Joe Palca
Joe Palca is a science correspondent for NPR. Since joining NPR in 1992, Palca has covered a range of science topics — everything from biomedical research to astronomy. He is currently focused on the eponymous series, "Joe's Big Idea." Stories in the series explore the minds and motivations of scientists and inventors. Palca is also the founder of NPR Scicommers – A science communication collective.
Palca began his journalism career in television in 1982, working as a health producer for the CBS affiliate in Washington, DC. In 1986, he left television for a seven-year stint as a print journalist, first as the Washington news editor for Nature, and then as a senior correspondent for Science Magazine.
In October 2009, Palca took a six-month leave from NPR to become science writer in residence at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
Palca has won numerous awards, including the National Academies Communications Award, the Science-in-Society Award of the National Association of Science Writers, the American Chemical Society's James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public, the American Association for the Advancement of Science Journalism Prize, and the Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Writing. In 2019, Palca was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for outstanding achievement in journalism.
With Flora Lichtman, Palca is the co-author of Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us (Wiley, 2011).
He comes to journalism from a science background, having received a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he worked on human sleep physiology.
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NewsFlooding from storms can sometimes lead to contamination from sewage in the drinking water supply. Scientists are trying to develop a quicker test for one troublesome contaminant: norovirus. -
Norovirus sickens tens of millions of people each year. They get the disease from contaminated food or water. Engineers have developed a rapid, inexpensive test to detect the virus in water supplies.
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NewsScientists are getting closer to developing a wearable patch that can measure hydration and other health markers — in sweat. The hope is it could give athletes more data to boost their performance. -
NewsA lab at Arizona State University tries to find new ways to combat the global scourge of locusts. One solution may have to do with farming practices. -
NewsAn engineer has invented a new way to test for the presence of cholera bacterium in water. The test could be useful in remote areas, because it's lightweight and self-contained. -
A powerful telescope is taking shape in the Chilean Andes. When finished, it will repeatedly image huge swaths of the sky, searching for rare events such as merging stars and other events. -
NewsLanding a man on the moon captures the public's imagination. But in the decades after the Apollo program, robots have also generated public excitement about space exploration. -
A lot of important astronomy is being done thanks to telescopes stationed in the mountains of Chile, where researchers are studying developments in space. -
There are human cancer genes in plants. Scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee are studying what they and other human genes are doing there.
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The path of totality cuts across much of the south Pacific Ocean as well as Argentina and Chile — including a telescope that is one the world's largest.
