About

I am a freelance science journalist based in New Jersey with more than 30 years of experience writing and editing about the mind, brain and all things biology and medicine. I specialize in long-form journalism, but also enjoy working on news, trends, profiles and short features.

My work has appeared in Science, Health, Business Week, The New York Times, Science News, Scientific American, Scientific American Mind, Popular Science, IEEE Spectrum, Discover and Spectrum. I also penned more than 85 science stories for Current Science, a magazine for middle school students.

I am the author of three nonfiction books. The Gene Masters: How a New Breed of Scientific Entrepreneurs Raced for the Biggest Prize in Biology (Times Books/Henry Holt 2002) is a behind-the-scenes story about the scientists involved in the Human Genome Project and their commercial competitors. I am the coauthor of Math Coach: A Parent’s Guide to Helping Children Succeed in Math (Berkley Books/Penguin Putnam 2001). My book Ramblin’ Robots: Building a Breed of Mechanical Beasts (Franklin Watts 1996) garnered the IEEE Award for Distinguished Literary Contributions Furthering Public Understanding of the Profession and The New York Public Library’s “Books for the Teen Age 1997.”

In my 15 years as a staff editor at Scientific American and Spectrum, I worked on long form features written by both journalists and scientists as well as news, opinion pieces, profiles, Q&As and trends stories. Several of my edited pieces have won awards, including the 2009 American Society of Journalists and Authors, Outstanding Article Award, the 2010 Journalism Award from the American Psychoanalytic Association, the 2011 Science Writing Award from the Acoustical Society of America and two 2021 Azbee Awards of Excellence – a National Bronze Award for Impact/Investigative and a regional award in the same category.

I have been a guest on The History Channel, MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan show and NY1. I have interviewed Ray Kurzweil and the astrophysicist Caleb Sharf on C-SPAN’s BookTV. I have an IMDb credit for William Shatner’s Weird or What? I’ve been featured in NPR’s ‘On Point’ and New Hampshire Public Radio among other programs. I have also written scripts for, and appeared in several Scientific American videos. When I am not writing, editing or narrating stories of strange happenings, I enjoy running, hiking and catching up with the adventures of my two grown children.