Curtis Brainard has covered science, environment, and medical news for the Columbia Journalism Review since 2006. In January 2008, he launched The Observatory, CJR's first fulltime department dedicated to critically analyzing science coverage in the media as well as the opportunities and challenges facing science journalists today. Brainard's work has been commended in The New York Times, Wired, Mother Jones, and many other publications. News outlets from NPR to Al-Jazeera English, and organizations from the Reuters Institute at Oxford University to the U.K.'s Science Media Centre, have interviewed Brainard about the state of science journalism and the coverage of particular stories, and he has been invited to speak to the World Conference of Science Journalists, the Knight Science Journalism Fellows at MIT, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, among others. Brainard has master's degrees in environmental science and journalism from Columbia University.