Nell Greenfieldboyce
Nell Greenfieldboyce is a NPR science correspondent.
With reporting focused on general science, NASA, and the intersection between technology and society, Greenfieldboyce has been on the science desk's technology beat since she joined NPR in 2005.
In that time Greenfieldboyce has reported on topics including the narwhals in Greenland, the ending of the space shuttle program, and the reasons why independent truckers don't want electronic tracking in their cabs.
Much of Greenfieldboyce's reporting reflects an interest in discovering how applied science and technology connects with people and culture. She has worked on stories spanning issues such as pet cloning, gene therapy, ballistics, and federal regulation of new technology.
Prior to NPR, Greenfieldboyce spent a decade working in print, mostly magazines including U.S. News & World Report and New Scientist.
A graduate of Johns Hopkins, earning her Bachelor's of Arts degree in social sciences and a Master's of Arts degree in science writing, Greenfieldboyce taught science writing for four years at the university. She was honored for her talents with the Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award for Young Science Journalists.
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Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted to endorse the emergency use of a single dose of a vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson. A study showed it was 66% effective in the U.S. -
The emergence of COVID-19 started scientists on a yearlong crash course to learn how the coronavirus might travel through the air and how to stop it. They learned a lot, and quickly. -
A NASA spacecraft sent out to collect rocks from an asteroid seems to have nabbed a lot of material, but there's now an unexpected problem — a flap isn't closing because some rocks are stuck.
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A Twinkie stored in a basement for eight years has been transformed by fungi, giving scientists something unusual to ponder and probe. -
The 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded for research into "rewriting the code of life." Emmanuelle Charpentier of France and Jennifer Doudna of the U.S. are the laureates.
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Scientists have found a gas associated with living organisms in a region of Venus' atmosphere. They can't figure out how it got there if it didn't come from life. -
There's a lot that scientists don't know about how viral infections can interact. But researchers are eager to figure out how coronavirus infections might affect flu infections and vice versa. -
Some unusual meteorites suggest that Earth got its water at its start, rather than forming dry and being watered by comets later on. -
So far this year, flu infections are way down in the Southern Hemisphere. Scientists want to know why — and what it means for the Northern Hemisphere as their flu season looms. -
When a weather station in Death Valley recorded a high of 130 degrees Sunday, it triggered an inquiry to verify the reading. Here's a look into the exacting process of vetting extreme weather claims.
