2011–12 Knight Fellows

Knight Fellows 2010-2011

Standing, left to right: Vincent Liota, Evelyn Tagbo, Dianne Finch (Manager for New Media), Pawel Gorecki, Joyce Murdoch, Phil Hilts (Director), Jia Hepeng, Helen Shariatmadari, Roeun Van, Eli Kintisch, Debbie Meinbresse (Program Coordinator), Eric Strattman (Administrative Assistant). Seated, left to right: Bill Lattanzi, Dan Falk, Maria Stenzel, Alister Doyle.

Alister Doyle Alister Doyle has worked as Reuters Environment Correspondent since 2004, mainly covering U.N. negotiations including the Copenhagen summit in 2009 and the science of climate change. A British citizen based in Oslo, the job has taken him to places ranging from the Arctic to Antarctica, where he was on the last flight to land on a part of the Wilkins Ice shelf before it collapsed in early 2009. Previously, he had postings with Reuters in Paris, Central America, Brussels and London in a career stretching back to 1982. He is a graduate of Oxford University where he studied French and Spanish.
Dan Falk Dan Falk is a freelance science journalist and author based in Toronto, Canada. His writing credits include The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, The Walrus, Astronomy, Cosmos, and New Scientist, and he has contributed to numerous CBC Radio programs. His magazine work and his radio documentaries have earned Falk two American Institute of Physics science writing awards, as well as gold and silver medals from the New York Festivals for Radio Broadcasting. He is also the author of two popular science books, Universe on a T-Shirt and In Search of Time.
Pawel Gorecki Pawel Gorecki is a science and technology journalist working for the Polish edition of Newsweek. He covers a wide range of topics but primarily focuses on the intersection of technology and the humanities. He is interested in how modern technology effects human cognition and the differences between artificial and human intelligence. He investigates error-prone, human operated systems like air transport and explores the unpredictable nature of complex phenomena such as traffic jams. He earned a master’s degree in philosophy at the University of Warsaw and worked at two of Poland’s biggest publications, Wprost weekly and Rzeczpospolita daily.
Jia Hepeng Jia Hepeng is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Science News Magazine. Upon his graduation from Tsinghua University in 1999, Jia joined China Daily. In June 2005, he became the UK-based SciDev.Net’s regional coordinator for China. He also wrote for Science magazine, Nature, and the UK magazine Chemistry World. Jia reports extensively on topics from life science to climate change. An active promoter of science journalism in China, Jia was elected in April 2007 as the executive board member of the World Federation of Science Journalists and was re-elected in July 2009. He is also the founder of China Science Media Centre.
Eli Kintisch Eli Kintisch has been a policy reporter at Science for six years. In a starred review, Publisher’s Weekly called his book, Hack the Planet, a “fascinating wake-up call.” His writing has appeared in The New Republic, Slate, The Daily Beast, New Scientist and Discover. A 2009 Kavli Fellow, he has given talks on geoengineering and climate policy to audiences at the American Geophysical Union, Columbia University, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Woodworking, hip hop and ultimate frisbee are among his hobbies.
Bill Lattanzi Bill Lattanzi is a freelance writer and producer for documentary television. He has worked extensively on science and history programming for Discovery, History, and National Geographic Channels; and the PBS programs NOVA and American Experience. With a bachelors in philosophy from Connecticut College, and a masters in creative writing from Boston University, Bill has a long-standing interest in the ways that science and technology shape how we think, act, and tell stories. Bill created the video website Shoetube.tv, and recently wrote a video game for Muzzy Lane Software and Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital that helps patients quit smoking.
Vincent Liota Vincent Liota is a video producer, director, cameraman, editor, and animator. For six years he served as Senior Series Producer on the PBS program NOVA ScienceNOW, often focusing on abstract scientific concepts such as complexity theory, molecular biology, and a mathematical conjecture of prime numbers. His stories are often presented through cartoons as well as an occasional musical production number. Work as a freelance producer includes science segments for ABC’s Nightline and World News Tonight. Vincent was a staff editor at ABC News, PBS Now with Bill Moyers, the New York Times Science Times and is a graduate of the NYU Film School.
Joyce Murdoch Joyce Murdoch directed coverage of energy and the environment as a National Journal managing editor. A former Washington Post editor and reporter, she co-authored two award-winning books, including Courting Justice: Gay Men and Lesbians v. the Supreme Court. Murdoch taught News Writing for the Web and Print at Harvard’s 2011 Summer School. She’s lectured at the Library of Congress, Yale and Stanford. She studied China’s evolution at Harvard as a 2011 Nieman affiliate. Earlier, she covered Congress for her own news service, served as a congressional press secretary and reported for the Atlanta Journal. A summa cum laude University of Georgia grad, Murdoch is a three-time Hoover Media Fellow.
Roeun Van Roeun Van is the Weekend Editor at The Cambodia Daily — Cambodia’s first English-language daily newspaper which was established in Phnom Penh in 1993. He joined the paper in 1997, and has covered agriculture, aquaculture and other connected environment issues, especially illegal logging, forestland clearing and the over-exploitation of the country’s rivers and freshwater fish stocks. His reporting also ranged from land disputes, fishery problems, the destruction of flooded forest in Tonle Sap Lake and the granting of massive economic land concessions to private companies for rubber plantations.
Helen Shariatmadari Helen Shariatmadari directs television documentaries for the BBC in London. For the last 6 years she’s specialized in science, covering a range of topics for their most popular science strand, Horizon. She tries to bring inaccessible subjects to a broad audience, posing questions like "What Is Reality?" and "How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?", films that have now been broadcast in over 30 countries. She’s also made films about parenting and tribal sports in rural Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. Born and educated in Britain, Helen graduated from Oxford University with a BA in English Literature.
Maria Stenzel Maria Stenzel is a freelance photojournalist specializing in environmental issues. Maria began her career in the 1980s, shooting feature stories about urban life for the Washington Post Magazine. She has covered twenty-five stories for National Geographic Magazine on history, culture, and conservation. She has traced the life of the poet Walt Whitman, traveled with migratory beekeepers, documented indigenous cultures in Siberia, Mexico, Bolivia, Borneo and Kenya, and photographed illegal logging in the Peruvian Amazon. Since 1996 she has regularly covered scientists’ research in Antarctica. Maria graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.A. in American Studies.
Evelyn Tagbo Evelyn Tagbo is the Associate Technology Editor of BusinessDay, Nigeria’s only business and economic daily. Previously, she worked in Ghana for four years as regional correspondent for BusinessDay, and later The BusinessEye, a weekly investigative journal published in Lagos. She has written extensively on climate change, energy, telecommunications, and health issues. She is a two-time first prize winner (2006, 2007) in the Africa Information Society Initiative (AISI) Media awards organized by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). Evelyn holds B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Statistics from University of Ibadan, Nigeria.