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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On mountaintop glaciers of Alaska, Washington and Oregon, billions of tiny black worms are tunneling upward to the barren, icy surface. What lures them, and how do they survive the frozen depths? -
It's a smackdown of one space monster by another: Scientists have made unprecedented observations of two black holes gobbling two neutron stars — among the weirdest space collisions ever detected. -
Potentially, observers in plenty of star systems could have detected Earth sometime in the last 5,000 years. More stars will soon move into positions that would let them see our planet. -
The two space probes will study Venus, a scorching hot world that may have once been like Earth. NASA chose the Venus missions over other candidates, such as trips to the moons of Jupiter and Neptune. -
Little is known about the night-time habits of tiny creatures all around us. Take the jumping spider--it mysteriously can spend much of the night suspended in mid-air, hanging by a thread. -
When a critter spends 17 years underground, it's not easy to study. So as Brood X cicadas break out, they're followed closely by researchers who must cram a lot of work in about six weeks. -
Something went boom in outer space and sent radioactive stardust our way, and it's just been found at the bottom of the ocean. -
If you've spent any time around cats, you've seen them curl up in cozy spaces. A new study on feline cognition shows that they also like to sit in snug squares created by a kind of optical illusion. -
Biologists say newly efficient and accurate gene sequencing techniques have allowed them to fairly quickly detail full genomes and find overlooked genes in a broad range of 25 important species. -
Scientists in Michigan went out in the dead of night to dig up part of an unusual long-term experiment. It's a research study that started in 1879 and is handed from one generation to the next.
