NPR’s Joe Palca to talk about ‘Science Communications’ as Poynter Fellow

Joe Palca, science correspondent for NPR, will speak at Yale on Friday, Oct. 23 as a Poynter Fellow in Journalism.

Palca will be participating in two events during his visit. The first, “Science Communications with Joe Palca,” will take place at 10 a.m. in Rm. 211 of Mason Laboratory, 9 Hillhouse Ave. At 3:15 p.m., Palca will participate in a panel discussion at the Yale Quantum Institute, on the fourth floor of 17 Hillhouse Ave. Both events are free and open to the public.

Palca began his journalism career in 1982, working as a television producer for the CBS affiliate in Washington, D.C., where he specialized in health-related news. In 1986, he left television print journalism, working first as the Washington news editor for Nature, and then as a senior correspondent for Science Magazine.

Since joining NPR in 1992, Palca has covered a range of science topics, from biomedical research to astronomy. Currently, Palca hosts “Joe’s Big Idea,” a series exploring the minds and motivations of scientists and inventors.

In October 2009, Palca took a six-month leave from NPR to become science writer in residence at the Huntington Library. Palca has won numerous awards, including the National Academies Communications Award, the Science-in-Society Award of the National Association of Science Writers, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science Journalism Prize.

Palca holds a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he worked on human sleep physiology.

The Poynter Fellowship in Journalism was established by Nelson Poynter, who received his master’s degree in 1927 from Yale. The fellowship brings to campus journalists from a wide variety of media outlets who have made significant contributions to their field. Among recent Poynter fellows are Maksym Eristavi, Christopher Buckley, and Jane Mayer.