Alexandra Witze is a contributing correspondent for Nature and Science News magazines. She writes news and features, primarily about the earth sciences, from her base in Boulder, Colo. With her husband Jeff Kanipe, she is the author of Island on Fire, a book about the extraordinary 18th-century eruption of the Icelandic volcano Laki (Pegasus Books, 2015). Alex is a nationally known science writer who has earned top journalism prizes from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, the American Institute of Physics, and the National Association of Science Writers. Among other places her reporting has taken her to the North Pole, to an earthquake zone in China, and to Maya ruins in the Guatemalan jungle. She is on the board of directors for The Open Notebook. Between 2005 and 2010 she served as features editor, news editor, and Washington bureau chief for Nature, the international weekly journal of science. Alex has also worked as a general science reporter at the Dallas Morning News in Texas and as an editor at the first Earth magazine, in Wisconsin. She has a bachelor’s degree in geology from MIT and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. www.alexandrawitze.com www.lakithebook.com Twitter: @alexwitze