Speakers

  • Jill Adams

    Position/Organization:

    Freelance journalist

    Jill U. Adams is a freelance journalist based in Albany, New York, who reports on health and medicine and scientific research. She's a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times and also has been published in the Washington Post, Discover, Nature, and WebMD.

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  • Peter Aldhous

    Position/Organization:

    San Francisco Bureau Chief, New Scientist

  • Christie Aschwanden

    Position/Organization:

    Independent science journalist

    Christie Aschwanden is an independent journalist, essayist and science nerd. She's written for more than 50 publications, including the New York Times, Men's Journal, Mother Jones, NPR.org, and O, the Oprah magazine. Her 2010 Reader's Digest cover story debunking the purported health benefits of multivitamins generated a record volume of hate mail. She was a National Magazine Award finalist in 2011 and a Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting fellow in 2007.

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  • Anthony Barnhart

    Position/Organization:

    Performing magician and graduate student in cognitive psychology, Arizona State University

    Anthony Barnhart, a magician since the age of 7, is known for his unique blend of theater, psychology and magic. He has won four national competitions and placed third among magicians from around the world in a 1999 competition. At Arizona State University, he studies the processes involved in handwritten word recognition in humans and the psychological foundations of stage magic.

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  • Natalie M. Batalha, Ph.D.

    Position/Organization:

    Professor of physics and astronomy, San Jose State University

    Natalie Batalha thought she wanted to follow her parents into a business career until she got to college and encountered freshman physics. "What impressed me was how ordered the universe is," she says. "When you internalize that fact, you begin to fully realize the beauty of it." As part of her work on the Kepler mission, she was responsible for the selection of the more than 150,000 planets that Kepler monitors for evidence of planets.

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  • Burkhard Bilger

    Position/Organization:

    Staff Writer, The New Yorker

    Burkhard Bilger has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 2001. Before that, he served as a senior editor at Discover and was deputy editor at The Sciences, where his work helped earn the magazine two National Magazine Awards. His articles have covered such diverse topics as the rise of Burmese pythons in the Everglades and the fermented food movement. His book, Noodling for Flatheads: Moonshine, Monster Catfish, and Other Southern Comforts, was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction.

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  • Deborah Blum

    Position/Organization:

    Author; Science Journalism Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison

    Deborah Blum is a Pulitzer prize-winning science writer and the Helen Firstbrook Franklin Professor of Journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She teaches classes ranging from science writing to creative non-fiction and is the author of four books and co-editor of a popular guide to science journalism. Her latest book, The Poisoner's Handbook, published in February, was named by Amazon as one of the Top 100 books of 2010 and is a featured selection of five book clubs ranging from Scientific American Books to the Mystery Guild Book Club.

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  • Karen Infeld Blum

    Position/Organization:

    Freelance health/science writer

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  • Anne Bolen

    Position/Organization:

    Editor, National Wildlife

    Anne Bolen is the Managing Editor of National Wildlife magazine. During her more than 20-years career, she has written, edited and managed the production of articles, books and other publications, covering a wide variety of scientific research and wildlife conservation topics. Prior to her current position, she most recently served as Senior Assistant Editor for Smithsonian magazine and as Publications Manager for the ocean conservation and communications organization SeaWeb.

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  • Rick Borchelt

    Position/Organization:

    Special Assistant for Public Affairs, National Cancer Institute

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