Nell Greenfieldboyce
Nell Greenfieldboyce is a NPR science correspondent.
With reporting focused on general science, NASA, and the intersection between technology and society, Greenfieldboyce has been on the science desk's technology beat since she joined NPR in 2005.
In that time Greenfieldboyce has reported on topics including the narwhals in Greenland, the ending of the space shuttle program, and the reasons why independent truckers don't want electronic tracking in their cabs.
Much of Greenfieldboyce's reporting reflects an interest in discovering how applied science and technology connects with people and culture. She has worked on stories spanning issues such as pet cloning, gene therapy, ballistics, and federal regulation of new technology.
Prior to NPR, Greenfieldboyce spent a decade working in print, mostly magazines including U.S. News & World Report and New Scientist.
A graduate of Johns Hopkins, earning her Bachelor's of Arts degree in social sciences and a Master's of Arts degree in science writing, Greenfieldboyce taught science writing for four years at the university. She was honored for her talents with the Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award for Young Science Journalists.
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The year 2022 was the 200th anniversary of the birth of Gregor Mendel. He's known as the father of genetics, so scientists exhumed Mendel's body and examined his DNA. -
Testing pregnant people's blood to look at free-floating DNA can tell doctors about the health of the fetus. But these tests sometime turn up DNA that might be shed by cancerous cells. -
The ruling is the latest twist in a long-running dispute over where dozens of federally-supported former research chimps should live out the remainder of their days. -
December 7, 1972 was the launch of the final mission in NASA's Apollo moon program. Fifty years later, NASA finally seems poised to return people to the lunar surface. -
Scientists studying a gas giant planet have found that it's partly cloudy and that its atmosphere gets altered by starlight from its host star. -
Galaxies that existed soon after the Big Bang turn out to be surprisingly bright, a discovery that's both thrilled and puzzled scientists who study how the universe evolved over time. -
NASA's Artemis moon rocket has finally launched after months of setbacks, from fuel leaks to hurricanes. If successful, the mission signals a big step toward returning humans to the moon. -
The space agency has been trying for months to send its giant moon rocket on its first test flight. The goal is to send a crew capsule, with no astronauts on board, around the moon and back. -
This wrinkled ol' pal, found across much of the U. S., may be in decline. A huge study in North Carolina plans to track box turtles for 100 years, to learn how to best protect them. -
NASA successfully crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid in a test of planetary defense. Now it will determine whether the mission was able to alter the asteroid's course.
