Science students report on RNA, quantum information and more at ScienceWriters2025
Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, is interviewed by Clara Moskowitz, chief of reporters at Scientific American, during the ScienceWriters2025 conference in Chicago. (Photo: Edward Chen/SciQuel)
At ScienceWriters2025, eight science graduate students jumped into journalism to cover the 63rd annual New Horizons in Science briefings and the 13th Patrusky Lecture. They filed stories on topics ranging from space policy and quantum information to the origins of life as part of the 2025 New Horizons Newsroom.
The students were participants in the annual ComSciCon-SciWri workshop, which provides early-career scientists an opportunity to take a hands-on approach to science journalism at North America’s largest annual convening of science journalists and writers.
Each student was paired with a professional journalist mentor and assigned to cover a briefing. This year’s mentors were Marla Broadfoot, Siri Carpenter, Joe Palca, CASW senior adviser Rosalind Reid, Ariana Remmel, Jill Sakai, Bijal Trivedi and Cassandra Willyard.
After meeting a 48-hour deadline, each student went through a rigorous editorial process, designed to emulate the editing in a professional newsroom. Stories received at least two rounds of editing and fact-checking, supervised by Reid. The editing team also included Alan Boyle, Pete Farley, Carpenter, and Palca, along with CASW staff.
The 2025 ComSciCon workshop was supported by generous funding from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and AAAS EurekAlert!
Read their stories:
- Jack Szostak on the origin of life
- Will cuts in science funding and immigration crackdowns spur a U.S. brain drain?
- Can NASA pursue breakthrough science during a political upheaval?
- Iran, new Russian weapons, Golden Dome: Expert briefs writers on nuclear threats
- Uncovering the tangled story behind AI’s water use
- “A fundamentally new technology”: David Awschalom on quantum information science
- Pandemic prevention starts now: Three tools to fight the next health threat
- Droegemeier: Research funding challenges a needed “wake-up call” for institutions
