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Eight new Knight Fellows named

Eight journalists from the United States, Australia and Switzerland have been named as Knight Science Journalism Fellows for the 1997-98 academic year at MIT. The journalists work for newspapers, magazines, and television.

Beginning September 1, the Fellows 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 are:

Scott E. Allen, 35, environment reporter, The Boston Globe. Mr. Allen is author of recent articles on acid rain, nuclear energy, the forests of northern Maine, and the project to bring natural gas from beneath the sea off Nova Scotia to Boston.

Cathy Johnson, 32, reporter and producer, "Quantum," Australian Broadcasting Corp., Sydney. Ms. Johnson is a Rotary International scholar and twice won the Michael Daley award for science journalism.

Beth A. Livermore, 35, science and health writer, New York, NY. Ms. Livermore wrote recently about science in Antarctica for Astronomy and Popular Science magazines.

Vivien A. Marx, 37, science journalist and television producer, Frankfurt, Germany. Ms. Marx works for Germany's largest public network, ZDF, and for the Franco-German television venture, Arte. She writes for Popular Science, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Zuricher Tagesanzeiger.

Steven J. Nadis, 42, science writer, Cambridge, MA. Mr. Nadis has written for the Atlantic Monthly, Nature, Science, Omni, Technology Review and other magazines. He has also written or contributed to numerous books.

Tom A. Paulson, 40, science reporter, Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Mr. Paulson wrote a group of articles in February on the increasing ties between industry and academic science.

Reto Schneider, science editor, FACTS magazine, Zurich, Switzerland. Mr. Schneider has written recently on the search for planets around nearby stars, artificial intelligence and robots.

Doug Stewart, 47, science writer, Ipswich, MA. Mr. Stewart has written for Smithsonian, Omni and National Wildlife.

The Fellows will be the 15th group of visiting science journalists under a program inaugurated in 1983. Since 1987, the principal sponsor has been the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation of Miami. The program is an activity of the Program in Science, Technology, and Society in MIT's School of Humanities and Social Science.

Since 1983, a total of 153 Fellows have been selected for the program, 70 women and 83 men, coming from 26 states including the District of Columbia, and 15 foreign countries. From the beginning, Fellows have come from radio, television, magazines, newspapers, wire services and book publishing.

Ms. Johnson is the third Fellow named from Australia, and Mr. Schneider is the second from Switzerland. Other countries sending Fellows have been Japan, China, Korea, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria, Sweden, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Great Britain.

Finalist interviews were conducted at MIT on April 18-19. Members of the 1997 Selection Committee for the Knight Fellowships were Bob Buderi of Cambridge, a Fellow in 1986-87 and author of The Invention That Changed the World; Deborah Fitzgerald, associate professor of the history of technology at MIT and author of The Business of Breeding: Hybrid Corn in Illinois; Victor K. McElheny, director of the Fellowships; Boyce Rensberger, editor, Horizon section, The Washington Post, a Selection Committee member in 1983 and 1984, and author of Life Itself: Exploring the Realm of the Living Cell; Shawna Vogel (SB '86) of Boston, a Fellow in 1991-92 and author of Naked Earth.

A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on April 30, 1997.

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