Speakers

Speakers

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WK
NASW workshop
NH
CASW New Horizons in Science
LL
Lunch with a Luminary

  • NH
    Scott Aaronson

    Associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    Scott Aaronson's research focuses on the capabilities and limits of quantum computers, and more generally on computational complexity and its relationship to physics. Aaronson studied at Cornell and UC Berkeley and did postdoctoral research at the Institute for Advanced Study as well as the University of Waterloo. His first book, Quantum Computing Since Democritus, was published in 2013 by Cambridge University Press. The son of a science writer, Aaronson has written about quantum computing for Scientific American and the New York Times, and writes the popular blog Shtetl-Optimized. He has received the National Science Foundation’s Alan T. Waterman Award, the United States PECASE Award, and MIT's Junior Bose Award for Excellence in Teaching.

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  • WK
    Marc Abrahams

    Editor and co-founder, Annals of Improbable Research; founder, Ig Nobel Prize

    Marc Abrahams is editor and co-founder of the magazine Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), host and main writer of the Improbable Research weekly podcast (distributed by CBS), and author of This is Improbable Too and other books. He edits and writes much of the web site and blog www.improbable.com, and is a longtime regular columnist for The Guardian newspaper. Marc is the father and master of ceremonies of the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, honoring achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK. The prizes are handed out by genuine Nobel laureates at a gala ceremony held each autumn at Harvard University and broadcast on the internet and on National Public Radio. the Washington Post called Marc "the nation's guru of academic grunge." The Journal of the American Medical Association called him "the Puck of Science." He has been called many other things.

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  • WK
    Scott Armstrong

    Senior editor, The Christian Science Monitor

    Scott Armstrong is a senior editor at The Christian Science Monitor in Boston. He is currently the cover story editor for the paper’s weekly magazine, which involves conceptualizing, assigning, and editing 3,500-word narratives on topics ranging from foreign affairs to physics. Before that he was a backstory editor, producing feature stories with an emphasis on storytelling. He was national news editor for 11 years and Los Angeles bureau chief for 10 years. He has been a technology writer, New England news reporter, and staff editor on the foreign desk.

  • WK
    Christie Aschwanden

    Lead science writer, FiveThirtyEight

    Christie Aschwanden is the lead science writer at FiveThirtyEight. She also writes a health column for the Washington Post and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times. Her work has appeared in dozens of publications, including Smithsonian, Popular Science, New Scientist, Discover and [NPR.org](http://NPR.org._ She blogs about science at The Last Word On Nothing and is a 2015 Journalism Fellow in Complex Systems Science at Santa Fe Institute. She's the recipient of a 2014 Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. She won the NASW Science in Society Award for Commentary or Opinion in 2013 and was a 2011 National Magazine Award finalist.

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  • WK
    John H. Ashley

    Chief, Visual Arts Division, U.S. Copyright Office

    A longtime veteran of the U.S. Copyright Office, John H. Ashley serves as Chief of the federal agency’s Visual Arts Division, one of three divisions (the others being Literary and Performing Arts) within the USCO Registration Practices and Policies Program. His division administers copyright law for pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including two- and three-dimensional works of fine, graphic, and applied art. Examples of such works include photographs; original prints; art reproductions; cartographic works, such as maps, globes, and relief models; technical and mechanical drawings; and architectural drawings, plans, blueprints, or diagrams. Ashley has taught at law schools on a variety of subjects, including copyrights, art law, administrative procedures law, constitutional due process, trademarks, entertainment law and communications law. He is on the faculty of the U.S. Copyright Office’s Copyright Academy, which prepares and teaches curricula to USCO staff and clients.

  • NH
    Abhijit Banerjee

    Ford Foundation international professor of economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    Abhijit Banerjee applies science to combating poverty. He and Esther Duflo are directors of the MIT-based Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab J-PAL, a global network of researchers driven by a belief in the power of scientific evidence to understand what really helps the poor, and what does not. Banerjee, Duflo and their colleagues conduct randomized evaluations to test and improve the effectiveness of policies and programs and disseminate their results to policymakers, nonprofit organizations and foundations. The lab and its directors were recently awarded the 2014/15 Albert O. Hirschman Prize by the Social Science Research Council. In addition to his research publications, Banerjee's books include, with Duflo, Poor Economics, chosen as Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year for 2011. Past president of the Bureau for Research in the Economic Analysis of Development, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a fellow of the Econometric Society, he has also been a Guggenheim Fellow and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow and was appointed in 2012 to the U.N. Secretary-General’s High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. In 2014 Banerjee was honored with the Bernard Harms Prize, awarded every two years by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

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  • WK
    Burkhard Bilger

    Staff writer, The New Yorker

    Burkhard Bilger has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2000. He was a senior editor at Discover from 1999 to 2005, and a deputy editor and writer at The Sciences from 1994 to 1999, where his work helped earn two National Magazine Awards and six nominations. His book, Noodling for Flatheads (Scribner, 2000), was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award. Bilger is a Branford Fellow at Yale University, from which he graduated in 1986. He is at work on a book about his grandfather’s experiences during the Second World War, to be published by Alfred A. Knopf.

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  • WK
    Jennifer Bleyer

    Senior editor, Psychology Today

    Jennifer Bleyer is a senior editor at Psychology Today. Previously, she was an independent journalist whose work appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, Self, Cosmopolitan, Tablet, Real Simple, and TheAtlantic.com among other publications, and an adjunct faculty member at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University.

    Pitch Guidelines

    I’m interested in stories from the behavioral sciences, so psychology, social neuroscience, cognitive science, psychobiology, social psychology. Also, I look for mind-body health stories, really interesting mental health advances (an upcoming story we’re doing, for instance, is on interventions for First Episode Psychosis), nutrition and sex stories based on empirical research. I’m looking for stuff that makes a newsy 800-1000-word story, or great narratives that can be 3-4,000 word features.

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  • WK
    Deborah Blum

    Director, Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT

    Deborah Blum is director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT. A Pulitzer-prize winning science journalist, she is the author of five books, co-editor of A Field Guide for Science Writers, and the 2014 guest editor of Best American Science and Nature Writing. She has written for a wide range of publications, including the New York Times, Time, Scientific American and Discover. She won the Pulitzer prize for beat reporting in 1992 while working as a staff science writer for the Sacramento Bee. Before coming to MIT, Blum was Helen Firstbrook Franklin Professor of Journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a past president of the National Association of Science Writers and the former North American board member of the World Federation of Science Journalists. She currently serves as vice president of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.

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  • WK
    Alex Blumberg

    CEO, Gimlet Media

    Alex Blumberg is the CEO of Gimlet Media. Before Gimlet, he was a radio journalist at This American Life, and the co-founder, along with Adam Davidson, of the This American Life/NPR co-production Planet Money. Blumberg left a long career in public radio to launch Gimlet, a for-profit podcast network focusing on narrative journalism and story-telling. Gimlet produces three podcasts: StartUp, the true story of what it’s like to launch a business; Reply All, a show about the internet; and Mystery Show, a podcast where the host solves everyday mysteries. His work has won every major award in broadcast journalism, including the Polk, the duPont-Columbia, and the Peabody. Blumberg's award-winning documentary on the housing crisis, The Giant Pool of Money, which he co-reported and produced with Adam Davidson, was named one of the last decade's top ten works of journalism by the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. Blumberg co-founded Planet Money with Adam Davidson. Planet Money, through podcasts, radio stories, documentaries and blog posts, delivers economic journalism in a fresh, accessible, humorous, yet hard-hitting way. Blumberg executive produced the interactive project "Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt," which won almost every major online award including an Emmy.

    Pitch Guidelines

    Gimlet Media is the premier media company focused on narrative podcasts. Our scope of interests is broad. For an idea of types of narratives that interest us, please listen to our initial 3 shows: StartUp, a documentary radio show about what it's really like to start a business, Reply All, a show about the internet, and Mystery Show, a show where host Starlee Kine solves everyday mysteries. For the full story of Gimlet’s creation, listen to season one of StartUp. Of the three, Reply All is the one that deals most often with science topics, particularly computers and mobile technology and their impact on society. We're constantly looking for narrative stories for that show. They should involve the internet, have a human at the center of them, and be surprising in some way. In addition, we have several new shows that we'll be launching over the next several months involving science. One explores family history with occasional dips into evolutionary biology. Another examines popular fads through the lens of science. Another will deal with medicine and health care. Finally, just to put it out there, we're constantly on the lookout for smart, narratively savvy journalists and producers, preferably with radio experience, to hire.

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  • WK
    Rick Borchelt

    Director of communications and public affairs, Department of Energy’s Office of Science

    Rick Borchelt is director of communications and public affairs for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Mr. Borchelt has held numerous high-level communications positions, most recently as special assistant for public affairs in the Office of the Director at the National Cancer Institute. He served as executive communications director for the Pew-funded Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University and as communications director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Research, Education, and Economics Mission Area. He serves on the editorial board of the journal Science Communication and as a member of the National Academy of Science's Roundtable on Public Interfaces of the Life Sciences. Mr. Borchelt also has directed media relations for the National Academy of Sciences, acted as press secretary for the U.S. House of Representatives Science Committee, and was special assistant for public affairs in the Executive Office of the President during the Clinton administration. He has worked overseas as well. He spent time in Nairobi, Kenya, as executive speechwriter to the United Nations under the secretary general and executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme. Mr. Borchelt received a B.S. in biology from Southeast Missouri State University.

  • WK
    Brooke Borel

    Freelance science writer, journalist, and author

    Brooke Borel is a freelance science writer and author based in Brooklyn, N.Y. She is a contributing editor at Popular Science and has also written for Slate, Aeon, and Nova Next, among others. Her first book, Infested: How the Bed Bug Infiltrated Our Bedrooms and Took Over the World, was published in 2015 from the University of Chicago Press with additional support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. She is working on a fact-checking guide, also for Chicago, which should publish in 2016.

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  • NH
    Katrine Bosley

    Chief executive officer, Editas Medicine

    Katrine Bosley is an experienced biotech entrepreneur. Before joining Editas, a Cambridge startup aiming to translate genome-editing technology into human therapeutics, she was the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Broad Institute, a biomedical and genomic research center founded by MIT and Harvard. Prior to that, she was the CEO of Avila Therapeutics (acquired by Celgene). She served as vice president for business development at Adnexus Therapeutics and then for strategic operations after Adnexus was acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb. Earlier, Bosley held several positions at Biogen in business development, commercial operations, and portfolio strategy and was part of the healthcare team at the venture firm Highland Capital Partners. She is a graduate of Cornell University. In addition to her role at Editas, Bosley currently serves as chairman of the board of Genocea Biosciences and is a board member of Galapagos NV and Scholar Rock, LLC. She is also a review committee member for the Translation Fund of the Wellcome Trust. Twitter: @ksbosley

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  • NH
    Edward Boyden

    Associate professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences, Media Lab and McGovern Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    Ed Boyden leads MIT's Synthetic Neurobiology Group, which develops tools for analyzing and repairing complex biological systems such as the brain and applies them systematically to reveal ground-truth principles of biological function as well as to repair these systems. He also co-directs the MIT Center for Neurobiological Engineering, which aims to develop new tools to accelerate neuroscience progress. Among other recognitions, he has received the Carnegie Prize in Mind and Brain Sciences (2015), the Schuetze Prize (2014), the Jacob Heskel Gabbay Award (2013), the Lundbeck "Brain" Prize (2013), the NIH Director's Pioneer Award (2013), the NIH Director's Transformative Research Award (2012 and 2013), and the Perl/UNC Neuroscience Prize (2011). In 2012, he was among those on Wired's Smart List "50 People Who Will Change the World." He has launched an award-winning series of classes at MIT that teach principles of neuroengineering, starting with basic principles of how to control and observe neural functions, and culminating with strategies for launching companies in the nascent neurotechnology space. His group has hosted hundreds of visitors to learn how to use neurotechnologies. Boyden earned his Ph.D. in neurosciences as a Hertz Fellow at Stanford University, where he discovered that the molecular mechanisms used to store a memory are determined by the content to be learned. Before that, he received three degrees in electrical engineering, computer science, and physics from MIT. He has contributed to more than 300 peer-reviewed papers, current or pending patents, and articles, and has given more than 300 invited talks on his group's work. Twitter: @eboyden3

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  • WK
    Bethany Brookshire

    Science education writer, Science News, Science News for Students

    Bethany Brookshire has a B.S. in Biology and a B.A. in Philosophy from The College of William and Mary, a Ph.D. in Physiology and Pharmacology from Wake Forest University School of Medicine. She is the editor of the Open Laboratory Anthology of Science Blogging, 2009, the editor of the Complete Guide to Science Blogging, to be published in autumn 2015, and the winner of the Society for Neuroscience Next Generation Award and the Three Quarks Daily Science Writing Award, among others. She is now a science writer at Science News, and a science education writer at Eureka! Lab with Science News for Students and Society for Science and the Public. You can follow her on Twitter: @scicurious.

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