MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing
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Congratulations to Rachel Becker, ’15, for scooping up a first place Society of Environmental Journalist (SEJ) Award for Reporting on the Environment. Rachel, who is currently an environment reporter for the nonprofit news site CalMatters, won the Outstanding Beat Reporting, small publications category for “Environmental Health: California’s Air, Water and Wildfires,” a series of pieces that covers the contaminants left in the state’s air and water following wildfires and their health ramifications.

SEJ judges hailed Rachel’s “in-depth, yet easy-to-digest reporting,” adding that “her writing was chockfull of helpful statistics and underpinned by science in a way that informed, but did not overwhelm, despite the sometime alarming subject matter.”

Prior to reporting for CalMatters, Rachel served as a staff science reporter at The Verge, where she wrote stories and hosted videos covering a range of beats including climate change, nicotine, and nuclear technology. Her byline has also appeared in NOVA Next, National Geographic News, Smithsonian, Slate, Nature, Nature Medicine, bioGraphic, and Hakai Magazine, as well as the PBS Digital Studios video series Gross Science and the YouTube show MinuteEarth.

You can read about all of the award-winning entries here. Click here to read more of Rachel’s work.