NeuWrite Boston

There is often a gap between scientific experts and the public, who can only learn about advances through the filter of the media. To address this problem, a couple of Columbia graduate students founded NeuWrite, a collaborative group for workshopping pieces by both scientists and writers. Fantastic work has come out of NeuWrite, both by individual members and as a result of collaborations within the group. Originally focused on neuroscience, NeuWrite has expanded to cover topics across the sciences.

We are excited to see how this model will work in Boston, a city full of scientists, writers, and those in between.

Schedule

We will meet about once every three weeks throughout the 2013-2014 academic year. We will set the schedule at the beginning of each semester. The first meeting will be the second week of September.

Members

Ted Benson, Ph.D. student in computer science.
Elizabeth Brown, Ph.D. student in evolutionary biology.
Cynthia Graber, print and radio journalist.
Andy Greenspon, Ph.D. student in applied physics.
Omar Sultan Haque, physician and psychologist.
Eliana Hechter, medical researcher.
Alison Hill, researcher in viral dynamics.
Will Knight, online editor for MIT Technology Review.
David Jimenez-Gomez, Ph.D. student in economics.
Kara Manke, Ph.D. student in physical chemistry.
Erin May, Ph.D. student in chemical biology and founder of PolicyLab.
Maggie McKee, science writer focusing on astronomy and physics.
Colin McSwiggen, math/physics to design school to writing.
Steve Ramirez, Ph.D. student in neuroscience.
Niels Rosenquist, psychiatrist and economist.

We are still filling out our group for this upcoming year. We would like to have between 10 and 20 members who can attend the sessions throughout the year. You are welcome to contact Jean (jeanyang [at] mit [dot] edu) with a statement of interest.

Leaders

We are taking over for Judith Vick and Molly Birnbaum, who led NeuWrite Boston 2012-2013.

Amanda Gefter is a science writer specializing in physics and cosmology. She consults for New Scientist magazine, where she served six years as Books & Arts editor and founded Culturelab. She was a 2012-2013 Knight Journalism Fellow at MIT. She is publishing her first book, Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn, with Random House in January 2014. She is currently working on her next book.

Jean Yang is a doctoral candidate in Computer Science at MIT. For her thesis, she is working on designing a language for automatically enforcing security policies. She is interested in communicating about technology, in the culture around creation of technology, and in how technology can aid communication. She occasionally blogs about academia, programming, and other topics. Her other projects include Brogramming Days and Strong Reject.