Eva Emerson is editor in chief of Science News magazine and its website. She joined the SN staff in December 2007 and, as managing editor, helped oversee redesign of the magazine and a relaunch of the website. She was promoted to editor in chief in 2012. A native of Los Angeles, Eva previously was associate director of the office of communications at the University of Southern California College of Letters, Arts & Sciences, where she edited the alumni magazine and wrote about science for campus publications. She has also held staff positions at the Magic School Bus television show, the Honolulu Weekly and the California Science Center. She is the coauthor of a book of classroom activities, Naturescope Kit: Habitats, published by the National Wildlife Federation and has freelanced for UPI, Discovery.com, ScienceNOW and Highlights for Children. She earned a B.A. in biological sciences and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Matt Crenson is managing editor at Science News. After graduating from Brown University with a bachelor's of science in geology, he earned a master's degree in hydrology at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. In 1992, he was an AAAS Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellow at the Dallas Morning News, where he then worked for four years as a science writer. He later worked in New York for the Associated Press as a science editor and national writer, and as a producer for ABC News. From 2007 to 2009 he was content manager for 23andMe, a Mountain View, Calif., company that offers genetic testing directly to consumers. During the 2003–2004 academic year, he was a John S. Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University, where he studied linguistics and genetics as a means of understanding human prehistory. He joined Science News as deputy managing editor for news in 2010. He was named managing editor in 2012.
Beth Rakouskas is design director at Science News. She oversees all aspects of the visual identity of the print, tablet and online editions. She consults with the Society for Science & the Public on design direction and brand maintenance, and with the advertising and circulation departments on respective projects. Before Science News, Beth managed the start-up of the Graphic & Web Design Program for CDIA at Boston University's Washington, D.C. campus. She taught classes, recruited instructors, developed curricula, and organized guest lectures. Beth's magazine career began at National Geographic where she redesigned the departments section and directed the design of all department pages. At ICF Consulting, Beth designed annual reports, websites, brochures, and identity packages for clients including EPA, UN, and Boeing. She graduated summa cum laude from North Carolina State University's School of Design.
Senior Editor Janet Raloff has been reporting at Science News for more than three decades on the environment, energy, science policy, agriculture and nutrition. She was among the first to give national visibility to such issues as electromagnetic pulse weaponry and hormone-mimicking pollutants, and was the first anywhere to report on the widespread tainting of streams and groundwater sources with pharmaceuticals. Her writing has won awards from the National Association of Science Writers, International Free Press Association, and the Institute of Food Technologists. Over the years, Janet has been an occasional commentator on NPR's "Living on Earth" and her work has appeared in several dozen publications. She is also a founding board member of the Society of Environmental Journalists. Before joining Science News, Janet was managing editor of Energy Research Reports (outside Boston), a staff writer at Chemistry (an American Chemical Society magazine) and a writer/editor for Chicago's Adler Planetarium. Initially an astronomy major, she earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University (with an elective major in physics). She interned with the Office of Cancer Communications (NIH), Argonne National Laboratory, the Oak Ridger in Tennessee and the Rock Hill Evening Herald in North Carolina.
Lila Guterman came to Science News as Deputy Managing Editor for News in January 2013 after editing online news at Chemical & Engineering News. Previously, she wrote about science research, publishing, and ethics for The Chronicle of Higher Education from 1999 to 2008. Other publications she has written for include Science, Nature, Cell, New Scientist, the Washington Post, the Economist, and Columbia Journalism Review. Lila has bachelor's and master's degrees in chemistry from Harvard University and Caltech, and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. Among the honors her writing has received are the Clark Payne award for young science writers, third place in the Society for Environmental Journalists' Awards for Reporting on the Environment, the American Society of Anesthesiologists Media Award, and a finalist honor for the Livingston Awards.
Lynn Addison, Deputy Managing Editor, Features, came to Science News after a 28-year career at the National Geographic Society, where she was a senior editor for books, Traveler, and finally for National Geographic magazine. Her work with science writers on the magazine resulted in an AGU Walter Sullivan Award for Excellence in Science Journalism and a second place in the Society for Environmental Journalists' Awards for Reporting on the Environment. Lynn has attended four Knight Science Journalism boot camps at MIT. She is a D.C. native and graduated from Woodrow Wilson Senior High (as did her two daughters, in 2005 and 2011). She has a BA in English from SUNY Binghamton and an MA in print journalism from Stanford.
Departments Editor Erika Engelhaupt edits department sections of Science News and Science News Prime, including book reviews, Notebook and the People section. She is a former writer and senior associate editor for the news section of Environmental Science & Technology, where she covered climate change and other environmental issues. Previously she was an AAAS Mass Media fellow at the Philadelphia Inquirer and interned on the science desk at National Public Radio and at Boulder's Daily Camera newspaper. She has bachelor's and M.S. degrees in ecology and evolutionary biology from Tulane University and an M.S. in environmental studies with focus areas in journalism and biogeochemistry from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Before becoming a journalist, she studied environmental processes in ecosystems ranging from Louisiana wetlands to Alaskan forests and published actively in the scientific peer-reviewed literature.
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Kate Travis is on her second tour of duty as associate editor of Science News. She moved to the Washington, D.C., area in 1999 after earning her bachelor's degree in journalism and master's in science journalism from Texas A&M University. Soon after she became deputy news editor (and later, news editor) for the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, a scientific journal published by Oxford University Press. In 2006, she came to Science News as associate editor and left a year later when the opportunity arose to move to Cambridge, England. While there, she served as north Europe editor for Science's online career magazine, Science Careers, and as editor of a website devoted to careers in translational research. She has written for The Scientist, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, CR Magazine, and Health. She returned to Science News in the summer of 2011 to assist with editing news stories and to work on SN Prime, Science News' iPad app.
Bruce Bower has written about the behavioral sciences for Science News since 1984. He often writes about psychology, anthropology, archaeology and mental health issues. Bruce has a master's degree in psychology from Pepperdine University and a master's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. Following an internship at Science News in 1981, he worked as a reporter at Psychiatric News, a publication of the American Psychiatric Association, until joining Science News as a staff writer. In 1996, the American Psychological Association appointed Bruce a Science Writer Fellow, with a grant to visit psychological scientists of his own choosing. Early stints as an aide in a day school for children and teenagers with severe psychological problems and as a counselor in a drug diversion center provided Bruce with a surprisingly good background for a career in science journalism.
Nathan Seppa has been the biomedical writer at Science News since 1997. Previously, he worked at the Wisconsin State Journal, a daily newspaper in Madison, where he inaugurated the science beat. In the 1980s, he covered energy and economics for the Dow Jones News Service in the Wall Street Journal's Washington Bureau. In the 1970s, Seppa served as a public health volunteer in the Peace Corps in Zaire, now Congo. He hails from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where he worked as a miner and gravedigger to pay his way through college. He has a B.S. in Sociology and a M.A. in Journalism. Nathan speaks French and knows enough Swahili to get out of a tight spot.
Rachel Ehrenberg covers interdisciplinary sciences and chemistry for Science News, so basically she gets to write about everything. A native of Vermont, Rachel double majored in botany and political science at her home state's school before heading to a graduate program in evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan. Perpetually distracted by science outside her chosen field, Rachel left Michigan with a master's degree to attend the science writing program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has written for newspapers, radio and done several in-the-field reporting fellowships. A Science News feature on whale strandings and sonar won Rachel the 2009 Science Writing Award for Journalists from the Acoustical Society of America.
Earth and environment writer Erin Wayman covers geology, climate, natural hazards and other often-gloomy subjects for Science News. A former primatologist-in-training, Erin decided to leave monkey-watching behind after a close run-in with angry peccaries in Ecuador. Once she completed her master’s degree in biological anthropology at the University of California, Davis, she switched careers and earned a master’s in science writing at Johns Hopkins University. Erin was previously an associate editor at EARTH and an assistant editor at Smithsonian magazine, where she blogged about human evolution. Her work has also appeared in New Scientist, Slate, ScienceNOW and Current Anthropology.
Life sciences writer Susan Milius has been writing about botany, zoology and ecology for Science News since the last millennium. She graduated from Swarthmore College with a double major in biology and English and worked at diverse publications before breaking into science writing and editing. After stints on the staffs of The Scientist, Science, International Wildlife and United Press International, she joined Science News. Two of Susan's articles have been selected to appear in editions of The Best American Science Writing.
Molecular biology writer Tina Hesman Saey is a geneticist-turned-science writer who covers genetics, cell biology and microbiology for Science News. She graduated with honors from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1990, then spent a year in Germany studying microbiology as a Fulbright scholar at the Georg-August University in Göttingen. After completing her Ph.D. in molecular genetics at Washington University in St. Louis, Tina started a master's program in science journalism at Boston University, finishing in 2000. She interned at the Dallas Morning News — where she won the Texas Daily Newspaper Association's intern of the year award — and at Science News. Tina returned to St. Louis to cover biotechnology, genetics and medical science for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for more than seven years before coming back to Science News. Her work has been honored by the Endocrine Society and the Genetics Society of America.
Neuroscience writer Laura Sanders reports on the latest mysteries of the mind. She earned her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where she studied the nerve cells that compel a fruit fly to perform a dazzling mating ritual full of singing and dancing. Convinced that she was missing some exciting science development somewhere, Laura turned her eye toward writing about brains in all shapes and forms. Laura's research has been published in scientific journals including Current Biology, Developmental Biology and PLoS Biology. She holds undergraduate degrees in Creative Writing and Biology from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where she was a National Merit Scholar.
Andrew Grant covers physics and dabbles in astronomy for Science News. He started his science journalism career at Discover magazine in New York, where as associate editor he wrote and edited feature stories and ran the front-of-the-book news section. Andrew has a bachelor’s degree in physics from The College of New Jersey and a master’s in journalism from New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program. His story “Cosmic Blueprint of Life” appeared in The Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology in 2011.
Meghan Rosen reports on a variety of topics at Science News, from camouflaged robots to feathered dinosaurs and stretchy electronics. Meghan graduated from the Science Communication Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2012, after completing her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology with an emphasis in biotechnology at UC Davis. At Davis, Meghan focused on figuring out how hormone-sensing proteins pitch into kidney and liver cancer. In addition to scientific publications, Meghan has written for the National Cancer Institute, ScienceNOW, Wired.com, and written and produced stories for KUSP, an NPR-affiliated public radio station in Santa Cruz.
Marcy Atarod, learned the ropes of publication design at Marymount University in Arlington, Va., where she art directed the literary magazine while earning a bachelor’s degree in graphic design with a minor in fine art. She went on to work at Hanley Wood, working her way up from graphic designer to art director of Architect, Architectural Lighting, and Residential Architect magazines. Marcy grew up in Northern Virginia and now lives in D.C. with her husband and their cat, Scoots Magoo. She has always had a love for science, an interest fueled early on by watching Bill Nye on TV.
Stephen Egts is an assistant art director at Science News. Graduating from Maryland Institute College of Art with a bachelor of fine art in 1994, Stephen has brought this creative talents to a wide variety of media, including web design, animation, film, video and print. Motivated by the idea of helping people while conveying potentially life-saving information, he has long focused on social marketing in the arena of public health.
Erin Feliciano is an Assistant Art Director at Science News. She received her B.A. in Studio Art from the University of Richmond and a certificate in Graphic and Web Design from CDIA at Boston University. Erin enjoys all mediums of art, but has a particular passion for print and web design. Her past experience in graphic design includes work with a printing house, a theater company and a public relations firm. Working at Science News is a particular joy — in her school days, science was always a very close runner-up to art in her "favorite subject" category!
Allison Bohac is the editorial assistant at Science News, which means she does a little bit of everything – fact checking and research, writing, news editing, magazine and website production and whatever other projects come her way. She spent her undergraduate years wading through Pennsylvania mountain streams to catch fish and frogs, which earned her a bachelor’s degree in zoology. After two years of managing aquatic systems for the laboratories at the National Institutes of Health, she went back to school for a master’s in science writing. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2011, and joined the Science News staff a few months later. On the weekends, though, she still prefers to spend her time in the woods as a volunteer at the Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary in Lothian, Md.
Laura Beil is an independent journalist specializing in medicine, health policy and science. In addition to being a contributing correspondent at Science News, her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Reader's Digest, Self, Prevention, Glamour, Newsweek, Men's Health, Ladies Home Journal, Parenting, O, and the New York Times. She began freelancing in 2007 after working as medical writer for the Dallas Morning News from 1992 to 2006. From 2006–2007 she was a media fellow with the Kaiser Family Foundation. She lives near Dallas.
Susan Gaidos has been a full-time freelance writer since 2002. She writes features, profiles and news stories on discoveries in areas ranging from biology and neuroscience to physics and technology. In addition to Science News, her articles have appeared in New Scientist, the Dallas Morning News, The Scientist, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Bulletin, and she is a regular contributor to Science Careers, on online publication produced by the journal Science. She also writes articles on science-related topics for children and is a contributor to Science World and Science News for Kids. She has degrees in journalism and biology from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and undertook post-graduate studies in biology at Purdue University while working as a university public information officer. She has received gold and silver awards in medicine and science writing from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, and received the National Institutes of Health's Plain Language Award in 2009 for contributions to the NIGMS publication Computing Life.
Contributing correspondent Alexandra Witze has covered science for nearly two decades. Among other exotic locales, her reporting has taken her to Maya ruins in the jungles of Guatemala, an ocean-drilling vessel off the coast of Oregon, among rotting corpses at the University of Tennessee's legendary "Body Farm," and the North Pole. Before joining Science News as a writer and editor, she served as Washington bureau chief and print news editor for the weekly journal Nature. She covered the physical sciences for The Dallas Morning News between 1996 and 2005, and has also worked as an editor at Earth magazine in Waukesha, Wis. She has a bachelor's degree in geology from MIT and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Among her awards Alexandra numbers the Science-in-Society Award from the National Association of Science Writers; the Walter Sullivan Award for Excellence in Science Journalism - Features from the American Geophysical Union; finalist honors from the Livingston Awards three years in a row; the Katie award from the Press Club of Dallas for specialty feature; and honorable mention in the Evert Clark Award for young science journalists.
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Three-part series on the scientific struggle to explain the conscious self
Tables of contents, columns and FAQs on SN Prime for iPad