Speakers

Speakers

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

  • LL
    Eric Minikel

    Doctoral candidate in biological and biomedical Sciences, Harvard Medical School; member, Schreiber Lab, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

    Eric Minikel is a computational scientist in Stuart Schreiber's laboratory at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Eric's research focuses on the long-term goal of developing of small molecule therapeutics for prion diseases — fatal neurodegenerative diseases caused by the spread of misfolded proteins across the brain. He works on developing methods for studying prions in cells and in cell-free systems and for identifying chemical compounds that bind prions or keep them from multiplying. He also works on diagnostic tools for measuring the progression of prion disease in patients. After a previous career in consulting, Eric began studying biology after learning in late 2011 that his wife, Sonia Vallabh, inherited a genetic mutation that causes prion disease. Prior to joining the Schreiber Lab, Eric worked for Daniel MacArthur, also at the Broad Institute, where he studied the genetics of prion disease. Eric holds a master's degree from MIT and is currently a Ph.D. student in the biological and biomedical sciences program at Harvard Medical School.

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  • WK
    Seth Mnookin

    Co-director, MIT graduate program in science writing

    Seth Mnookin is the co-director of MIT’s graduate program in science writing. His most recent book, The Panic Virus: The True Story Behind the Vaccine-Autism Controversy, won the National Association of Science Writers 2012 "Science in Society" Award and the New England chapter of the American Medical Writers Association’s Will Solimene Award for Excellence. He is also the author of the 2006 New York Times bestseller Feeding the Monster: How Money, Smarts, and Nerve Took a Team to the Top, which chronicles the challenges and triumphs of the John Henry-Tom Werner ownership group of the Boston Red Sox. His first book, 2004’s Hard News: The Scandals at The New York Times and Their Meaning for American Media, was a Washington Post Best Book of the Year. Seth is currently a member of the FDA’s Expert Working Group on Medical Countermeasure Emergency Communication Strategies. Since 2005, he’s been a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, where he’s written about the American media presence in Iraq, Bloomberg News, and Stephen Colbert. In 2002 and 2003, he was a senior writer at Newsweek, where he wrote the media column "Raw Copy" and also covered politics and popular culture. Seth’s essays and reporting have been featured in the annual Best American Science and Nature Writing anthologies, and his journalism has appeared in numerous publications, including the New Yorker, New York, Wired, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Spin, Slate, and Salon.com. A former music columnist for the New York Observer, he began his journalism career as a rock critic for the now-defunct webzine Addicted to Noise and has also worked as a crime reporter at the Palm Beach Post, a city hall reporter at the Forward, a presidential campaign reporter at Brill’s Content, and a jack-of-all-trades at Inside.com. He graduated from Harvard College in 1994 with a degree in history and science, and was a 2004 Joan Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. A native of Newton, Mass., he and his wife currently live outside of Boston with their ten-year-old dog, their five-year-old son, and their three-year-old daughter. See more at: http://sethmnookin.com/bio/#sthash.fYjOqG3N.dpuf. Twitter: @sethmnookin

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  • WK
    Sy Montgomery

    Author, The Soul of an Octopus

    Sy Montgomery’s nearly 20 books for both adults and children have garnered many honors. The Good Good Pig, her memoir of life with her pig, Christopher Hogwood, is an international bestseller. She is the winner of the 2009 New England Independent Booksellers Association Nonfiction Award, the 2010 Children’s Book Guild Nonfiction Award, the Henry Bergh Award for Nonfiction (given by the ASPCA for humane education) and dozens of other honors. Her work with the man-eating tigers, the subject of her book Spell Of The Tiger, was made into in a National Geographic television documentary she scripted and narrated. Also for National Geographic TV she developed and scripted Mother Bear Man, about her friend, Ben Kilham, who raises and releases orphaned bear cubs, which won a Chris award. Sy writes for adults and children, for print and broadcast, in America and overseas in an effort to reach as wide an audience as possible at what she considers a critical turning point in human history. She speaks frequently at schools and museums, libraries and universities.

  • WK
    Liz Neeley

    Executive director, The Story Collider

    Liz Neeley is the Executive Director of The Story Collider, which is dedicated to the idea that true, personal stories about science, told live, are powerful. She previously worked as the Assistant Director of Science Outreach for COMPASS, where she created and led science communication trainings for faculty and researchers around the country. Before COMPASS, she worked in Fiji and Papua New Guinea, helping local scientists share their knowledge of coral reefs and conservation, and on international trade policies for deep-sea corals. Her approach to communication is strongly influenced by network science and her graduate research at Boston University on the evolution of visual communication systems in tropical reef fishes. You can follow her aesthetic explorations on Pinterest at www.pinterest.com/lizneeley/memento-vivere/ Twitter: @LizNeeley

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  • WK
    Michael E. Newman

    Senior communications officer, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); Freelance writer/editor

    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 36-year career – the past 26 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. From 1991 to 2007, Newman served as director of media relations for the NIST, the Commerce Department agency that serves as the nation’s measurement and standards laboratory and the federal agency charged with helping U.S. industry become more competitive in the global marketplace. In his current role as NIST’s senior communications officer, he continues to perform many of his past duties involving media relations and science writing. Additionally, his responsibilities include writing and updating content on the NIST Web pages, and writing and producing video news features. Newman also has been a successful freelance writer/editor/video producer for more than 30 years, primarily on science, technology, medical and health topics. He is co-chair of NASW’s PIO Committee, serves on the Programs Committee, and received the organization’s 2013 Diane McGurgan Award for dedication and volunteer service.

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  • WK
    Ivan Oransky

    Vice president, Global editorial director, MedPage Today; co-founder, Retraction Watch

    Ivan Oransky M.D. is the vice president and global editorial director of MedPage Today and co-founder of the MacArthur Foundation-funded Retraction Watch. He previously was executive editor of Reuters Health and held editorial positions at Scientific American and The Scientist. A 2012 TEDMED speaker, he is the recipient of the 2015 John P. McGovern Medal for excellence in biomedical communication from the American Medical Writers Association. Oransky teaches medical journalism at New York University’s science, health, and environmental reporting program, and serves as vice president of the Association of Health Care Journalists.

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  • NH
    Naomi Oreskes

    Professor of the history of science and affiliated professor of earth and planetary sciences, Harvard University

    Naomi Oreskes is a historian of science with a particular interest in understanding scientific consensus and dissent. She joined the Harvard faculty in 2013 after 15 years on the faculty of the University of California, San Diego, and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Oreskes’s research focuses on the earth and environmental sciences, which were the focus of her scientific training and early research. In a 2004 essay "The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change," Oreskes made waves with an analysis of the scientific literature concluding that 75 percent of published abstracts on climate change supported the consensus on anthropogenic climate change. Her 2010 book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco to Global Warming, co-authored with Caltech historian Erik M. Conway, is the basis of the documentary Merchants of Doubt and was awarded the 2011 Watson-Davis Prize by the History of Science Society. Oreskes received her Ph.D. from Stanford's graduate special program in geological research and history of science. Her most recent book, also with Erik Conway, is science-based fiction. The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future imagines a world devastated by climate change. Twitter: @NaomiOreskes

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  • WK
    Shannon Palus

    Reporter, Retraction Watch; former fact-checker for Popular Science and Discover

    Shannon Palus recently became a staff writer for Retraction Watch. Before joining Retraction Watch, Palus was a fact-checker for Retro Report, Quanta, and Popular Science. She also taught Popular Science interns how to fact check. She has written for a number of publications including Discover, Ars Technica, Slate, the Atlantic, Smithsonian, Science, McGill News, The Toast, Eos (the American Geophysical Union’s newspaper), and Popular Science.

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  • LL
    Alex Pentland

    Toshiba Professor of Media Arts & Sciences, program in media arts and sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    Prof. Alex “Sandy” Pentland, director of the MIT Connection Science and Human Dynamics Laboratories, was named by Forbes in 2012 as one of the “seven most powerful data scientists in the world.” His research focuses on ways to use Big Data and “reality mining” to extract patterns that predict human behavior. His 2014 book Social Physics postulates that “the newly ubiquitous digital data that is becoming available about all aspects of human life” can be used to build “a predictive, computational theory of human behavior” that can in turn be used to engineer better social systems.

    But these new capabilities raise obvious questions about privacy and personal autonomy; so alongside his research work, Pentland helps to devise guidelines to preempt future privacy disasters through his work as academic director of the Data-Pop Alliance, a New York think tank promoting democratic and humanitarian uses of Big Data, and co-leader of the World Economic Forum Big Data and Personal Data initiatives.

    Pentland is also the co-founder of Sociometric Solutions, a Boston startup that uses a “Sociometric Badge” device to analyze work in complex organizations. He has been called “The Godfather of Wearables” by The Verge for his work in the 1980s and 1990s to build highly portable displays, health monitors, cameras, and interface devices. Pentland’s former student Thad Starner went on to lead the Glass project at Google.

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  • WK
    Jeffrey M. Perkel

    Freelance science writer

    Jeffrey Perkel has been a scientific writer since 2000, when he left academia to join the staff of The Scientist magazine as a senior editor for technology. He holds a Ph.D. in cell and molecular biology from the University of Pennsylvania, and did postdoctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania and at Harvard Medical School. Specializing in lab technologies and methods, Jeffrey’s freelance clients include the American Chemical Society, Biocompare.com, BioTechniques, Nature, Science, and The Scientist.

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  • WK
    Kendall Powell

    Freelance science writer

    Kendall Powell has been a freelance science writer for 12 years, covering the realm of biology, from molecules to maternity. She has written for publications including the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Nature, the Journal of Cell Biology, and Discover. She also writes science communications for the HHMI Bulletin, the American Society for Microbiology, the National Institute on Drug Abuse and others. She is a contributor to The Science Writers’ Handbook.

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  • WK
    Katie Pratt

    Communications director, Deep Carbon Observatory

    Katie Pratt is a science writer and communicator based in Rhode Island. She holds a PhD in molecular biology, but now works as Communications Director for the Deep Carbon Observatory, a 10-year Sloan Foundation funded program focused on Earth sciences. She appreciates all forms of creative science communication, and regularly acts as writer, videographer, photographer, and graphic facilitator. Twitter: @katie_phd and @deepcarb

  • WK
    Lee Rainie

    Director of internet, science and technology research, Pew Research Center

    Lee Rainie is the director of internet, science and technology research at the Pew Research Center. He gives several dozen speeches a year to government officials, media leaders, scholars and students, technology executives, librarians, and non-profit groups about the changing media ecosystem. He is also regularly interviewed by major news organizations about technology trends. He is a co-author of Networked: The New Social Operating System and five books about the future of the internet that are drawn from the center’s research. Prior to joining Pew Research, he was managing editor of U.S. News & World Report. He is a graduate of Harvard University and has a master’s degree in political science from Long Island University. He blogs at http://networked.pewinternet.org/blog/.

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