I’m a health and science reporter at The New York Times, where I write mostly about infectious diseases.
I have also written for The Atlantic, The New Yorker online, Slate, Nature, Scientific American and others.
I am the 2019 winner of the Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Reporting. I have also received numerous other awards for my writing.
I like to tell stories about complex science through the lives of people directly affected by it — whether that’s the second person ever to be cured of H.I.V., women with autism, the people who live near the abandoned Bhopal factory or a man recovering from a traumatic brain injury. I revel in reporting offbeat stories in far-flung locales: from a ‘Fablab’ in South Africa that’s turning housewives into inventors, to a neuroscientist who’s teaching blind Indian children to ‘see’ and the peer review revolution online.
I was the founding editor and editor-in-chief of the autism news site Spectrum from its launch in 2008 through May 2020. With my colleague Nidhi Subbaraman, I launched Culture Dish, a nonprofit dedicated to enhancing diversity in science journalism. For four years, I also served as an adjunct professor at New York University’s Science Health and Environmental Reporting Program.
I am a member of the National Association of Science Writers, where I was a founding co-chair of the diversity committee, and a member of the program committee for the 2016 World Conference of Science Journalists. I was the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s science writer in residence for spring 2019.