The MIT KNIGHT Science Journalism Program (KSJ) announced that USHA Lee McFarling, National Science Correspondent Stat And the former KSJ scholarship holder, will join the team in August as next director.
As Director, McFarling will play a central role by helping to manage the KSJ – an elite program of mid -Carrier scholarships which brings eminent scientific journalists from around the world for 10 months of studies and intellectual exploration to MIT, Harvard University and other institutions in the Boston region.
“I can’t wait to take the bar during this critical period for scientific journalism, an era when journalism is attacked both politically and economically and disinformation – especially in the fields of science and health – is widespread,” said McFarling. “My goal is that the program finds even more ways to support our field and its practitioners when they continue their important work.”
McFarling is a veteran scientific writer, more recently to work to work New Stat. She had previously reported for the Los Angeles Times,, The Boston GlobeKnight Ridder Washington Bureau, and the Light of San AntonioAnd was Knight Science Journalism Fellow in 1992-1993. McFarling graduated from Brown University with a diploma in biology in 1988 and then obtained a master’s degree in biological psychology from the University of California in Berkeley.
His work on the sick state of the world’s oceans won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism and an Award Polk, among others. Its coverage of health disparities in Stat won an Edward R. Murrow Prize and awards from the association of Health Care Journalists and the Asian American Journalists Association. In 2024, she received the Victor Cohn Prize for excellence in the report of medical sciences and the Bernard Lo, MD Award in Bioethics.
McFarling will succeed the director Deborah Blum, who was director for 10 years. Blum, also a journalist winning Pulitzer and the successful author of Six Books, retires to return to a career as a full -time writer. She will join the board of directors of DefaultA magazine that she helped to find in KSJ and to continue as a member of the board of directors of the Council for the advancement of scientific writing and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, among others.
“It was an honor to serve as director of the Knight Science journalism program for 10 years and a pleasure to be able to support the important work that scientific journalists do,” said Blum. “And I know that under the direction of Usha McFarling – which brings such talent and intelligence to work – that KSJ will continue to grow and prosper in all the best ways.”