Rob Stein
Rob Stein is a correspondent and senior editor on NPR's science desk.
An award-winning science journalist with more than 30 years of experience, Stein mostly covers health and medicine. He tends to focus on stories that illustrate the intersection of science, health, politics, social trends, ethics, and federal science policy. He tracks genetics, stem cells, cancer research, women's health issues, and other science, medical, and health policy news.
Before NPR, Stein worked at The Washington Post for 16 years, first as the newspaper's science editor and then as a national health reporter. Earlier in his career, Stein spent about four years as an editor at NPR's science desk. Before that, he was a science reporter for United Press International (UPI) in Boston and the science editor of the international wire service in Washington.
Stein's work has been honored by many organizations, including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Association for Cancer Research, and the Association of Health Care Journalists. He was twice part of NPR teams that won Peabody Awards.
Stein frequently represents NPR, speaking at universities, international meetings and other venues, including the University of Cambridge in Britain, the World Conference of Science Journalists in South Korea, and the Aspen Institute in Washington, DC.
Stein is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He completed a journalism fellowship at the Harvard School of Public Health, a program in science and religion at the University of Cambridge, and a summer science writer's workshop at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass.
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The Biden administration is scrapping plans to offer COVID boosters for people under 50 this summer. Instead officials will push for an earlier release of the next generation boosters in the fall. -
People who are 50 and older and certain immunocompromised individuals may get a second Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine booster four months after they received the first. -
New research out of New York found the protection of the vaccine against infection in kids ages 5 to 11 dropped from 68% to 12%. -
University of Washington research predicts the omicron wave will infect more than 400,000 people a day in the U.S. when it crests in about six weeks. -
Scientists are projecting the surge will peak in January. Just how massive it could be depends on how quickly Americans get boosted and change behavior to slow the spread. -
What's the U.S. doing to watch out for the omicron variant? Here's the work underway and the challenges that experts say may slow down the country's efforts. -
Scientists have begun to find abnormalities in the immune systems of some long-COVID patients that might help explain the syndrome, at least in some people. But there is still much more to learn. -
Some experts worry "boostermania" is distracting from the goal of getting tens of millions of unvaccinated Americans their first shots. -
Should people who get a COVID booster get a different vaccine from their original shot? The results of a highly anticipated study suggest that in some cases the answer may be yes. -
Though infections are still sky-high, the U.S. may be turning a corner, according to a consortium of researchers who forecast the pandemic. And we may well be spared a winter surge.
