Earlier this week, the MIT Knight Science Journalism Program announced their 2020-21 Project Fellows, and we recognized a familiar name on the list. Starting this fall, Ashley Belanger, ’20, will spend nine months working with the Knight program on an investigative project that dives into issues surrounding offender release from civil commitment treatment facilities throughout the U.S. The project is an expansion of work started in the MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing, and we’re thrilled to see it continue to grow.

Selected from a pool of about 200 applicants, Ashley is one of 18 remote fellows that will receive Knight Science Journalism support in the upcoming academic year, and one of just eight who will receive $40,000 in funding to cover two semesters of work. The upcoming cohort of fellows represent a diverse group of reporters, editors, photojournalists, audio journalists, and documentarians pursuing a broad range of projects in the science, health, technology, and the environment fields. You can check out all of the projects here.

Ashley joins the Knights fresh off of an internship at the WGBH News Center for Investigative Reporting where she’s reported on Covid-19’s impact on those living in group homes and the lengthy lag time between parole approval and getting to leave prison. Earlier this year, Ashley also won a grant from the National Geographic Society’s COVID-19 Emergency Fund for Journalists to cover how coronovirus is affecting domestic violence shelters, as well as the MIT Obermayer Prize for Graduate Student Writing for her piece on how Hans-Lukas Teuber, former head of MIT’s psychology department, pioneered ethics standards for studies involving human subjects.

Congratulations to Ashley and all of the Knight Science Journalism fellows!