The Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT has announced that Usha Lee McFarling, national science correspondent for STAT, will be joining the team in August as its director.
The program is an elite mid-career fellowship program that brings prominent science journalists from around the world for 10 months of study and intellectual exploration at MIT, Harvard University, and other institutions in the Boston area.
McFarling is a veteran science writer, most recently working for STAT News. She previously reported for the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, and the San Antonio Light, and was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow in 1992-93.
McFarling graduated from Brown University with a degree in biology in 1988 and later earned a master’s degree in biological psychology from UC Berkeley.
Her work on the diseased state of the world’s oceans earned the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism and a Polk Award, among others. Her coverage of health disparities at STAT has earned an Edward R. Murrow award, and awards from the Association of Health Care Journalists, and the Asian American Journalists Association. In 2024, she was awarded the Victor Cohn prize for excellence in medical science reporting and the Bernard Lo, MD award in bioethics.
