Writers

Award winners whose work is featured in Showcase

Jane Qiu

Science Writer

Jane Qiu is an award-winning independent science writer in Beijing, contributing to publications such as Nature, Science, Scientific American, MIT Technology Review, National Geographic, and The Economist. With a PhD in cancer genetics, Qiu has covered wide-ranging topics from life science, conservation, environment, geoscience, anthropology, and development issues to science policy. In addition to reporting cutting-edge science with a critical lens, Qiu is known for her unique contribution to uncovering underreported stories and perspectives in the context of the developing world. Her work has won prestigious journalism awards from the U.S. Association of Health Care Journalists (2023), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2016 & 2022), the Association of British Science Writers ( 2017), the South Asian Journalists Association (2017), and the Asia Environmental Journalism Awards (2016). Qiu is a recipient of numerous prestigious international fellowships such as Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, the Pulitzer Center travel grants, and the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF)’s Fund for Women Journalists.

Lulu Ramadan

Investigative Reporter

Lulu Ramadan is an investigative reporter at The Seattle Times and a distinguished fellow at ProPublica. She previously worked at The Palm Beach Post, where her 2021 series exploring the health and environmental impacts of South Florida’s sugar industry on rural communities was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, among other honors. (One of the stories in this series is featured on Showcase.) In Washington, her work on an award-winning series on private special education schools has resulted in statewide reforms to education oversight.

Hillary Rosner

Freelance Journalist

Hillary Rosner is a freelance journalist and editor specializing in feature stories about science and the environment. She writes for National Geographic, Wired, Scientific American, The New York Times, High Country News, and many other publications, and she is a contributing editor at bioGraphic. Her work has twice been awarded the AAAS-Kavli Science Journalism prize (including “Attack of the Mutant Pupfish,” which is featured on Showcase) and has also garnered awards from the Society for Environmental Journalists and the National Association of Science Writers. She lives in Colorado.

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 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.

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.

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.