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Eight journalists awarded 1996-97 Knight Fellowships

Newspaper and magazine reporters of science, medicine and the environment from across the United States will join colleagues from Germany and Japan on September 1 as the 1996-97 Knight Science Journalism Fellows at MIT.

The journalists will spend nine months at the Institute in group and individual study. Among their group activities will be several field trips and approximately 55 seminars with faculty members on recent developments in science, technology, medicine and the environment. The new Fellows will be:

William H. Allen, 44, science writer at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Nancy R. Bazilchuk, 39, environment and science writer at The Burlington Free Press in Vermont.

Madeline Drexler, 41, of Watertown, medical columnist, The Boston Globe Magazine.

Ruth C. Flanagan, 31, of Madison WI, contributing editor for Earth magazine.

Mark A. Grossi, 42, environment reporter at The Fresno Bee in California, a McClatchy newspaper.

Carola Hanisch, 27, editor, economy, social affairs and science for Markische Allgemeine, Potsdam, Germany.

Asako Murakami, 32, environment staff writer on the national news desk of The Japan Times, Tokyo.

Gary A. Taubes, 40, of New York City, contributing correspondent to Science magazine and author of Nobel Dreams and Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion.

The Fellows will be the 14th group of visiting science journalists under a program inaugurated in 1983 as the Vannevar Bush Fellowships. The name was changed in 1987 when the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation of Miami became principal sponsor. The program is an activity of the Program in Science, Technology and Society in MIT's School of Humanities and Social Science.

The number of Fellows selected for the program now totals 145, representing 26 states, the District of Columbia and 15 foreign countries. Two Fellows have come from Australia, two from Brazil, three from Italy, three from Poland, four from Canada, nine from Germany and 13 from Japan.

Finalist interviews were conducted at MIT on April 26 and 27. The 1996 Selection Committee for the Knight Fellowships was: Jerry E. Bishop, deputy news editor at The Wall Street Journal; Deborah Fitzgerald, associate professor of the history of technology at MIT; Ann Gibbons, contributing correspondent to Science magazine; Robert Lee Hotz, science reporterat the Los Angeles Times; and Kathy Sawyer, science and space reporter at The Washington Post.

A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on May 8, 1996.

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