Pien Huang
Pien Huang is a reporter on the Science desk, covering public health and health disparities. She also guest hosts on NPR news programs, and narrates the Moments in History series on the NPR One app.
She joined NPR in 2019 as the newsroom's first Reflect America Fellow, working with shows, desks and podcasts to bring more diverse voices to air and online. Her reporting, with NPR's visuals team, on tracking COVID-19 data won a 2022 Edward R. Murrow award.
She's a former producer for WBUR/NPR's On Point and a 2018 Environmental Reporting Fellow with The GroundTruth Project at WCAI in Cape Cod, covering the human impact on climate change. As a freelance reporter, Huang's stories on the environment, arts and culture were featured on NPR, the BBC and PRI's The World.
Huang's experiences span categories and continents. She was executive producer of Data Made to Matter, a podcast from the MIT Sloan School of Management, and has taught podcasting and audio journalism at Northeastern University.
In a detour from journalism, she worked as a project manager for public artist Ralph Helmick to help plan and execute The Founder's Memorial in Abu Dhabi. Huang has traveled with scientists looking for signs of environmental change in Cameroon's frogs, in Panama's plants and in the ocean water off the ice edge of Antarctica. She has a degree in environmental science and public policy from Harvard.
-
The elephantnose fish is native to Africa and a darling of neuroscientists, for its specialized cerebellum-like brain. Scientists have mapped the neurons in a part of the brain that senses electrical signals in detail, and found that how it filters out electrical noise is more complex than they thought.
-
Public health officials acknowledge they need to shed paternalistic messaging if they want to reach more people. The nominee to run the CDC says she will strike a new tone.
-
Dr. Erica Schwartz answered questions from a Senate committee Wednesday, as she sought confirmation to become the next director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
-
Emails from CDC officials released by Sen. Bernie Sanders reveal agency leaders dealing with political pressures during the Trump era and highlight challenges for the next director.
-
Health officials and researchers hope that efforts to control deer populations, which serve as "party buses" for mating ticks, can reverse the tide of ticks and the illnesses they cause. -
A case of New World screwworm has been found in a calf in Texas. The flesh-eating fly, which was eradicated from the U.S. in the 1960s, poses a major threat to the cattle industry.
-
The World Cup gets underway next week and millions will pack huge stadiums to watch. Public health officials will be watching too, only they're looking for germs that could spread at these matches!
-
One of the 18 Americans tested "mildly" positive for the virus during the U.S. return flight. A French woman has also tested positive — she was was among five French passengers repatriated to Paris. -
President Trump announced a third nominee for surgeon general, Dr. Nicole B. Saphier, a regular Fox News contributor, after pulling his previous nomination for Dr. Casey Means.
-
The CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service was on the chopping block last year by the Trump administration. Scientists had a study assessing COVID vaccine effectiveness suppressed by its leadership.
