Sam Macdonald, a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellow in the Department of Mathematics, has been selected to be a Mass Media Fellow by the American Mathematical Society.
The AMS annually sponsors a fellow through the AAAS Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellowship program, which places science, mathematics, and engineering students in newsrooms nationwide. Fellows observe and participate in the process by which events and ideas become news, improve their ability to communicate about complex technical subjects, and increase their understanding of how information is effectively disseminated.
MacDonald will spend 10 weeks at Scientific American in New York. His interview with AMS is available online.
"It is more important than ever – with attacks on science and challenges to journalism – to get reliable scientific information to the public and engage a much larger segment of the scientific community in this endeavor," said Karen Saxe, senior vice president, AMS Government Relations. "We need more mathematicians who are skilled at and comfortable communicating outside of our community. The Mass Media Fellowship offers advanced math students a great opportunity to spend a summer working for a media outlet."
