I am an astronomer working as a member of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav). Currently I'm a professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). I received a B.A. in astronomy-physics and computer science from Colgate University, received an M.S. and Ph.D. in astronomy from Cornell University, and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at West Virginia University before moving to RIT.

Besides research, I am actively involved in public outreach, both inside and outside of our collaboration. My main outreach focus is as part of AskScience, where I coordinate the "Ask Me Anything" (AMA) series on Reddit, in which we bring scientists and the public directly together for Q&A sessions. I started as a panelist with the group, where I would provide answers to questions given my realm of expertise, and in 2015 decided to revive the series.

In my free time, I enjoy running, reading and playing with the best beagle there is.

Twitter: @astromlam
Email: astromlam@gmail.com

Ben Young Landis leads Creative Externalities, a collective designing lasting impact for science, environment, and society. He has produced content and advised on communication strategies for the California Council on Science and Technology (CCST), the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the World Conference of Science Journalists, and other clients. Landis has also led science communication and science policy trainings for SETAC, CCST Science and Technology Policy Fellowship, Duke, UC Davis, and UC Santa Cruz. He has written for North Carolina Sea Grant and the AGU Thriving Earth Exchange, and managed outreach and media relations for the U.S. Geological Survey's Western Ecological Research Center from 2010 to 2015.

Landis received a B.A. in evolution and ecology and minor in education from UC Davis, a M.E.M. from Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment, and a AAAS Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellowship in 2009 to the Orange County Register. Landis is the founder and current executive co-chair of Capital Science Communicators (CapSciComm), a regional science writers group serving the greater Sacramento region in California.

Twitter: @younglandis
Email: ben@cr8xt.com

Judy is a writer-editor at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). There, she manages media relations and creates online, social, and video content on HIV, allergy, immunology, and transplantation research. Judy holds a B.A. in English from Wells College and an M.S. in science journalism from Boston University. Her science writing and multimedia work have appeared in the Boston Globe, Chemical & Engineering News, Scientific American Online, The Healing Muse, 90.9 WBUR and on the walls of Philadelphia's Mütter Museum. Empowering language as a means to dismantle health-related stigma has been a personal and professional interest since Judy began reporting on psychiatric medications in college and HIV prevention in graduate school. She continues to promote empowering language around HIV, disabilities, and rare diseases in her current role.

Twitter: @jude_lavelle
Email: judith.lavelle@nih.gov

Jane is a news editor at Nature. She has a masters degree in marine biology from UCLA and is an alumnae of the science writing program at UC Santa Cruz. Prior to joining Nature, Jane was a reporter and editor with National Geographic covering biology, ecology and atmospheric sciences. Her work has also appeared in Science and the San Jose Mercury News.

Pitching guidelines:

For any pitch, I want to know why we should tell the story now, why the subject is unusual or important, and why the piece would suit our core audience — working scientists. We love exclusive stories or unique angles, and often run pieces that use an individual event to illustrate a broader trend.

News briefs and news stories run anywhere from 200-1,200 words, with most pieces running between 400-800 words. (Our features section commissions longer pieces, up to about 3,000 words. I do not edit features, but can connect you with a features editor.)

Please limit your news pitches to no more than two paragraphs. If your pitch is time-sensitive, flagging that in the subject line of your e-mail will help us both.

Some of Nature's favorite topics include:

• surprising or counterintuitive results, or those with serious policy implications for the general public or research community
• a shift in thinking about a topic or field
• a major debate or controversy that involves scientists, or scientific/science-policy issues
• funding increases or decreases, especially those that will affect a whole field or country
• openings or closures of world-class research facilities
• research fraud or misconduct
• policies that affect how scientists work day-to-day, on topics such as lab/field safety, higher education, or academic publishing

I recommend scanning through some of our recent news coverage before your first pitch to get a sense of our tone and approach to news: http://www.nature.com/news.

A note on single-study stories: We rarely commission stories on papers in big-name journals — such as Nature, Science, PNAS, and PLoS — from freelance pitches. But we do love freelancers who ferret out interesting studies from subject-specific journals (such as the Astrophysical Journal, the AGU journals, the Proceedings of the Royal Society, and Current Biology — to name just a few!) or pre-print servers (bioRxiv, arXiv).

Karen Lips is a field ecologist who studies how global change (wildlife disease, climate change, land use) affects biodiversity of amphibians and reptiles in Latin America and the U.S. A primary focus of her research is determining the ecological and environmental factors that influence amphibian species' response to disease, and how that information might be used in conservation and recovery plans. She is interested in how the loss of biodiversity affects communities and ecosystems, and how human activities contribute to the spread of disease and loss of biodiversity. Before joining the University of Maryland, Lips was a Jefferson Science Fellow at the U.S. Department of State, where she worked in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, in the Office of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, and served as an Embassy Science Fellow in Colombia. Lips is a research associate at the U.S. Museum of Natural History, an AAAS Leshner Leadership Public Engagement Fellow, an AAAS fellow, an ESA fellow, and an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow. She was awarded the President's Award of the Chicago Zoological Society, a Bay and Paul Biodiversity Leadership Award, the Sabin Amphibian Conservation Award in 2012, and the inaugural UMD Impact Communicator Award. She holds a BS in zoology from the University of South Florida and a PhD in biology from the University of Miami. Lips is interested in increasing engagement on environmental issues, promoting scientific leadership, and fostering international scientific collaborations.

Twitter: @KWren88
Web: http://lipslab.weebly.com/

Jonathan Lynch's research focuses on understanding the basis of plant adaptation to drought and low soil fertility. This encompasses physiology, genetics, and ecology, centered on organismic processes. Lynch completed his Ph.D. and postgraduate research in plant physiology at the University of California, Davis, and continued his research at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia before joining the Penn State faculty in 1991. He has been honored for his work by the Mexican Academy of Sciences and the government of China. In the U.S., he is a Fellow of the Crop Science Society of America and last year was awarded the Dennis Hoagland Award by the American Society of Plant Biologists. He holds a Chair in Root Biology at the University of Nottingham in the U.K. and serves on the Advisory Council of the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research.

Web: http://roots.psu.edu/

Marilynn Marchione joined the Associated Press in 2004 after 28 years as a reporter and editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Akron Beacon Journal. As the AP's chief medical writer, she covers medical meetings and looks for consumer-oriented stories with an eye for news you can use. In 2010, she won CASW's Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting. Her work has also been recognized by the Associated Press Managing Editors Association and others. She has held numerous fellowships, including a four-month Knight epidemiology fellowship at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Her journalism degree is from Kent State University.

Twitter: @MMarchioneAP
Web: https://apnews.com/