Profiles of Women Working In STEM
Laura Helmuth
Health & Science Editor
Laura Helmuth is the Health and Science Editor for The Washington Post, where she manages a team of 12 reporters and three editors who cover all fields of scientific research and medicine as well as health policy and the culture and politics of science. She has a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience and became a journalist only after deciding that writing and editing is even more fun than science. She has been an editor for National Geographic, Slate, Smithsonian, and Science magazines, and a freelance writer or editor for the New York Times, Nautilus, National Wildlife, Stanford Medicine and other publications.
She has been an active volunteer in science and communication groups. She is the immediate past president of the National Association of Science Writers, which includes science reporters and editors, public information officers, science museum writers, educators, book authors and more. She is currently a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s standing committee on the science of science communication, and she serves on the advisory boards of SciLine (a program that connects reporters with scientific experts on deadline), High Country News, Knowable Magazine, Society for Science and the Public (which publishes Science News magazine), and Spectrum magazine, and she is a council member of the Geological Society of Washington. For fun, she’s a birdwatcher, hiker, and kayaker. Follow her on Twitter at @LauraHelmuth
