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MBL Awards Journalism Fellowships
Biology "Boot Camp" to Provide Reporters with Hands-On Science Training
MBL, Woods Hole, MA—Eleven science writers and editors have been awarded prestigious Science Journalism Fellowships at the MBL (Marine Biological Laboratory), an internationally known biomedical and environmental research center located in the village of Woods Hole, Massachusetts on Cape Cod. The program will provide the journalists hands-on science training during the MBL’s famed summer research season, when hundreds of biologists gather at the institution from around the world to conduct research and to teach and learn advanced-level science and research techniques.
This year’s MBL Science Journalism Fellows are:
Biomedical Course:
- Corie Lok, Editor, Nature Network Boston
- Brendan Maher, Senior Editor, The Scientist (Senior Editor, Nature, June 2007)
- Stephanie Nano, Editor/Reporter, The Associated Press
- Sally Palmer, Deputy Editor, BBC Focus magazine, UK
- Tetsuro Yamada, Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan
Environment Course:
- E. Anne Bolen, Managing Editor, Geotimes
- Andrea Cross, Freelance Producer
- Richard Friebe, Staff Writer, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Germany
- Jude Isabella, Managing Editor, YES! magazine
- Rosanne Skirble, Environment/Health Reporter, Voice of America
- Peter Thomson, Acting Senior Producer, PRI's Living on Earth
Now in its 22nd year, the MBL’s Science Journalism Program allows promising science journalists from around the globe to “step into the shoes of the scientists they cover,” by awarding them fellowships to live and study at the laboratory.
During their residencies at the MBL, fellows learn what science is like from the inside out. All fellows will arrive in early June to participate in one of two hands-on laboratory courses—each designed specifically for the non-scientist. One course will explore techniques used in biomedical research—sequencing DNA, cloning, and PCR (polymerase chain reaction), for example—and the other will feature research techniques currently in use by ecosystems ecologists both in the field and in the laboratory. In 2007, 2 fellows will also travel with MBL scientists to the North Slope of Alaska's Brooks Range to learn more about climate change research and other environmental studies being conducted at an MBL field site located on Toolik Lake.
To date, the Science Journalism Program has granted fellowships to more than 250 journalists from a wide range of news organizations, including The New York Times, Science, National Public Radio, The Washington Post, CNN, and Scientific American. It is also gaining cachet with journalists overseas, and includes alumni from such far-reaching places as Africa, Brazil, Sweden, India, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
MBL visiting investigator and Northwestern University professor Dr. Robert D. Goldman, and Knight Science Journalism Program director and former Washington Post science editor, Boyce Rensberger, direct the Science Journalism Program. The Biomedical Hands-On Laboratory course is directed by Dr. Kerry Bloom of the University of North Carolina and the Environment Hands-On Laboratory course is co-directed by Drs. Kenneth Foreman and Christopher Neill, both of the MBL’s Ecosystems Center.
The 2007 MBL Science Journalism Program is supported in part by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the American Society for Cell Biology, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, FASEB, the National Science Foundation—Office of Polar Programs, NASA, The New York Times Company Foundation, and the Society for Neuroscience. For more information about the MBL’s Science Journalism Program, visit www.mbl.edu/sjp.
The MBL is a leading international, independent, nonprofit institution dedicated to discovery and to improving the human condition through creative research and education in the biological, biomedical and environmental sciences. Founded in 1888 as the Marine Biological Laboratory, the MBL is the oldest private marine laboratory in the Western Hemisphere. For more information, visit www.MBL.edu
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