Geoff Brumfiel
Geoff Brumfiel works as a senior editor and correspondent on NPR's science desk. His editing duties include science and space, while his reporting focuses on the intersection of science and national security.
From April of 2016 to September of 2018, Brumfiel served as an editor overseeing basic research and climate science. Prior to that, he worked for three years as a reporter covering physics and space for the network. Brumfiel has carried his microphone into ghost villages created by the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan. He's tracked the journey of highly enriched uranium as it was shipped out of Poland. For a story on how animals drink, he crouched for over an hour and tried to convince his neighbor's cat to lap a bowl of milk.
Before NPR, Brumfiel was based in London as a senior reporter for Nature Magazine from 2007-2013. There, he covered energy, space, climate, and the physical sciences. From 2002 – 2007, Brumfiel was Nature Magazine's Washington Correspondent.
Brumfiel is the 2013 winner of the Association of British Science Writers award for news reporting on the Fukushima nuclear accident.
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Scientists have used a gene-editing technique to make mosquitos allies in the fight against malaria. Environmentalists are troubled by the idea of genetically modifying wild animals.
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Law enforcement is increasingly using artificial intelligence to investigate crimes, but some civil rights advocates want limits on the technology.
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Artificial intelligence is getting attention for its potential to bring huge changes to many different fields in the future, but experts say the AI revolution in surveillance is already here.
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A Norwegian organization says that two seismic networks it oversees saw an explosion at the war-torn Kakhovka dam in Ukraine around the time it failed.
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NASA is trying to bring science to the study of unidentified anomalous phenomena. A panel of top scientists and academics is trying to figure out how to systematically study UAPs.
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Research shows some hammerhead sharks hold their breath when diving deep under water. They do it to keep their bodies from getting too cold. (Story aired on All Things Considered on May 11, 2023.)
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In South Texas, the commercial spaceflight company SpaceX is preparing to test a huge, stainless-steel rocket. The machine could one day carry humans to the moon, Mars and beyond.
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New startups believe chatbot technology could help reduce the burden on physicians. But some academics warn bias and errors could hurt patients.
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It's an intriguing finding that suggests life as we know it may have been seeded by asteroids and meteors.
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Arms control experts warn that the suspension of the New START treaty is part of a troubling global rise in nuclear weapons.