Laura Martin Agudelo is a science journalist with a humanities background. Growing up in Bogotá, she learned from her grandfather that curiosity is a way of life—whether tracking ants in the forest or devouring books together. This mindset convinced her that science and the humanities aren’t just connected, they are inseparable.

After receiving two degrees in social sciences from Sorbonne University, she became a staff reporter at La Revue du Praticien, a French medical journal, where she has covered public health for the past five years.

At MIT, Laura is eager to expand her beats and witness how science unfolds. She hopes to keep crafting stories that bridge disciplines and cultures to bring complex scientific issues closer to everyone. When she’s not at her desk, you’ll probably find her dancing because, much like writing, it’s all about rhythm.

Zoe Beketova is a writer from Moscow and London with a master’s degree in developmental neuroscience. She spent the past three years between University College London and Yale University researching the causal mechanisms of psychosis. Outside the lab, Zoe has covered topics ranging from genomics and fertility fraud to hospital bankruptcy and nursing shortages.

At MIT, Zoe is excited to sharpen her investigative skills and write about science policy, especially concerning AI governance and global health. When not at her desk, Zoe can be found hiking or reading fiction books.

Ashley D’Souza writes to bring people closer to the nature around them. They believe that conservation efforts depend on individuals developing personal relationships with wildlife. Their passion for the environment led them to journalism.

After moving from Austin, Texas to Boston, they left a career in software engineering and started blogging about birds. They’ve spent the last two years as a freelance multimedia journalist, covering topics from bird flu and beech leaf disease to anti-abortion centers and housing inequity. Their work appears in Pride Source, Brookline.News, The Margins, and more.

At MIT, Ashley is excited to expand their reporting into national outlets, hone their conservation beat, and explore new forms of science journalism. You can find them performing with their band around Boston and talking to plants and animals in the woods.

Ana Georgescu is a writer and science communicator originally from Romania. She studied astrophysics and physics at Harvard and most recently worked at a science communications agency in New York City, supporting early-stage biotech and space health organizations in translating complex science for broader audiences. Her projects have spanned topics including gene therapy, neurological disorders, precision oncology, and astronaut health.

As a 2025 Taylor/Blakeslee Fellow in physics writing, Ana is particularly interested in how discoveries in the physical sciences take shape, not just through data, but through the people, institutions, and tensions that move science forward. She hopes to develop a voice that brings clarity and nuance to complex topics while capturing the narrative richness that surrounds scientific stories.

In her free time, she likes discussing what her friends are reading, frequents the Brattle and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and lives in a never-ending cycle of half-baked hobbies, like roller skating, playing chess, and most recently trying to play the harmonica.

Jamie Jiang reports on disasters. For the last three years, that meant reporting on wildfire survivors and solutions to catastrophic wildfires in far Northern California. Jamie graduated with a bachelor’s in linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles. She got hooked on investigative journalism when she broke a story about COVID-19 outbreaks in Missouri prisons. Since then, she’s been writing about disasters and how people recover from them. Her work has aired on public radio stations, including Kansas City’s KCUR 89.3FM, Northern California’s North State Public Radio, Sacramento’s CapRadio, and others. She currently works as a reporter and research assistant to an incarcerated environmental journalist.

At MIT, Jamie wants to learn how to tell stories about climate events and public health that make sense for a local audience. She spends her free time birdwatching, spoiling her two cats, and keeping up with an ever-expanding list of podcasts.

Lucie McCormick is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker and science journalist. Coming from an arts background, she found her way to science through a love of the night sky and eclipse chasing. Her projects in documentary production and news have focused on astronomy, rare geological formations, environmental impacts on mental health, and structural disparities in urban green spaces. Her work has been published in Scientific American, ABC News, PBS, and the BBC, among other outlets.

At MIT, Lucie plans to grow her skills in science storytelling. Outside of work, Lucie’s interests include martial arts, getting into nature, and hunting for spicy food.

Alex Megerle is a biologist-turned-writer who loves a good story and the wild things in life. If you’re ever in the mood to watch a nature documentary, Alex is your guy!

Originally from New Jersey, Alex has combined childhood loves of zoology and creative writing into a budding science communication career. He has written for The Enterprise newspapers on Cape Cod, the nonprofit Advocates for Snake Preservation, and the world-renowned Marine Biological Laboratory. At MIT, he’s excited to grow as a communicator and to cover the natural world and humanity’s relationship with it.

Alex’s heart is split between the Northeast, the West Coast, New Mexico, and Ireland. Beyond communicating science, he loves writing fantasy, hiking and hunting for critters, watching ice hockey, and being with loved ones.

Julia Vaz is a journalist from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She recently graduated from Brown University with degrees in Political Science and Modern Culture & Media. While at Brown, she led The Brown Daily Herald as Managing Editor of Newsroom and Vice President of The Herald‘s Editorial Board. Before that, she oversaw the paper’s environmental coverage. She has covered climate change, policy, and environmental justice for Heatmap News, Inside Climate News, and New Hampshire Public Radio.

At MIT, Julia hopes to deepen her understanding of both the science and social impacts behind climate change. Her goal is to find ways to innovate environmental stories, focusing on local communities and their relationship to nature. When she isn’t reporting, Julia can be found reading, going on long walks, and trying to find the best coffee in town.

Sarah R. Akaaboune is a writer from Ann Arbor, Michigan. She attended the University of Michigan, where she studied neuroscience and English. In the lab, she studied the impacts of Golgi fragmentation on lysosomal protein biogenesis and the development of neurological disorders. Outside of the lab, she served as a writer and editor for her student newspaper, The Michigan Daily, where she covered a variety of topics, most notably medical malpractice and its impact on survivors. 

Sarah has also explored science communication and data accessibility as a community leadership fellow at her local health department and as a student correspondent for Teen Vogue, where she covered the 2024 presidential election cycle in Michigan.

When she isn’t writing, Sarah can be found in the lab, listening to old episodes of This American Life, or spending time with her cat. 

Anika Jane Beamer is a Midwesterner and a writer with a background in the biological sciences. She’s spent years researching and thinking about life’s little guys—viruses, bacteria, and fungi. Now, she’s interested in writing about how manmade changes to the environment are transforming microscopic life, for better and worse.

Anika Jane has spent the last two years as the science writer for Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. There, she shared stories about research, faculty, and students in fields as far-flung as robotics, galaxy formation, water geochemistry, and lung cancer. She sees herself as a translator, deconstructing the “language of science” to ensure that the hard-to-see, and harder-to-fathom, can be understood by a wide audience. Whether hiking, painting, birdwatching, or playing soccer, she’s often thinking about her place in nature and the science that surrounds her.

Jessica Chomik-Morales was raised in South Florida, where from an early age she wondered why people act the way they do. She holds a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience and since graduation, has worked in a cognitive neuroscience lab at MIT, where she uses fMRI to explore abstract thought in humans.

As a daughter of immigrant parents from Paraguay, Jessica is fiercely proud of her heritage and uses her privileged position as a bilingual scientist to bridge the gap between a predominantly English-speaking academic world and the Spanish-speaking public. She hosts and produces Mi Última Neurona, a neuroscience podcast in Spanish, to ignite curiosity, spark conversations, and empower her community.

At MIT, Jessica is excited to expand her communication abilities while serving the Spanish-speaking community, weaving together population-relevant narratives to foster understanding and inclusivity within the scientific landscape.

Nanticha Ocharoenchai, or Lyn, first started journaling when she left her hometown of Bangkok to go on a year-long exchange in Italy. When she found hiking and backpacking, these hobbies and adventures sparked her love of environmental journalism and activism.

Just before graduating in communications from Chulalongkorn University in 2019, Lyn organized what grew into Thailand’s first youth climate movement. Since then, she has written and produced short films for WWF, Greenpeace, Mongabay, The Pulitzer Center, and more, covering topics from wildlife conservation and sustainable design, to Indigenous knowledge and land rights. In a search for practical—and fun!—environmental solutions, Lyn is furiously learning about natural science and conservation technology and is excited to explore more at MIT.

Pratik Pawar is a science journalist who covers stories about global health, medicine, and science policy. He is particularly interested in covering neglected health issues in the Global South and in understanding the role of inequity and socio-political realities in furthering health crises. His work has been published in The Atlantic, Nature, Science, and Undark, among other outlets.

At MIT, Pratik aims to learn new skills in data and investigative journalism to help him tell nuanced and substantive stories about global health. When he’s not at his desk, you can find Pratik noodling on his guitar, reading personal essays, or out in nature.

Paula Rowińska is a writer from Warsaw, Poland, and is the author of Mapmatics: A Mathematician’s Guide to Navigating the World, a popular science book about the mathematics of maps.

While pursuing her Ph.D. in mathematics and statistics at Imperial College London, Paula discovered that she prefers science communication to research. She has shared her passion for math by contributing to newspaper articles, radio shows, and TV programs. Since graduation, she has been creating interactive math and data science content for Brilliant, an educational company.

At MIT, Paula will continue exploring the role of mathematics in our daily lives while also covering topics like mental health and environmental issues. In her free time, she reads more books than she cares to admit, loves learning foreign languages, and has a soft spot for musicals.

Mackenzie White is a writer and planetary scientist from Austin, Texas. Her journey into science writing began at the University of Texas at Austin, where she received liberal arts and science degrees.

Driven by curiosity about other worlds, she earned a Ph.D. in geophysics, specializing in temperatures on the Moon and Mars. During graduate school, she worked on NASA missions, which fueled her enthusiasm for sharing discoveries with the public. She has contributed to outlets like Google Arts & Culture and Eos and was a 2022 AAAS Mass Media Fellow at Science Friday.

At MIT, Mackenzie aims to strengthen the connection between humans and the natural world through storytelling. When she’s not writing about space rocks, you can find her along the rivers of central Texas with her dogs, Rocky and Maggie.

Celina Zhao is pumped to be staying in Cambridge for another year after studying writing and biology as an undergraduate at MIT.

Celina’s work with Science, NOVA, and Cell Press has led her to explore scientific topics ranging from telescope cyberattacks to controversial fossils to microbes that travel through wildfire smoke. She’s fascinated by the relationship between culture, technology, and the natural world, and is excited to work on long-form projects that explore the evolution of this intersection in the coming year.

Outside the classroom, you can find Celina running along the Charles, drinking too much matcha, and challenging herself to try something new every day.