Laureate Bios
- Clive Cookson—Science journalist at The Financial Times of London.
- David Ewing Duncan—Science journalist, contributor to Nature and other science publications, and regular NPR and PBS contributor.
- Joel Garreau—Author of “Radical Evolution”, journalist and editor at The Washington Post
- Simon Grose—Science and technology editor, Canberra Times.
- Moira Gunn—Science journalist, creator of NPR’s TechNation and BiotechNation, and Purdue Science and Engineering alumna.
- Joan Leach—Editor, Social Epistemology, and convener, Science Communications Program at the University of Queensland.
- Nuala Moran—Science journalist, editor, Science|Business, BioWorld, former managing editor, Nature, former deputy editor, Computer Weekly.
- Apoorva Mandavilli—Senior news editor, Nature Medicine.
- Jason Pontin—Science journalist, editor-in-chief of Technology Review, the MIT magazine of innovation.
- Jeff Young—Senior editor, The Chronicle of Higher Education
- Sabine Louët—News Editor of Nature Biotechnology.
Clive Cookson has worked in science journalism for the whole of his professional life. He left Oxford University in 1974 with a First Class Honours degree in chemistry. After two years training on the Luton Evening Post, he joined the Times Higher Education Supplement — first as science correspondent in London and then as American Editor in Washington. Clive Cookson returned to London in 1981 as technology correspondent of the Times. In 1983 he moved to BBC Radio as science and medical correspondent. He went back to print journalism in 1987, when he joined his present newspaper, the Financial Times, as technology editor. He has also written about the chemical and pharmaceutical industries for the FT — and since 1991 he has been the paper’s science editor. He won Glaxo science journalism prizes in 1994 and 1998.
David Ewing Duncan is a journalist and author of six books, and a television and radio producer and correspondent. He wrote the international bestseller Calendar: Humanity’s Epic Struggle to Determine a True and Accurate Year (Harper-Collins/Avon), published in 19 languages. His most recent book for Harper-Collins is The Geneticist Who Played Hoops with My DNA… and other masterminds from the frontiers of biotech, released in May 2005.
He writes the “Biotech and Creativity” column for the San Francisco Chronicle, and is a Contributing Editor to Wired and Discover. He has written for Life, Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly, Smithsonian, Fortune, USA Today, and others. Duncan is a freelance producer for ABC’s Nightline, and a producer for Discovery Television, and a correspondent for NOVA on PBS; he is a commentator for NPR’s “Morning Edition.” In 2004, Duncan won the prestigious AAAS Magazine Journalism award.
He is the founder and editorial director of The BioAgenda Institute, an independent, nonprofit life science policy program and institute. He is a member of the San Francisco Writer’s Grotto, and is the executive producer of “Grotto Nights.” He is a board member of the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. His other books include a narrative about a bicycle trek around the world; about a stint as a correspondent in Africa during the waning days of Apartheid; a biography of the conquistador Hernando de Soto; and an investigative report on how doctors are trained. He has three children and lives in San Francisco, California.
Joel Garreau is the author of Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies – and What It Means to Be Human, published in 2005 by Doubleday. Joel is a reporter and editor at The Washington Post and principal of The Garreau Group, the network of his best sources committed to understanding who we are, how we got that way, and where we’re headed, worldwide. He has served as a senior fellow at the University of California at Berkeley and George Mason University, and is a member of Global Business Network, the pioneering scenario-planning organization. He is the troll of a small forest in the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge where he lives with his wife and two daughters.
Simon Grose co-edited Sydney University’s student newspaper in 1974 and was regular contributor to the Australian edition of Rolling Stone during the 1970s and 80s. After stints in television journalism and small business, he came to Canberra in 1988 to join the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia’s major publicly funded research organisation. He later served as a ministerial media adviser in the portfolios of Primary Industry and Resources, Treasury, Transport and Communications, and Trade. He has been the Science & Technology Editor of The Canberra Times since 1994 and Computing Editor from 1996 to 2002. He is also a writer for Australasian Science and produces a daily email bulletin in the sciences, education and related areas as Science Media’s correspondent in the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery.
Moira Gunn. Labeled the “Grand Dame of Tech Talk” by Wired magazine, Moira Gunn is best known as the host of National Public Radio’s “TechNation: Americans & Technology”, as well as a weekly columnist on Knight-Ridder’s SiliconValley.com.
On her weekly program, Gunn interviews technological innovators, as well as everyday people who are coping with the new wired world. Her guests have ranged from business leaders like Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos to political and cultural figures such as Senator John McCain and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter to top scientists and science writers, including Sir Francis Crick and Stephen Jay Gould.
Gunn is a popular commentator on life in the technology age. Her weekly insights are available in both print and audio on the Web at SiliconValley.com and air nationally and internationally on National Public Radio.
Gunn is also a frequent guest on CNN, ZDTV and San Francisco’s public television station, KQED. She is regularly asked to speak on a range of topics, including the impact of cyberspace on society, economic opportunities on the Internet and her experience as a woman in the fields of science and technology.
A former NASA scientist and engineer, Gunn has served as a member of the Awards Selection Committee for the Space Technology Hall of Fame and is currently on the board of directors of the Tech Museum of Innovation. She holds a PhD in mechanical engineering from Purdue University and an MA in computer science, as well as a technical patent in human nutrition.
Joan Leach earned her PhD through the University of Pittsburgh’s rhetoric of science program, went to England for seven years as assistant professor at the University of London-Imperial College, and came back to Pitt as a faculty member this January with a controversial journal in tow. Leach is executive editor of Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy (Taylor and Francis Ltd.), which now is housed in Pitt's Department of Communication.
Apoorva Mandavilli. Before joining Nature Medicine, Apoorva Mandavilli was US News editor of the now-defunct BioMedNet News. Her work has been featured in National Public Radio’s Science Friday, BBC News and Medscape, among others. She has a graduate degree in science journalism from New York University; she also completed four years of graduate school in biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin in Madison but, as with many science journalists, left without a PhD when she realized she wanted to write instead.
Nuala Moran is a freelance science journalist with over 25 years experience. She is UK Correspondent for BioWorld and Senior Editor of ScienceBusiness.
A former Managing Editor of the science journal Nature, Innovation Editor of the Independent on Sunday and Deputy Editor of Computer Weekly, she is also a long term contributor to the Financial Times, writing mainly on Information Technology. She has written for many other publications including the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Nature Medicine and Nature Biotechnology.
Jason Pontin is an editor, journalist and publisher. Pontin is the editor in chief and publisher of Technology Review, an independent publication owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that describes emerging technologies and analyses their impact. He was hired as the editor of Technology Review in July 2004, and in August of 2005 was also named publisher. As publisher, he is responsible for all the media and business of Technology Review, including its print magazine, Web site, videos, e-newsletters, and events. Pontin is enagaged in what the Boston Globe has described as a “strategic overhaul” of Technology Review, whose goal is to make the venerable magazine (est. 1899) into an interactive, largely electronic publishing company. In 2006, Technology Review was named as a finalist in the National Magazine Awards in the category of General Excellence.
From 1996 to 2002, Pontin was the editor of Red Herring magazine, a business and technology magazine that was popular during the dot-com boom. From 2002 to 2004, he was the editor of The Acumen Journal, a now-defunct magazine about the life sciences that he founded.
Pontin has written for The Economist, The Financial Times, Wired, The Believer Magazine, Readymade Magazine, and InfoWorld. He is a frequent guest on broadcast, public, and cable television news, and appears every week on CNN.
Pontin was born in London, raised in Northern California, and educated in England, at Harrow School and Oxford University.
Jeffrey R. Young is a writer and senior editor for The Chronicle of Higher Education, where he leads the paper's coverage of information technology. In his more than 10 years at The Chronicle he has been involved with efforts to use new technology at the newspaper, most recently helping to create a blog on education technology. His freelance work has appeared in The New York Times and other publications.
He earned a bachelor's degree from Princeton University and a master's degree in communication, culture, and technology from Georgetown University.
Sabine Louët is the News Editor of the leading science and business magazine Nature Biotechnology. She has joined Nature over three years ago and has managed to provide a truly global coverage of the biotechnology sector by creating her own network of correspondents reporting from Beijing to the Bay area, via Cambridge and Cape Town.
She has also helped the community of would-be entrepreneurs to gain access to the wisdom of serial entrepreneurs by hosting a series of roundtable events across Europe.
Sabine has been working for about ten years in publishing and her many experiences as a writer has led her to write for various publications including the pharmaceutical and biotechnology strategy magazine In Vivo and the now defunct biomedical portal BioMedNet. She has also contributed to Science’s career portal Next Wave.
Prior to that, she has been actively involved in the creation of a European news releases broker service, called AlphaGalileo, designed to help raise the profile of research emanating from European laboratories. AlphaGalileo has since become a prime source of news for journalists Worldwide, and has extending its remit from science to the humanities.
Before switching allegiance to the life sciences, Sabine studied Fundamental Physics at Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg located in her native France.