Padma Tata Venkata

Padma TV is an award-winning journalist based in India where she writes for Nature, Nature India, New Scientist, Physics World, Chemistry World BioWorld, and other outlets. In 2017, she was the sixth Journalist in Residence at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS), and the first from a developing country. Padma started her science journalism career as a science correspondent at India’s leading news wire agency Press Trust of India (PTI) covering space, nuclear energy, medicine, environment, and crop research. She later worked on development communication projects at Panos Institute South Asia, focusing on public health communication. Beginning in 2004, she served for 10 years as the first South Asia news editor/regional head of SciDev.Net, a not-for-profit, free-access international science website focusing on development-oriented science policies and research in developing countries. At SciDev.Net, she set up the region’s first network of professional science writers. She turned to freelancing in 2014. Padma has contributed a chapter on the advent of online science journalism in India in the book Bridging the Communication Gap in Science and Technology: Lessons from India (Editors: Bagla, Pallava, Binoy, V. V.), published in by Springer in 2017. Earlier, she was part of SciDev.Net’s team that won the 2005 Association of British Science Writers (ABSW) award for best online coverage of the 2004 Great Asian tsunami. She has also won the 1993 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) award for best reporting on nutrition issues while at PTI. Padma TV earned a B.Sc in botany (honors) and a M.Sc from the University of Delhi, with special papers in genetics and microbiology. She also has a post-graduate diploma in bioethics.