Amy Maxmen (born 1978) is an American science journalist who writes about evolution, medicine, science policy and scientists. She was awarded the Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting for her coverage of the
COVID-19 pandemic, and other awards for her reporting on
Ebola and
malaria.
Early life and education
Maxmen was an undergraduate student at the
University of California, Berkeley, where she majored in biology and English. She moved to the
East Coast of the United States for graduate studies, where she received a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from
Harvard University.[1] Her doctoral research, published in the journal Nature, suggested that
sea spiders belong to an early lineage of arthropods and that their claws may be similar to the 'great appendages' seen in fossils dating back to the
Cambrian explosion.[2]
2016 Bricker Award for Science Writing in Medicine[11]
2018 First place in public health from the Association of Health Care Journalists Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism[12] for her Nature feature on the spread of drug-resistant malaria in southeast Asia[13]
2019 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award, Magazine Gold;[14] First place award for excellence in the trade category from the Association of Health Care Journalists;[15] and the 2020 Communications Award from the American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene[16] for her Nature feature on how the World Health Organization battled Ebola in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo[17]
2021 Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting, shared with
Helen Branswell[18]
2022 Feature of the Year, specialist category, from the Medical Journalists' Association;[19] 2022 Honorable mention from the NIHCM Foundation Awards in trade journalism;[20] and 2021 Communications Award from the American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene [21] for her Nature feature on the toll of inequality in the Covid pandemic among agriculture workers in the United States.[22]