Council for the Advancement of Science Writing

Rick E. Borchelt is director of communications for the US Department of Agriculture's Office of Research, Education, and Economics, and public affairs lead for the Under Secretary and Chief Scientist.  He is the former communications director for the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University, a Washington, DC-based think tank that works to help policy leaders, decision makers and the public better understand the rapidly evolving field of human genetics and its application to healthcare. Prior to joining the Center, he was director of communications and public affairs at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT, an independent research enterprise focusing on fundamental biological sciences. He varied career in science communications and science public policy also includes stints as media relations director for the National Academy of Sciences; press secretary for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology under the chairmanship of the late Rep. George E. Brown, Jr.; special assistant for public affairs in the Executive Office of The President during the Clinton Administration; and director of communications for the Department of Energy's Office of Science.

Lewis Cope was a science writer for the Minneapolis Star Tribune for 29 years, and is now a freelance writer. He is a former president of the National Association of Science Writers. He is coauthor of the second edition of News & Numbers: A Guide to Reporting Statistical Claims and Controversies in Health and Other Fields. It is used as a college journalism textbook, as well as a resource by writers. Cope has received national awards from the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and other organizations. He is a graduate of Washington & Lee University, Lexington, Va., and spent a year as a science-writing fellow at Columbia University 's Graduate School of Journalism, New York City. He also is a former president of the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists.

Warren Leary recently retired from his post as science correspondent for The New York Times.  A graduate of the University of Nebraska, Leary received an M.S. degree from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. He began his science writing career with the Associated Press, creating and covering the science beat in the Boston bureau of the news agency from 1971 through 1976, and continuing as a senior science writer for the AP in its Washington bureau from 1976 until 1989, when he joined the staff of The Times. As an award-winning science writer based in Washington, Leary covered space flight, technology, engineering, aeronautics, and medical science, as well as policy issues. He is a member and former officer of the National Association of Science Writers.

David Perlman, award-winning Science Editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, has been a reporter, magazine writer, and foreign correspondent, and has been reporting on science and technology for more than 40 years. He is a past president of CASW and the National Association of Science Writers. He has been a Poynter Fellow at Yale, a Carnegie Corporation Fellow at Stanford, and a Regent's Professor at the University of California. He lectures widely at American universities and has led science writing and editing workshops for the American Press Institute and the China Association for Science and Technology.

Rosalind Reid was Editor of American Scientist, the interdisciplinary magazine of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, from 1992 to 2008. Co-organizer of the MIT/Harvard Image and Meaning workshop series on visual communication of science, she was the first Journalist in Residence at the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and again took a "science immersion" leave to serve as a Fellow at the Harvard Initiative in Innovative Computing, now part of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Today she is Director of the IIC and a consulting editor for the magazine. Reid wrote for newspapers in Maine and North Carolina before learning the science beat as a research news editor at North Carolina State University. She is a member of NASW, has served on awards committees for the National Science Board and American Institute of Physics and is an honorary member of Sigma Xi.

Cristine Russell is an award-winning freelance journalist who has written about science and medicine for more than three decades. She is a Senior Fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, currently at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and, in spring 2006, at the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. She is also a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review and its Observatory science section. Russell was formerly a national science reporter for The Washington Post and The Washington Star.  She is a past president of the National Association of Science Writers and serves on the National Academies Communication Awards selection committee, the USC Annenberg School for Communication board, and on the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Russell is an honorary member of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, and has a biology degree from Mills College.

Donald Kennedy, Ph.D., is President Emeritus and Bing Professor of Environmental Science and Policy, Emeritus, at Stanford University; a Senior Fellow by courtesy of the Wood Institute for the Environmental and Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of the journal Science  (2000-08). A member of the Stanford faculty since 1960, he served as the university's president from 1980 to 1992. Before that he held rank as chair of the department of biology (1964-72), director of the program in human biology (1973-77) and Provost (1979-80). In 1977, he took leave for 26 months to serve as Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration during the Carter presidency. Kennedy received his A.B. and Ph.D. degrees in biology from Harvard University. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. His research interests center on the development of policies related to a host of environmental issues, including land-use changes; food security and environmental change and global-climate modification.

Ben Patrusky, executive director of CASW since 1988, served for three decades (1975-2004) as program director of the annual New Horizons in Science briefing. Before embarking on a freelance science career in 1975, he was for a dozen years the research writer and science editor for the American Heart Association, where he designed and launched AHA's Science Writers Forum. He has also orchestrated science journalism seminars for, among others, the National Academy of Science, Research to Prevent Blindness and the Ford Foundation. Widely published, he is the recipient of the Science Journalism Award from the American Institute of Physics and the American Chemical Society's Grady-Stack Award. He is an honorary member of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, and for 18 years until 2008, served as a member of the board of trustees of Science Service (now the Society for Science and the People), publisher of Science News and administrator of the Intel Science Talent Search.

Diane McGurgan began her professional career in 1961 as a member of the public relations staff of the American Institute of Physics. In 1978, she was appointed administrative secretary of the National Association of Science Writers; in 1999, in appreciation of her dedication, sensitivity and responsiveness, she was named executive director of NASW, overseeing a membership roster that came to exceed 2,400 by the time she retired in 2008. In 1987, she was invited to become administrative secretary of CASW. McGurgan has been described by many as the heart and the glue that binds the science writing community.