U.S. News & World Report’s Shute to be writer in residence

Nancy Shute, a veteran science and medical reporter for U.S. News & World Report, has been named the spring Science Writer in Residence at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Shute will be on campus the week of April 22.

As a senior writer at U.S. News, Shute covers medicine and health care. In that role, she has covered significant news stories, including Sept. 11, anthrax, SARS, bioterrorism, Hurricane Katrina and avian influenza. Shute also has served as the magazine's science editor, and has written cover stories about soldiers wounded in Iraq, direct-to-consumer genetic testing and "America's love affair with stimulants."

Shute is also a prolific freelance writer. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Smithsonian, the New Republic and National Review. As a Fulbright Scholar, she founded the first bilingual newspaper in Kamchatka, Russia.

As a UW–Madison Science Writer in Residence, Shute will spend a week on campus working with students, faculty and staff. She also will give a public lecture, "When Science is Breaking News: Covering Anthrax, SARS, Katrina and Iraq," at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, April 24, at the Memorial Union. The talk is free and open to the public.

For two decades, the UW–Madison Science Writer in Residence Program has brought the nation's top science journalists to UW–Madison for extended visits, including three whose work subsequently earned them the Pulitzer Prize, journalism's most prestigious and coveted award.

The program is supported by the UW Foundation and is a collaborative project of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and University Communications.