Recent Guest Speakers

Throughout the academic year guest speakers are invited into the classroom to share their expertise on current issues in both science and the communication of science. Many are drawn from the vast community of science writers, journalists, and scientists living and working in the Boston metropolitan area. Students also have the opportunity to join the Knight Science Journalism Fellows at their weekly seminars. Guests in 2008-09 have included Pulitzer Prize winning author Deborah Blum, author and program alum Courtney Humphries, writer and science blogger Carl Zimmer, and author Masha Gessen .

Carl Zimmer
guest speaker

Other past guests have included MIT biologist Robert Weinberg, a pioneer in cancer research who discovered the first human oncogene and the first tumor suppressor gene; New York Times science journalist William Broad, two-time winner of the Pulitzer prize; Dava Sobel, author of Longitude and Galileo's Daughter; investigative journalist Robert Whitaker, who wrote Mad in America, an exposé on the business of treating mental health in America; Thomas Murray, a former member of the President's Commission on Bioethics, who discussed how the media covers ethical concerns in science and medicine; Robert Kirshner, Harvard astronomer and member of the team that made the startling discovery of the accelerating universe; Alan Guth, winner of the 2004 Cosmology Prize of the Peter Gruber Foundation; Phil Hilts, author of Smokescreen and Rx for Survival and astrophysicist Paul Schechter.

Thomas Murray
guest speaker