Freelance journalist Emily Sohn has been selected as the winner of the 2025 Sharon Begley Award for Science Reporting.
The award, established in 2021 by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, recognizes and supports reporting and writing that embodies the high standards exemplified by the science journalist Sharon Begley (1956–2021). The winner receives a $20,000 grant to support a significant reporting project, as well as mentorship from a senior journalist.
“Emily’s writing reflects many of the qualities that distinguished Sharon Begley’s writing, including her breadth and depth of coverage as well as her focus on the human factor in scientific issues,” said Alan Boyle, co-chair of the Sharon Begley Award judging committee and past president of CASW.
Sohn’s reporting has found her trekking through Oregon’s forests, visiting a public-health research project in rural Uganda, and attending the Nobel Prize ceremonies in Sweden. “Emily is a dogged reporter, a wonderful writer, and an incredibly generous mentor,” says Seth Mnookin, one of this year’s judges.
The judges praised Sohn’s service to the science writing community, particularly through mentoring the next generation of science journalists. She has organized panels at the annual ScienceWriters conference about writing for kids, traveling for research, and trauma-informed reporting. She also serves on the National Association of Science Writers’ Nominating Committee and co-chairs the NASW Journalism Committee, which awards grants to freelance journalists. She has led and participated in multiple science-communication workshops and press trainings for graduate students and scientists.
In recommending her for the award, Transmitter editor Brady Huggett noted how he turned to Sohn for coverage of controversy around a well-known, media-savvy neuroscientist. “It was a pleasure witnessing Emily carefully earning the trust of a half-dozen wary scientists, and convincing them to participate in the article,” Huggett wrote. The resulting investigation earned a 2024 Kavli Silver award, one of science journalism’s top honors.
Her profile of pioneering sports journalist Virginia Kraft also earned broad recognition, including a 2024 Webby award and a place in the Year’s Best Sports Writing Anthology of 2024.
Sohn will use her grant to support a book, tentatively titled The New Wilderness, that uncovers creatures thriving in human-altered environments, such as butterflies on highways, storks in garbage dumps, and marine insects in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The collection of case studies challenges traditional notions of wilderness and uncovers unexpected ways we can support the natural world. “As the Trump administration rolls back environmental regulations, it feels more important than ever to tell these stories of resilience to both revive hope for the future of our planet and explore conservation solutions within the confines of reality,” Sohn writes.
Science journalist and editor Hillary Rosner, author of the forthcoming book Roam: Wild Animals and the Race to Repair Their Fractured World, will mentor Sohn.
“I know the book will provide compelling examples of hope and resilience at a time when the public desperately needs these types of stories,” bioGraphic editor in chief Steven Bedard wrote when recommending Sohn for the award.
Sohn’s career began in the Science Communication graduate program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She spent five years as the inaugural writer for Science News magazine’s website for kids and another five as a contributing writer for the Discovery Channel. “She has unusual versatility in knowing how to write engagingly for adults and for children,” Laura Helmuth, former editor in chief of Scientific American, wrote in recommending Sohn for the award. “Her stories are always insightful, welcoming, and humane.”
Sohn has written hundreds of articles—ranging from service-oriented news coverage to longform narratives and entire special issues—for National Geographic, The New York Times, Scientific American, Nature, Outside, and Long Lead, among others. She is a co-author of the 2013 book The Science Writers’ Handbook: Everything You Need to Know to Pitch, Publish, and Prosper in the Digital Age.
The Sharon Begley Science Reporting Award
The Sharon Begley Award was created by CASW in 2021 in collaboration with Sharon Begley’s husband, Ned Groth, a scientist, author, and environmental health consultant. It is supported by a dedicated fund established in Begley’s honor. More than 250 private donations totaling more than $880,000 have been received to date. The first award was presented in 2022 to freelance journalist Bijal Trivedi, at the time a senior editor for science at National Geographic. Subsequent winners include John D. Sutter, a climate journalist, documentary filmmaker, and assistant professor of environmental media at the University of Oregon; and Hannah Furfaro, a science and health journalist who covers mental health for The Seattle Times.
At the time of her death in January 2021, Sharon Begley was the senior science writer at STAT, Boston Globe Media’s health and medicine news site, covering genetics, cancer, neuroscience, and other fields of basic biomedical research. Begley’s work was recognized posthumously when she was named a 2021 Pulitzer Prize finalist along with two STAT colleagues for early reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic. Among her many other awards was CASW’s Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting. STAT has also honored her by creating the Sharon Begley Science Reporting Fellowship.
Begley was previously the senior health and science correspondent at Reuters, The Wall Street Journal‘s first science columnist, and the longtime science editor at Newsweek, which she joined upon her graduation from Yale University. During her nearly 30 years at the newsweekly, she served as science columnist and editor and as a contributing writer at the magazine. Her column for The Wall Street Journal ran from 2002 to 2007, when Newsweek recruited her back, and from 2012 to 2015 she was the senior health and science correspondent at Reuters.
The judging panel for the fourth Sharon Begley Science Reporting Award was co-chaired by Alan Boyle, CASW past president and a longtime online journalist focusing on space and physical sciences; and Betsy Mason, freelance science journalist and CASW board secretary. Judges were Usha Lee McFarling, former national science correspondent at STAT and winner of the 2024 Victor Cohn Prize; Seth Mnookin, author and director of the MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing; Ashley Smart, associate director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT, senior editor of Undark, and CASW treasurer; Richard Stone, senior science editor for HHMI’s Tangled Bank Studios and a CASW board member; Nidhi Subbaraman, science reporter for The Wall Street Journal; and Trivedi.
