Writers
Award winners whose work is featured in Showcase
Elizabeth Rush
Author
Elizabeth Rush is the author of Rising: Essays from America’s Disappearing Shore (Milkweed Editions 2018). She is currently the Andrew Mellon Fellow for Pedagogical Innovation in the Humanities in the English Department at Bates College, where she teaches creative nonfiction. She is also the recipient of the Howard Foundation Fellowship, awarded by Brown University, and the Science in Society Award from the National Association of Science Writers (that story, “Leaving the Sea,” is featured on Showcase). Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Harpers, Granta, Creative Nonfiction, The New Republic, Orion, Le Monde Diplomatique, Frieze, Witness, The Dark Mountain Project and others. You can follow her on Twitter @elizabetharush.
Javier Salas
Science, Health, and Technology Editor
Javier Salas, the science, health, and technology deputy editor at El País, is a journalist with over 15 years of experience in mainstream media. Specializing in scientific, technological, and environmental reporting, he has been a valuable contributor to El País since 2014, working in the science and technology sections of the newspaper. Throughout his career, he was also part of the founding team of the newspaper Público and served at the website of Informativos Telecinco. Salas has been recognized and honored for his outstanding contributions to journalism. He and Mariano Zafra won a AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award in 2021 for the story “A room, a bar and a classroom: how the coronavirus is spread through the air” (featured on Showcase), making them the first Spanish journalists to receive this recognition. He also received the esteemed Ortega y Gasset Award in recognition of his accomplishments. Additionally, his remarkable work with Materia earned him the CSIC-FBBVA Science Communication Award.
Megan Scudellari
Freelance Science Journalist
Megan Scudellari is a freelance science journalist based in Boston, Massachusetts, specializing in the life sciences. She has contributed to Nature, Newsweek, Bloomberg News, Scientific American, Discover, and Technology Review, among others. She is currently a regular contributor for IEEE Spectrum‘s Human OS blog, and previously wrote as a health columnist for the Boston Globe (2015-2017), a contributor to Retraction Watch (2016-2017), and as a correspondent then contributing editor at The Scientist magazine (2009-20014). She is the co-author of a college biology textbook, Biology Now, now in its second edition from publisher W. W. Norton. In 2013, she was awarded the prestigious Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award in recognition of outstanding reporting and writing in science. The award is bestowed upon one young science journalist annually. Her story, “Never Say Die” (featured on Showcase) was part of the winning package for that award. Follow her on Twitter @Scudellari.
Ashley Smart
Senior editor
Ashley Smart is associate director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT and a senior editor at Undark magazine, where he was co-editor of the award-winning “Long Division” project on race science. He also serves as an instructor in MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing. Before coming to the Knight Science Journalism Program, he spent eight years as an editor and reporter at Physics Today magazine, and in 2015-16 he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. Smart serves on the boards of directors of the Open Notebook and the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, and he is co-editor of A Tactical Guide to Science Journalism: Lessons From the Frontlines, published by Oxford University Press. His story “A Field at a Crossroads: Genetics and Racial Mythmaking” (featured on Showcase) won the National Association of Science Writers’ Science in Society Award in 2023.
Joshua Sokol
Freelance science journalist
Joshua Sokol is a freelance science journalist based in Raleigh, NC. After majoring in English literature and astronomy at Swarthmore College, he worked as a data analyst for the Hubble Space Telescope, then attended the graduate program in science writing at MIT. His work has appeared in Science, the Atlantic, the New York Times, many other publications, and the Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology. Winner of the Evert Clark/Seph Payne Award for Young Science Journalists and science writing awards from the American Astronomical Society, the American Institute of Physics, and the American Geophysical Union, he is now at work on his first book, a natural history of the night sky, for Penguin Random House. His story “The Stargazers,” for Science, is featured on Showcase.
Joshua Sokol
Freelance Writer
Joshua Sokol is a freelance writer based in Boston. Originally trained in observational astronomy, he now covers not just space but stories throughout natural history for Quanta, Science, and other magazines. His piece about mercury poisoning in Minamata (featured on Showcase), together with three other stories from the past year, won the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing’s 2018 Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award for young science journalists. Follow him on Twitter @josh_sokol.
Nicola Twilley
Science Journalist
Nicola Twilley is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker magazine and a co-host of Gastropod, an award-winning podcast about the science and history of food. She is at work on two books: one about refrigeration for Penguin Press, and the other on quarantine, co-authored with Geoff Manaugh, for Farrar, Straus and Giroux. “The Billion-Year Wave” (featured on Showcase) was anthologized in the 2017 edition of The Best American Science and Nature Writing. Follow her on Twitter @nicolatwilley.
Hester van Santen
Staff Writer at NRC Media
Hester van Santen is a staff writer at NRC Media, the publishing company of the Dutch daily newspapers NRC Handelsblad and nrc.next. Van Santen has worked at the NRC science desk for 12 years, specializing in life sciences. Her articles cover a diverse range of topics, from food science and biodiversity to human physiology and scholarly publishing. In 2017, she was named European Science Writer of the Year by the Association of British Science Writers for her story “Peer Review Post-Mortem: How a Flawed Aging Study was Published in Nature” (featured on Showcase). The jury characterized her work as “remarkably well researched” and “full of creativity.” Last September, van Santen took up a new position at NRC. She now covers energy and sustainability at the economy & finance desk. Van Santen holds an MSc in Biology and Journalism from the University of Groningen.
Erik Vance
Science Writer
Erik Vance is a native Bay Area writer replanted in Mexico as a non-native species. Before becoming a writer he was, at turns, a biologist, a rock climbing guide, an environmental consultant, and an environmental educator. His work focuses on the human element of science — the people who do it, those who benefit from it, and those who do not. He has written for The New York Times, Nature, Scientific American, Harper’s, National Geographic, and a number of other local and national outlets. His Discover story “Why Nothing Works” (featured on Showcase) won the NASW Science in Society Award in 2015 and inspired his first book, Suggestible You, about how the mind and body continually twist and shape our realities.
Madhumita Venkataramanan
Journalist, Editor and Speaker
Madhumita Venkataramanan is a UK-based journalist, editor and speaker with expertise in the fields of science, health and technology. As the European Technology Correspondent at the Financial Times, she writes news and features around themes of tech, science and innovation. She was previously head of the Telegraph‘s technology section, where she oversaw the newspaper’s technology coverage and has written longform features around data privacy, security and other major science and tech trends for publications such as Wired and BBC Future. Her Wired story “My Identity For Sale” (featured on Showcase) won CASW’s Evert Clark/Seth Payne award for young science journalists in 2015.
