Biographies of Conference SpeakersRick E. Borchelt is Director of Communications and Public Affairs for the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Mass. Formerly, he served as Director of Communications for the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science, where he implemented a strategic communications plan for public outreach on DOE's science portfolio. A biologist by training, Borchelt received his undergraduate degree in biology at Southeast Missouri State University and did graduate work in both entomology and science journalism at the University of Maryland College Park. He has practiced science and technology public affairs at the University of Maryland, the National Academy of Sciences (and its sister organizations, the Institute of Medicine and National Academy of Engineering), as press secretary to the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology under the chairmanship of the Hon. George E. Brown, and as White House special assistant for science and technology public affairs. He served as liaison to gay/lesbian press for Clinton/Gore '96. He recently chaired a blue-ribbon panel of science communicators, journalists, and scientists in a 3-year survey of best practices in science and technology communications at U.S. research institutions. Frank Burnet is the Director of Graphic Science, a portfolio of innovative projects designed to take science to targeted audiences. He has also played a leading role promoting the discussion of the key issues facing individuals and organizations that undertake Science Communication activities, both within the United Kingdom and internationally. Frank graduated with First Class Honours in Biochemistry from the University of St. Andrews and then spent the next year in the Sudan under the auspices of Voluntary Service Overseas. He worked briefly for Oxfam before accepting a place to read for a D.Phil in Neuroendocrinology at Oxford and on getting his D.Phil became a Lecturer in Biochemistry at the University of Kent. In 1988, he was awarded a Media Fellowship and worked as a reserve medical correspondent on TODAY newspaper. The experience inspired him to initiate a series of activities designed to increase public awareness of science and also led to his appointment as Editor of The Biochemist. In 1996, he moved to Bristol to take up a Principal Lectureship in Science Communication at the University of the West of England. He now directs Graphic Science, an operation which uses varied means to take science to the public. Its lead activity over the last two years has been Science on the Buses, which began in Cardiff with funding through a Millennium Award and has since run in eight major cities in the UK. The campaign is now running in every capital city of the European Union, during European Science and Technology Week, 2002. Burnet was awarded the MBE in the 2000 Queens Birthday Honours list for his innovative science communication activities. This year he became a Visiting Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Derby and is co-directing the first ever Cheltenham Festival of Science. Karen Brown Peggy Girshman has been a broadcast journalist for 26 years. She spent her formative years working as a segment and show producer for commercial stations in Washington DC, WNET-TV, and as the senior producer for several PBS series, including Scientific American Frontiers and a 26-part series on statistics. She had several editor positions at National Public Radio, in science, domestic news and as Deputy Managing editor. She was part of three start-up operations: Satellite News Channel (competition for CNN), Monitor News Channel (Christian Science Monitor) and Video News International (a NY Times company attempting to pioneer the use of small format video journalism). She has had two journalism fellowships, one at the Marine Biological Lab, the other at MIT. She was a senior producer at Dateline NBC for 2 1/2 years and is now back at NPR as an editor and TV partnership consultant. She is the winner of a national Emmy award, 4 local Emmy awards, a co-winner of the AAAS science-writing prize and two Peabody awards for covering health care. She serves on the board of the National Association of Science Writers and has helped select journalists for the Knight fellowship. Hannah
Holmes As an editor at New York-based Garbage Magazine in the late 1980s, she explored environmental issues, then returned to Maine and launched a freelance magazine writing career. In the late 1990s, she was recruited by the Discovery Channel Online for a grand experiment called live internet reporting. Among her freelance jobs for Discovery were a month in the depths of Mongolia's Gobi desert, a stint at the Montserrat Volcano Observatory, and a journey up the San Andreas Fault. Over the years she has dabbled in web-TV, written a documentary script, and recorded commentaries for local radio. Her first book, The Secret Life of Dust, was published in August, 2001. Wherever she travels,
it is inevitable that she returns home with pockets full of rocks. Jon
D. Miller Created:
8/27/01
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