Last Wednesday evening at the Albert Einstein building on Constitution Avenue (AKA National Academy of Sciences), May Berenbaum, the committee chair for the 2019 NAS Communication Awards, gathered with hundreds to honor recipients "for excellence in reporting and communicating science, engineering and/or medicine to the general public."
The event, sponsored for the last time by the W.M. Keck Foundation, recognized achievements for written, online, and spoken words by teams and individuals.
Winners in each category receive $20,000.
Honorees were:
Film/Radio/TV: Howard Berkes, Nicole Beemsterboer, Huo Jingnan and Robert Benincasa for "Coal's Deadly Dust" which aired on National Public Radio
Magazine/Newspaper: Tina Saey, "Genetic Testing Goes Mainstream" in Science News. (She was not present to receive her award.)
Online: Lisa Song, Al Shaw, Katie Campbell, Patrick Michels, ad Ranjani Chakraborty for "Flood They Neighbor" in ProPublica and "The Last Generation" for the GroundTruth Project and Frontline PBS. (This award was started in 2009.)
Book: Carl Zimmer for She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity.
A reception followed in the Great Hall where Dr. Zimmer autographed his book which was given to attendees who also received copies of the other winning pieces.
When a woman in line for Dr. Zimmer's autograph told him she wasn't a scientist, he replied: "This book was not written for scientists."
I hope the awards presentations can continue under another foundation's administration since the Keck Foundation has ended its sponsorship. No reason for the termination was given.
patricialesli@gmail.com
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