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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NASA's James Webb Space Telescope successfully deployed its secondary mirror Wednesday after unfolding its enormous sunshield a day earlier. -
A low cost vaccine called Corbevax may help solve the problem of getting safe and effective COVID vaccines to poor and middle-income countries.
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NASA mission managers successfully completed the most complicated part of the unfolding process of James Webb Space Telescope's sunshield — a critical stage in the powerful observatory's deployment.
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Two studies that have not yet been peer reviewed indicate increased protection against the infectious omicron variant. -
The James Webb Space Telescope is on its ways to its parking place a million miles from Earth. What do scientists plan to do with it once it is operational?
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The James Webb Space Telescope is on the way to its final destination, about a million miles from Earth. From there, it will make unprecedented observations of the universe.
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The James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful telescope ever put into space, launched December 25. Astronomers are watching and waiting at mission control in Baltimore.
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NASA is getting ready to launch the James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the iconic Hubble Space Telescope. At mission control in Baltimore, Md., astronomers are getting ready.
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The Food and Drug Administration has granted Emergency Use Authorization to a second COVID-19 antiviral therapy. This one comes from drug maker Merck.
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Pfizer has received emergency use authorization for a COVID-19 pill, giving doctors a new tool for treating the virus. Who qualifies to take it and is it expected to work against the omicron variant?
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New treatments for COVID-19 is expected to get Emergency Use Authorization from the Food and Drug Administration soon. But how much of the drug will be available, and how soon?
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The Food and Drug Administration has now extended it authorization for Pfizer/BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine booster to everyone 16 and older.
