Ashley Belanger, ’20, keeps scooping up the awards. This week, MIT announced the winners of this year’s Ilona Karmel Writing Prizes. Ashley received an Honorable Mention for the Obermayer Prize for Graduate Student Writing, which recognizes excellence in writing that furthers the public’s understanding of how innovation happens.

Ashley’s piece No Freedom to Do Harm chronicles how Hans-Lukas Teuber, former head of MIT’s psychology department, pioneered ethics standards for studies involving human subjects. The story traces Teuber’s professional life, moving from his research at Bellevue Hospital Center on brain injury amongst Vietnam veterans to his experimental psychology work at MIT, as well his fight to establish the Institute’s Committee on the Use of Humans as Experimental Subjects.

Ashley joins several MIT science writing alumnae who have also won recognition from the Obermayer Prize committee, including Laura Castañón, ’18; Francesca Schembri, ’18; and Sarah Schwartz, ’15. Just a few weeks ago, Ashley also won a National Geographic Society COVID-19 Emergency Fund for Journalists grant for a project that explores how the pandemic is impacting domestic violence rates and victims in Florida. You can check out Ashley’s portfolio here. Congratulations!