All lecturers in the Science Communication Program are professional journalists and editors in the San Francisco Bay Area. They teach courses in their specialties, and they serve as mentors long after our students graduate.

Robert Irion, B.S., Program Director and Senior Lecturer (Reporting and Writing Science News, The Science Feature, Multimedia Reporting). Freelance magazine journalist and former U.S. correspondent in astronomy and astrophysics for Science. National clients include Smithsonian, National Geographic, Scientific American, Discover, New Scientist, Sky & Telescope, Reader's Digest Books, the National Academies, and Muse. Rob has won three national writing awards in the physical sciences, including one from the American Institute of Physics for his coauthored book, One Universe: At Home in the Cosmos (Joseph Henry Press, 2000). He is co-chair of the NASW Education Committee and a longtime board member of the Northern California Science Writers Association. Rob has a B.S. in earth and planetary sciences from MIT. He worked as a newspaper reporter in Boston before graduating from the Science Communication Program in 1988.

Peter Aldhous, Ph.D., Lecturer (Policy and Investigative Reporting). San Francisco bureau chief of New Scientist. Peter got his start in journalism in 1989 as a reporter for Nature, then fresh from a Ph.D. in animal behavior. Subsequent roles included European correspondent for Science and news editor with New Scientist. Prior to moving to California in 2005, he spent five years as chief news & features editor with Nature. Peter's main interests lie in the biological and social sciences, from genetics and stem cells, through ecology and conservation, to the psychology of addiction and crime. He is a keen roving correspondent, having reported from countries including Cameroon, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, and Vietnam. His articles have won awards from the Association of British Science Writers, the Association of Health Care Journalists, the U.K. Guild of Health Writers, and the Wistar Institute.

Erika Check Hayden, B.S., Lecturer (Reporting and Writing Science News). Reporter for Nature, based in San Francisco. Erika has worked for the journal's news section since 2001, reporting on biomedical research, emerging technologies, scientific trends, and ethics in science. She majored in biology at Stanford University, where she began her journalism career by writing for the Stanford Daily and the Stanford Alumni Magazine. She also has worked at Newsweek in New York, covering science, medicine, and breaking news.

Marc DesJardins, B.A., Lecturer (Writing and Editing Workshop). Features editor, Santa Cruz Sentinel. Marc has been a reporter, editor and copy editor at community newspapers for more than 15 years. He has shared in numerous California Newspaper Publishers Association awards for spot news and writing, among others.

Janet Hopson, M.A., Lecturer (The Science Essay). Jan was the natural history essay columnist for Outside for many years and is now working on a book of essays. She is also revising her college health and fitness textbook, Get Fit, Stay Well! (Benjamin Cummings, 2009), one of six college and high school texts she has coauthored. Her other writings include popular nonfiction books on human pheromones and childhood brain development, and 120 features for Smithsonian, Reader’s Digest, New York Times Magazine, Psychology Today, Science Digest, Science News, and other magazines. She has won several fellowships and magazine awards. Jan also teaches science writing at San Francisco State University and edits its science magazine Intersci. She earned her B.A. in biology and chemistry from Southern Illinois University, and her M.A. in science journalism from the University of Missouri.

Ken McLaughlin, M.A., Lecturer (Writing and Editing Workshop). Ken has been a journalist for more than three decades. He began his career at the Watsonville Register-Pajaronian and San Mateo Times. In 1982, he joined the San Jose Mercury News, where he’s been a reporter, assistant city editor, state editor, and editorial writer. He's written extensively about immigration, Asian and Latino affairs, race, demographics, and marine science. He's also edited the paper's science team. He has received awards from the Asian American Journalists Association, San Francisco Peninsula Press Club, United Press International, and Society of Professional Journalists. A Mercury News project he conceived on Santa Clara County turning a “majority minority” was cited in 2000 by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism as distinguished coverage of race and ethnicity in America. He has a bachelor's degree in English literature and political science from the State University of New York at Albany and a master's in journalism from Stanford University.

Martha Mendoza, B.S., Lecturer (Policy and Investigative Reporting). National Writer for the Associated Press, based in San Jose. Martha's investigative reports have won numerous awards and prompted Congressional hearings, Pentagon investigations, and White House responses. She won a 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting as part of a team that revealed, with extensive documentation, how American soldiers early in the Korean War killed hundreds of civilians at the No Gun Ri bridge. She has won numerous other prestigious awards as well, including a Headliner Award, a Polk Award, and the Science-in-Society Award from the National Association of Science Writers. She was a 2001 Knight Fellow at Stanford University where she studied U.S. international policy and civilians, and she is the 2002 UC Santa Cruz Alumni Achievement Award winner. Martha's earlier award-winning works include investigative reports on flaws in the federal government's wild horses program and illegal child labor in the U.S.

Mary Miller, B.A., Lecturer (Multimedia Reporting). Science writer and Web producer at The Exploratorium, San Francisco's famous participatory science museum. Mary leads production teams that create content for the museum’s award-winning Website, writes a blog, and hosts live Webcasts that link museum and online audiences with scientists in the field. Mary has produced programs from the South Pole, Greenland, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, NASA Goddard’s giant clean room, and the synchrotron radiation laboratory at SLAC. She is coauthor of “Watching Weather” (Henry Holt) and has written for numerous publications including Natural History, New Scientist, Smithsonian, Popular Science, California Wild, and The Sciences. She is past president and current board member of the Northern California Science Writers Association. Mary studied marine sciences at UC Santa Cruz and is a 1990 graduate of the Science Communication Program.

Evelyn Strauss, Ph.D., Lecturer (The Science Essay). Executive Editor of a start-up news and information website for researchers who study multiple sclerosis, set to launch in 2011, and official citation writer for the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation. Previous positions: Executive Director, Scientists Without Borders, co-creator and Senior News Editor of the former Science of Aging Knowledge Environment (SAGE KE) at Science, and contributing correspondent at Science. Evi has written for Scientific American, Health, HHMI Bulletin, Stanford Medicine, WebMD, Salon.com, Dating911, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the American Academy of Microbiology. She earned a B.S. in chemistry from UC Berkeley, a Ph.D. in biochemistry from UCSF, did postdoctoral work in microbiology at Stanford, and graduated from the Science Communication Program in 1998. (On leave for 2011-12.)

Lisa Strong, B.A., Laboratory Coordinator (Multimedia Reporting). Lisa is a multimedia storyteller and science journalist. She specializes in nature, science and history stories for museum exhibits, web multimedia, or anything else that gives her an opportunity to explore the world. She’s a writer, still photographer, cinematographer and video editor. Lisa worked for Ocean Leadership as the outreach/video producer on the research vessel JOIDES Resolution in winter 2011, producing weekly videos and live webcasts during a 2-month expedition at sea. She worked for San Francisco’s hands-on science museum, the Exploratorium, as a video producer on Ice Stories. The web-based multimedia exhibit included original reporting on polar science during the International Polar Year, with fieldwork in Greenland and Antarctica. Other clients have included the Kids’ Science Challenge, the National Park Service, National Geographic’s Crittercam, and the African American Museum and Library at Oakland. Lisa has B.A.s from UC Santa Barbara in environmental biology and environmental studies. She graduated from the Science Communication Program in 1993.