Science Communication Fellowship

About the Fellowship

GSA’s Science Communication Fellowship is an opportunity for a science writer, journalist or scientist with a passion for communicating to spend 10 months gaining experience and professional contacts, working in concert with GSA communications and member leaders.

With funding from the GSA Foundation's Bruce and Karen Clark fund, the goal of the Fellowship is to help improve communication of geoscience knowledge between the members of GSA and the non-scientific community. Candidates should understand how to interview authors to capture the significance of their work for non-scientific audiences, and translate technical research papers into well-developed and compelling press releases for general media outlets with lay readership.  The Fellow will write a minimum of 12 press releases throughout the Fellowship term, selected from the Society’s top-rated, peer-reviewed geoscience journals and from abstracts submitted by scientists to the extensive technical program for the GSA Annual Meeting.

The Fellow will also help staff the onsite Newsroom at the GSA Annual Meeting, assist members of the media covering the meeting, pitch stories to local and national media outlets, and mentor student interns considering a career in science communication.

Current Fellow

Laura Fattaruso
2022–2023 GSA Science Communication Fellow

Laura Fattaruso lives in Holyoke, Massachusetts. They got their bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science and Geology with a minor in Physics at SUNY Albany in New York state, and their master's degree in Geoscience at UMass Amherst where they are now working on a PhD to be completed in Fall 2022. Their PhD research focuses on the energy budget of rock fracture processes, to improve our understanding of earthquakes, along with side projects in paleomagnetism and geologic mapping of Venus. Their master's work examined how the shape of the San Andreas fault impacts crustal deformation, and how changes to the fault system over time influenced the tectonic evolution of southern California. They have also worked as a teacher, housekeeper, landscaper, sandwich maker, and dog walker. From 2017–2020, they produced and hosted the podcast ‘Lab Talk with Laura’ which features conversations about research between scientists and comedians. They were a 2019 Mass Media Fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, doing science reporting for King 5 News in Seattle, and they currently write about emerging earthquake research for Temblor Earthquake News.