Siri Carpenter (Executive director and editor-in-chief) is co-founder of The Open Notebook and is an award-winning science journalist and editor whose writing and editorial work has appeared in The New York Times, Science, Discover, Scientific American, bioGraphic, Science News, Science News for Students, and many other publications. She has a PhD in psychology from Yale University and began her science-writing career as a AAAS Mass Media Fellow. She is a past president of the National Association of Science Writers (2018-2020). She lives in Madison, Wisconsin. Follow her on Twitter @SiriCarpenter.
Saugat Bolakhe (Program assistant) is a Nepalese science journalist. He studied zoology as an undergraduate in Nepal and has a master’s degree from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. His work has appeared in Scientific American, Nature, Quanta Magazine, New Scientist, Discover, Knowable, and other publications. Follow him on Twitter @Saugat_Optimist.
Torie Bosch (Senior editor) is the First Opinion editor at STAT, and former editor of Future Tense, a partnership of Slate, Arizona State University, and New America. She is the editor of “You Are Not Expected to Understand This”: How 26 Lines of Code Changed the World from Princeton University Press as well as the co-editor of What Future: The Year’s Best Ideas to Reclaim, Reanimate, and Reinvent the Future (2019) and Future Tense Fiction: Stories of Tomorrow, both published by Unnamed Press. Torie is a graduate of Penn State University and lives outside of Philadelphia. Follow her on Twitter @thekibosch.
Aaron Brooks (Senior editor) handles The Open Notebook’s copyediting and production. He has done freelance editing work for Sapiens, Science News, bioGraphic, and Knowable Magazine, among other publications. He lives with his family in Traverse City, Michigan. Follow him on Twitter @ … um, actually, he doesn’t post anything on Twitter. He is aware of how unprofessional this is, and yet he can’t seem to get himself to start tweeting.
Inés Gutiérrez Jaber (Translator) is a freelance science journalist. Her work focuses on anything from octopus biology, life sciences, environmental science, to science policy in Mexico and has appeared in Science, Science News, Newsweek, and other outlets. She is bilingual and her work has been published both in English and Spanish. She is a member of the Mexican Network of Science Journalists (RedMPC) and does work as a freelance translator, copy editor, and fact checker. She lives in Mexico City. Follow her on Twitter @yosoynes_.
Emily Laber-Warren (Science Journalism Master Classes co-creator) is a professor at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, where she heads the Health and Science Reporting program. She writes about autism, climate change, circadian rhythms, and other topics for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Spectrum, Sapiens, Undark, and other publications. She has twin boys and lives on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River, where the views are better. She is the author of a nature book for young children, A Walk in the Woods: Into the Field Guide. Follow her on Twitter @elaberwarren.
Sarah Luft (Program assistant) is a digital storyteller, science reporter and community engagement strategist. She manages marketing and communications at SeriousFun Children’s Network. Her reporting on chronic conditions and mental health has appeared in publications like The City and Lady Gaga’s Channel Kindness. She has an M.A. in engagement journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Follow her on Twitter at @sarahaluft.
Rodrigo Pérez Ortega (TON en Español editorial director) is a staff writer at Science, and his work has also appeared in Nature, The New York Times, Quanta, and others. He’s a former early-career fellow at The Open Notebook and he works continuously to raise awareness about science and science journalism in Latin America. He won a 2022 Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communication. He’s a founding member of the Mexican Network of Science Journalists and is on the board of the National Association of Science Writers. He lives in Mexico City. Follow him on Twitter @rpocisv.
Debbie Ponchner (Translations editor) is an award-winning science journalist based in Costa Rica and the editor of Knowable en español. She worked as a science reporter, editor and managing editor for La Nación, the newspaper of record for this Central American country. In 2014 she moved to New York to create and lead the Spanish language website of Scientific American, a project that ran until 2017. She was a 2003–04 Knight Science Journalism Fellow, and is a board member of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing. Follow her on Twitter @debbieponchner.
Sandeep Ravindran (Project manager) is a freelance science writer based in Bethesda, Maryland. He has written about life sciences and technology for publications such as Time, The New York Times, Smithsonian, National Geographic News, The Scientist, Nature, and Wired. He is Vice President of the National Association of Science Writers and has been an NASW board member since 2016. He holds a PhD in microbiology and immunology from Stanford University and studied science communication at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is originally from South India, and enjoys finding new Indian dishes to cook for his six-year-old daughter. Follow him on Twitter @sandeeprtweets.
Jill Sakai (Senior editor) is a science writer and editor in Madison, Wisconsin. She is the assistant managing editor at Science News Explores and a freelance writer and editor. She is a former AAAS Mass Media Fellow and was a board member of the National Association of Science Writers from 2014–2022. When not writing, she enjoys hiking, climbing, and playing ultimate frisbee, violin and piano (though not simultaneously). Follow her on Twitter @jill_sakai.
Kelly Tyrrell (Engagement editor) is an award-winning science and health writer. She oversees research communications and media relations at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and occasionally writes national freelance health policy stories. She is a former staff reporter at The News Journal in Wilmington, Delaware and her work has also appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Chicago Tribune, where she was a AAAS Mass Media Fellow in 2011. Often, you can find her running trails near her home in Madison, Wisconsin. Follow her on Twitter @kellyperil.
Katherine J. Wu (Senior editor) is a staff writer for The Atlantic. Before that, she was a science reporter for The New York Times, an early-career fellow at The Open Notebook, and a AAAS Mass Media Fellow at Smithsonian in 2018. She holds a PhD in microbiology and immunobiology from Harvard University. She won a 2022 Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communication, a 2021 Science in Society Award, and the 2020 Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award for Young Science Journalists. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineJWu.
Rachel Zamzow (Managing editor) is an award-winning science journalist and editor. She writes features and news stories for the autism research news site Spectrum. You can also find her work here at The Open Notebook, where she was a 2017 early-career fellow, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, where she was a 2014 AAAS Mass Media Fellow. She lives in Central Texas with her husband and their two young, very energetic sons. Follow her on Twitter @RachelZamzow.
2024 Early-Career Fellows
Kate Fishman is a freelance journalist based in San Diego, California. Her career in local news has taken her from Ohio to Pennsylvania to California’s Mendocino County, where she covered environmental regulation and natural resources as a Report for America corps member and cultivated a love for writing about ecology. Her science and environmental reporting has appeared in Sierra Magazine, Reuters, and Atmos, among other publications. She also produces and hosts an interview podcast about loneliness, makes coffees, and loves to dance. Find her on Bluesky, X, or Instagram.
Emma Gometz is a digital producer at Science Friday, where she writes newsletters and web articles, helps develop audience strategy, and contributes to the visual artistic direction of the website. Previously, she was a newsletter writer for the Atlantic Theater Company, and a podcast research intern for Offscrip Media. She’s also a performance artist, writes a blog about junk food, a memoir cartoonist, and self identifies as “fruity.” She graduated with a BA in ecology, evolution, and environmental biology from Columbia University in 2021. Follow her on X @monkey_cabinet.
Claudia López Lloreda is a science journalist with a focus on neuroscience, mental health, and psychology. She received her bachelor’s degree in cellular-molecular biology from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, and her PhD in neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania. She was the 2021 Mass Media Fellow at STAT, worked as a news intern for Science and is now a full-time freelancer. Her work has also appeared in Wired, Undark, Scientific American, Smithsonian Magazine, and Science News. She is currently based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Follow her on X @claulopezneuro.
Latin American Advisory Group
The Open Notebook‘s Latin American Advisory Group is a group of journalists who have made themselves available to offer guidance to our writers, upon request, when they are seeking Latin American sources and angles for TON stories. Members of this paid advisory group currently include:
Federico Kukso (Argentina)
Mariana Lenharo (Brazil)
Andrea Obaid (Chile)
María de los Ángeles Orfila (Uruguay)
Angela Posada-Swafford (Colombia and USA)
Emiliano Rodríguez Mega (Mexico)
Valeria Román (Argentina)
Michelle Soto (Costa Rica)
