Updated November, 2007

Stevens Institute of Technology created the Center for Science Writings in 2005 to draw attention to writings, from books to blogs, that shape public perceptions of science. Stevens hired the science journalist John Horgan to serve as the first Director of the Center. The Center, which is part of the College of Arts & Letters, is fulfilling its missions in the following ways:

  • The Center sponsors public events at which prominent writers--including journalists, scientists, engineers, philosophers and others--visit Stevens to discuss science-related issues. The Center's website publicizes these events and provides supplementary materials and a forum for discussion.
  • The CSW website publishes a blog in which John Horgan and other CSW staff members comment on scientific issues addressed in CSW events and in the media. Visitors' comments are welcome.
  • The Center has compiled and published on its website "The Stevens Seventy Greatest Science Books," which stand out because of their subject matter, rhetorical style and impact on science and the rest of culture.
  • The Center staff has created writing-intensive undergraduate courses-such as "Introduction to Journalism", "War and Human Nature", and "Science and the Press"-that will eventually count toward a minor in Science Writings.
  • In 2007, the Center created the Green Book Award, given each year to a book that addresses environmental issues in a compelling way.
  • Each spring the Center awards prizes to undergraduates for the three best papers on science-related topics. The Center publishes the prize-winning papers on its website.

John Horgan, Director

John Horgan, who came to Stevens in 2005, is an author and freelance writer who has been published in the New York Times, Newsweek, TIME, Discover, London Times and other publications around the world. Horgan holds a BA in English from Columbia University's School of General Studies and an MS from Columbia's School of Journalism. He was a senior writer for Scientific American from 1986 to 1997. His honors and awards include the 2005 Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowship in Science and Religion; the Science Journalism Award of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1992 and 1994); and the National Association of Science Writers Science-in-Society Award (1993). His writings have been featured in the 2005, 2006 and 2007 editions of The Best American Science and Nature Writing.

For more information, please visit John's personal website.

Lisa Dolling, Co-Director

In addition to being Co-Director of the Center for Science Writings, Lisa Dolling is associate dean of the Stevens College of Arts & Letters and associate professor in and director of the philosophy department. She holds a BA in philosophy, with minors in English and French literature, from Manhattanville College. She has since earned a certificate of completion cum laude from the Higher Institute of Philosophy in Louvain, Belgium and an MA in Philosophy from Fordham University. She went on to receive her PhD in Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her primary specialty is the philosophy of science, but her interests include hermeneutics, aesthetics, feminism, women philosophers, the philosophy of literature, and the philosophy of education. She edited the collection "The Tests of Time: Readings in the Development of Physical Theory", and has published articles on Hermeneutics, Epistemology, and the work of several philosophers. Prior to coming to Stevens, Professor Dolling was a member of the philosophy department at St. John's University, where she also worked as the Executive Director of the University Honors Program, Director of the Women's Studies Program, and Coordinator of the Science and Religion project.

For more information, please visit Professor Dolling's page on the philosophy department site.

Suhas Sreedhar, Assistant Director

Suhas Sreedhar graduated from Stevens in May of 2007 with a B.E. in Engineering Management and minors in Philosophy and Economics. He decided to pursue his interest in science journalism and worked as a writer for IEEE Spectrum soon after graduating. While at Spectrum he wrote on several news stories, blog posts, and authored an extensive two-part web feature for the month of August entitled "The Future of Music." The article quickly became widely viewed and was picked up by popular online news blogs such as Digg and Slashdot, gaining the praise of many engineers and audiophiles. In addition to journalism, Suhas has an interest in filmmaking and fiction-writing and has won student film fests in both high school and college. Additionally he has interests in philosophy, history, anthropology, human evolution, sociology, psychology, and rock and roll music and wishes to write about several of these subjects in the future.

The Friends of the Center for Science Writings are writers who share the Center's interest in media depictions of science. The Friends are:

  • Natalie Angier, author, columnist, New York Times
  • Michael Brooks, author, writer/editor, New Scientist
  • Sharon Begley, author, columnist, Newsweek
  • David Berreby, author, freelance journalist
  • Dan Fagin, author, freelance journalist, professor, NYU
  • Mark Fischetti, author, senior editor, Scientific American
  • Fred Guterl, senior editor, Newsweek
  • Steve Hall, author, freelance journalist
  • Jim Holt, freelance journalist
  • George Johnson, author, science reporter, New York Times
  • Rob Kunzig, author, freelance journalist
  • David Lefer, author, freelance journalist
  • Mike Lemonick, author, freelance journalist
  • Kitta MacPherson, science reporter, New Jersey Star-Ledger
  • Chris Mooney, author, freelance journalist
  • Oliver Morton, author, editor, Nature
  • Dennis Overbye, author, reporter, New York Times
  • Corey Powell, author, executive editor, Discover Magazine
  • Martin Redfern, correspondent, BBC
  • John Rennie, editor in chief, Scientific American
  • Andrew Revkin, author, environment and science reporter, New York Times
  • Philip E. Ross, web editor, IEEE Spectrum
  • Kirkpatrick Sale, author, freelance journalist
  • Charles Seife, author, freelance journalist, professor, NYU
  • Ellen Shell, author, freelance journalist, professor, Boston University
  • Jamie Shreeve, author, senior editor, National Geographic
  • Gary Stix, author, special projects editor, Scientific American
  • John Timpane, oped editor/writer, Philadelphia Inquirer
  • John Voelcker, freelance journalist
  • Margaret Werthheim, author, freelance journalist
  • Karen Wright, freelance journalist
  • Robert Wright, author, freelance journalist, producer, Bloggingheads.tv
  • Phil Yam, author, news editor, Scientific American
  • Carl Zimmer, author, freelance journalist
  • Glenn Zorpette, executive editor, IEEE Spectrum Magazine

The Board of Advisors of the Center for Science Writings are members of the greater Stevens community who have agreed to offer their advice and support to the developing vision of the CSW. All four of them have distinguished themselves by their commitment and contributions to science and science communications.

Barrett Hazeltine

Barrett Hazeltine is Professor Emeritus of Engineering at Brown University and a member of the Board of Trustees at the Stevens Institute of Technology. He holds a BSE and an MSE from Princeton University and a PhD from the University of Michigan, and has taught or worked in over a dozen countries. Among his many awards and honors are two Fulbright lectureships.

Richard A. McCormack

Richard McCormack is President of RAMCO Consulting Company, a follow-on organization to RAMCO Inc., an energy and management-consulting firm headquartered in San Diego, CA, that McCormack founded in 1977 and sold to Pacific Gas and Electric Company's National Energy Group in 2001. McCormack also serves as President of Thermal Energy Storage, which he established in 1979 to bring his patented gas-hydrate storage technology to market. He is an active alumnus of the Stevens Institute of Technology.

Richard Reeves

Richard Reeves is the author of the prize-winning trilogy on the modern Presidency: President Kennedy: Profile of Power; President Nixon: Alone in the White House; President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination. He is senior lecturer at the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California. His next book, A Force of Nature: The Frontier Genius of Ernest Rutherford, scheduled for publication in 2007, includes experiments done at the Stevens Institute of Technology. He graduated from Stevens in 1960.

Robert Ubell

Robert Ubell is the Dean of the School of Professional Education at the Stevens Institute of Technology. He launched the school's first online graduate program, WebCampus.Stevens, in 2000. Distinguished by two of the most prestigious awards in e-learning, the Sloan Foundation prize for the best online learning university and the US Distance Learning Best Practices award, by the fall of 2006, it had enrolled its 10,000th student. Ubell also heads Stevens’ programs in China where he manages the school's Chinese graduate programs at Beijing Institute of Technology and at Central University of Finance and Economics. Earlier, he held a number of positions in publishing. He was vice-president and editor-in-chief of Plenum Publishing Corporation, editor of the National Magazine Award-winning monthly, The Sciences, and American publisher of the premier British science weekly, Nature.