial diversity in science journalism that could be replicated at other publications.

Begley, STAT’s senior science writer, was long considered one of the nation’s finest science journalists. She was known as a generous supporter of younger journalists and 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.

“Sharon loved working at STAT and did some of her best reporting there, and mentoring younger journalists was one of her talents and priorities,” said her husband, Ned Groth. “So, for there to be a Sharon Begley Fellow at STAT, honing their journalistic skills in association with and mentored by colleagues who were in turn mentored by Sharon, seems like a perfect tribute to her.”

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, drug makers and hospitals of patients with sickle cell disease, who in the U.S., are predominantly Black.

“Supporting reporters from racial and ethnic groups underrepresented in journalism will bring important perspectives to the newsroom and surface new narratives and stories relevant to more communities, which will not only make biomedical reporting better and more accurate, but also help encourage greater public trust in science among historically marginalized groups,” said CZI Science Communications Manager Leah Duran. “We’re proud to support STAT and MIT to stand up this exciting program to cultivate talent and expand representation in science journalism.” In 2019, CZI supported the University of California, Santa Cruz to increase diversity, inclusion, and representation in its science journalism program.

The Sharon Begley-STAT Science Reporting Fellowship will accept applications from Tuesday, June 1, 2021 at 9 a.m. Eastern Time until June 30, 2021 at 5 p.m. Eastern Time. For more information and application instructions, please visit KSJ’s online portal. For inquiries, technical assistance, or other questions pertaining to this application, please contact Gideon Gil at Gideon.Gil@statnews.com or Deborah Blum at dlblum@mit.edu.

by Deborah Blum / May 3rd 2021 / Announcements

KSJ to Offer Project Fellowships for 2021-22, Continue Pause on In-Person Program

Since 1983, the Knight Science Journalism Program has traditionally hosted a premier fellowship program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, offering science journalists from around the world a chance to spend nine months off deadline in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The program has been home to more than 300 remarkable journalists, who have spent the time here networking, developing new skills, researching projects, and auditing courses at MIT, Harvard, and a wide range of other top-tier academic institutions in the area.

Last year, for logistical and safety reasons related to the Covid-19 pandemic, KSJ made the difficult decision to postpone bringing its chosen 2020-21 academic fellowship class to campus. At the same time, during that period, we decided to offer a new kind of remote project fellowship to directly support science journalism in the United States during this challenging time. As a result, we awarded project fellowships to 18 outstanding science journalists, for a period that began in September 2020 and will end this May. The projects have included a remarkable range of stories, from social justice aspects of Covid-19 treatment, to climate change, to water supplies in the American West.

We had planned to return to the academic fellowship model in the coming 2021-22 school year. But due to ongoing risks and uncertainties posed by the pandemic, including restrictions on international travel and visas, we recognize the need for a transitional period before returning to more standard operations. KSJ will now resume its traditional fellowship model in the 2022-23 academic year. That class has already been selected and will be formally announced this fall.

This means that for one more year, in keeping with KSJ’s core mission of supporting science journalism, we will be offering up to 20 remote project fellowships to U.S. based journalists. The application period for these fellowships will be from May 10 to June 6, 2021 and the submissions portal on the KSJ website will open at the start of that period.

These fellowships are designed to support independently conceived projects — books, investigations, documentaries — and they will be awarded for varying durations over the course of the upcoming academic year, from September 2021 to May 2022.

Candidates will be asked to apply for one of three forms of fellowship support:

A nine-month, $40,000 fellowship running from September 2021 thru May 2022
A four-and-half-month, $20,000 fellowship running from September 2021 thru mid-January 2022.
A four-and-a-half month, $20,000 fellowship running from mid-January 2022 thru May 2022

There is no requirement for project fellows to be based in Cambridge. Each fellow may choose an appropriate location for their work. But each fellowship will include remote access to MIT’s university libraries and their vast trove of journal and database materials. We will offer carefully selected training seminars via Zoom as well as an orientation session (which will include time with MIT librarians) and schedule a series of roundtables for fellows to discuss their work. All appointments will include up to $5,000 in additional support for research-related expenses, such as travel or equipment.

Recipients of the 2021-22 KSJ Project Fellowships will be announced on July 15, 2021. For further details about the application and fellowship process, please visit KSJ’s Project Fellowship page or contact knight-info@mit.edu.

We look forward to celebrating the new KSJ project fellows this summer. And we look forward to celebrating our outstanding incoming class of academic fellows this November and to personally welcoming them here in the summer of 2022. And most of all — and we know we are not alone in this — we look forward to a full reopening with enthusiasm, with style, and with safety in the post-pandemic years to come.

Deborah Blum
Director, Knight Science Journalism Program

by Deborah Blum / May 20th 2020 / Announcements

Amid Covid-19, KSJ Defers Academic Fellowships, Offers New Project Fellowships

Since 1983, the Knight Science Journalism Program has hosted a premier fellowship program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, offering science journalists from around the world a chance to spend nine months off deadline in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they have the opportunity to network, develop new skills, and audit courses at MIT, Harvard, and a wide range of other top-tier academic institutions in the area. More than 300 journalists — staff and freelance writers and editors, photographers, producers, and podcasters whose work is published and broadcast by some of the world’s most influential media companies — have joined KSJ over nearly 40 years.

This year, the rise and relentless spread of the Covid-19 global pandemic confronted us with a unique set of challenges in continuing to offer the kind of world-class fellowship experience that KSJ has historically provided. Some of that relates to the uncertainty of all university programs in the coming year, as our university and others in the Boston area work to plan an academic schedule that offers both quality and safety. We are also saddled with continued uncertainty regarding international travel in 2020, the possibility of a second wave of Covid-19 infections in the fall, and the timeline to a vaccine. And all these questions must be considered against our foremost priority: keeping our staff, and our fellows, safe.

Given the many uncertainties, logistical questions, and possible risks, the Knight Science Journalism Program has made the difficult decision to defer its academic fellowship program for one year, meaning that our next in-Cambridge fellowship program will commence in the 2021-22 academic year. We have selected that fellowship class based on applications from this year’s submissions cycle. In order to accommodate continued uncertainties and possible further pandemic-related changes to the program, we will not formally announce the ten fellows in the upcoming class until this fall.

In the interim, and in keeping with KSJ’s core mission of supporting science journalism, we will be opening an application process on June 1, 2020 to award up to 20 KSJ Project Fellowships. These fellowships, open to U.S. residents only, are designed to support independently conceived projects — books, investigations, documentaries — and they will be awarded for varying durations over the course of the upcoming academic year, from September 2020 to May 2021.

Candidates will be asked to apply for one of three forms of fellowship support:

A nine-month, $40,000 fellowship running from September 2020 thru May 2021
A four-month, $20,000 fellowship running from September 2020 thru December 2020
A four-month, $20,000 fellowship running from February, 2021 thru May 2021

A competitive application period for the project fellowships will run for a month, from the June 1 start date until June 30, 2020. Recipients of the 2020-21 KSJ Project Fellowships will be announced on July 31, 2020. For further details about the application and fellowship process, please visit KSJ’s Project Fellowship page or contact knight-info@mit.edu.

We look forward to celebrating the new KSJ project fellows this summer. And we look forward to celebrating our outstanding incoming class of academic fellows this November and to personally welcoming them here in the summer of 2021. And most of all — and we know we are not alone in this — we look forward to reopening with enthusiasm, with style, and with safety in the post-pandemic years to come.

Deborah Blum
Director, Knight Science Journalism Program