Cristine Russell

Cristine Russell is an award-winning freelance journalist who has written about science, health and the environment for more than three decades. She is a Harvard Kennedy School senior fellow at the Belfer Center Environment & Natural Resources Program and an HKS Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy. She has written for Columbia Journalism Review, Scientific American, The Atlantic and other publications and earlier was a national science reporter for The Washington Post and The Washington Star.

Russell has led efforts to improve national and international science journalism. She is Organizing Committee Co-Chair for the 10^th World Conference of Science Journalists in San Francisco, October 2017 and a past president of the U.S. Council for the Advancement of Science Writing as well as the National Association of Science Writers. She is an American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow and served as chair of the AAAS Section on General Interest in Science and Engineering (Y). Russell is an honorary member of Sigma Xi, the international scientific research society. She serves on the Advisory Board of the HKS Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, where she was a 2006 Fellow.

Russell has written about sexism in science and science writing and, in 2011, established the Russell Women in Science Lecture Series at Mills College, where she earned a biology degree.  Her science writing awards include the National Association of Science Writers’ “Science in Society Award” and the American Chemical Society’s James T. Grady Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public. Russell was a contributor to the books Ebola’s Message: Public Health and Medicine in the 21^st Century; Reproductive Health Care for Women and Babies; and A Field Guide for Science Writers.