Speakers

  • Steve Miller

    Position/Organization:

    Freelance

    Steve Miller is a freelance science writer, currently specializing in curriculum materials for middle school and high school science. After more than 20 years in the chemical industry, Steve began writing in 1999. His writing and editing career has covered a wide range of assignments in the physical and earth sciences including textbook chapters, childrens' magazine articles, trade magazine articles, grant proposals, and press releases.

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  • Seth Mnookin

    Position/Organization:

    Author, The Panic Virus; Contributing Editor, Vanity Fair

    Seth Mnookin is a lecturer in MIT's Graduate Program in Science Writing. His most recent book, The Panic Virus, examines the controversies over vaccines and autism as a way examining how our society decides what counts as truth. He is also the author of two previous books: The 2006 New York Times bestseller Feeding the Monster, about the Boston Red Sox, and Hard News, a Washington Post best book of the year in 2004.

  • Rajendrani Mukhopadhyay

    Position/Organization:

    Freelance writer and editor

    Rajendrani (Raj) Mukhopadhyay, Ph.D., is a freelance science writer and editor who writes for Chemical & Engineering News, Chemistry World, and various other magazines. She covers a wide range of subjects in the chemistry arena, including science policy in the U.S. energy sector. Raj also is the blogger for the Polymer Solutions Newsblog that covers all things polymers and plastics, and she does technical editing on reports, journal articles, and grants for scientists.

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  • Gary Paul Nabhan, Ph.D.

    Position/Organization:

    Research social scientist, Institute of the Environment, University of Arizona

    Gary Paul Nabhan, W.K. Kellogg Chair in Southwest Borderlands Food and Water Security, The Southwest Center, University of Arizona.

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  • Mark Neumann

    Position/Organization:

    Professor, Communication and Documentary Studies, NAU; Author, Recording Culture: Audio Documentary and the Ethnographic Experience

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  • Jim Newman

    Position/Organization:

    Associate Director for Media Relations, Oregon Health & Science University Strategic Communications

    Jim Newman is the associate director for media relations in the Strategic Communications department at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, Oregon. He handles crisis communications for OHSU's hospitals, clinics, research and educational operations. He also directs communications for OHSU’s Comparative Medicine Department and the Oregon National Primate Research Center. One of his specialties is handling animal research communications (internal and external) for the university.

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  • Michael Newman

    Position/Organization:

    Senior Communications Officer, National Institute of Standards and Technology Public Affairs Office

    Michael E. Newman is a broad-based communicator with an extensive and award-winning record in three branches of communications – public relations, journalism and broadcast media. His 32-year career – the past 22 years with the federal government – has included full-time positions and freelance work in science and medical communications, corporate PR, broadcast TV and radio, and mass market publications.

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  • Michelle Nijhuis

    Position/Organization:

    Freelance writer; Contributing Editor, High Country News

    Michelle Nijhuis is a freelance writer and a longtime contributing editor of High Country News. Her reporting on conservation and global change has appeared in Smithsonian, National Geographic, the Atlantic, and the anthologies Best American Science Writing and Best American Science and Nature Writing. In 2011, as an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow, she is researching radical measures to conserve critically endangered species. She lives off the grid in rural Colorado.

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  • Michael Ort, Ph.D.

    Position/Organization:

    Professor of geology, Northern Arizona University

    Michael Ort is a volcanologist with a particular interest in interactions between humans and volcanoes.

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  • Steven Pinker, Ph.D.

    Position/Organization:

    Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, Harvard University

    Steven Pinker has won numerous prizes for research and teaching and for his eight books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate. He is currently chair of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary and writes frequently for The New York Times, Time, The New Republic and other publications. His is married to the novelist Rebecca Goldstein, author of 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction.

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