Rob Irion

Robert Irion ran the internationally recognized Science Communication Program at UC Santa Cruz from 2006 through 2016. Irion received his B.S. in earth and planetary sciences from MIT and worked as a newspaper reporter near Boston before moving to Santa Cruz for his training in science writing. He was campus science writer at UC Santa Cruz, then a national freelance in the physical sciences for major magazines. For eight years he was the U.S. correspondent in astronomy and astrophysics for Science. Irion is coauthor of “One Universe: At Home in the Cosmos“ (Joseph Henry Press, 2000) with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Charles Liu, a book that received the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award. He is a two-time winner of the David N. Schramm Award for High-Energy Astrophysics Science Journalism for articles in Science and Smithsonian, and he has published a cover story and special-edition essays in National Geographic. Irion also co-chaired the National Association of Science Writers Education Committee with Jeff Grabmeier of The Ohio State University for six years.