Joshua Sokol is a science writer in the Boston area. He studied astronomy and English literature in college, worked as a data analyst for the Hubble Space Telescope, and then attended MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing. Since 2016 he has been a freelancer covering space and other topics in natural history for publications like Quanta, Science, The New York Times, and whoever else will look at his pitches.
Eli Chen reports on scientific research and environmental issues at St. Louis Public Radio. Her work has appeared in or aired on NPR, Marketplace, WHYY’s The Pulse, The New York Times, Science Friday, and Scientific American. Born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, her role model growing up was Sue the T. rex at the Field Museum, because everyone should aspire to become an apex predator.
Mark Peplow is a freelance science journalist based near Cambridge, U.K., who splits his time between writing and editing. He previously spent four years as Nature’s news editor, two years as editor of Chemistry World, and two years as a physical sciences reporter at Nature. He really likes chemistry.
Virginia Hughes is the science editor at BuzzFeed News, where she manages five reporters focused on the darker side of science. Before that she was a freelancer reporting on genetics, neuroscience, and medicine. Her writing has appeared in Nature, Popular Science, The New York Times, and twice in the Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology. She grew up in Michigan and now lives with her husband, daughter, and energetic dog in Brooklyn, New York.
Amy Maxmen is a senior reporter at Nature, based in San Francisco. She has written about Ebola, evolution, machine learning, and much more.
Ashley Smart is the associate director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT and a senior editor at Undark magazine. He joined KSJ in 2018, after eight years as an editor at Physics Today. He is a member of the advisory board of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing and a co-chair of the National Association of Science Writers diversity committee. Ashley was a 2015–16 Knight Science Journalism fellow.
Megha Satyanarayana worked at several newspapers and an online news startup before landing at Chemical & Engineering News. She has covered suburban crime, public health, science and technology, and much more. She also knows a bit about audience engagement and multimedia reporting, and is happy to have landed back in Texas, where sentences start, end, and contain in all grammatical spaces the word y’all, and it works. Really.
Shannon Palus is a journalist based in Brooklyn. She is a senior staff writer at Wirecutter, where she primarily covers health tech and personal care. Her freelance work has appeared in Scientific American, Slate, Popular Science, New Scientist, The Atlantic, Discover, and elsewhere.
Anna Kuchment is a staff science writer at The Dallas Morning News, a contributing editor at Scientific American, and a former reporter and writer at Newsweek magazine. She is a coauthor, with Boston College historian Conevery Bolton Valencius, of the forthcoming book Shaky Ground: The Untold Story of the Largest Earthquake Surge in Modern History, which tells the story of the dramatic rise in earthquakes linked to oil and gas production.
Kat McGowan is a journalist and editor focused on medicine and science. As an editor, she currently works with Grist and Neo Life; her most recent bylines were for Popular Science, Mother Jones, Scientific American, and STAT. She was formerly a consulting editor at the autism science publication Spectrum, a special projects editor at Discover, and senior editor at Psychology Today. She also volunteers at a wildlife hospital and is an active member of the crow team.
Maryn McKenna is a freelancer focused on public and global health and food policy, the author of three books, and a senior fellow of the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. She is a columnist for Wired and has written for The New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, National Geographic, and many others. Her stories have been anthologized in numerous collections. She appeared in the 2014 documentary Resistance, and her 2015 TED Talk has been viewed 1.6 million times.
For nearly 15 years, George Musser was a senior editor at Scientific American focusing on astronomy and fundamental physics. He thought of himself as the magazine’s Mars correspondent, although tight budgets stopped him from taking up his post. He left the Sci Am staff in 2012 to write his second book, Spooky Action at a Distance , and do a Knight Fellowship. Since then he has been a freelancer, still writing for Sci Am , but also Nautilus , Quanta , and others.
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Pitching Errors: How Not to Pitch
Tools: Planner Pad, the Funnel of Focus
Taking Good Notes: Tricks and Tools
How Rebecca Skloot Built The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Trading the Pipette for the Pen: Transitioning from Science to Science Writing
On Being a Science Writer and Managing a Mental Illness
Are You a Writer or an Editor? Part I: The Writers
The Science Byline Counting Project: Where Are the Women—and Where Are They Not?
Navigating Newsrooms as a Minority
How to Talk to Your Facebook Friends about Fake News
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