Quick Facts
Biography
Joe Palca is an American correspondent for National Public Radio. He specializes in science, and is the backup host for Talk of the Nation Science Friday. Palca was also the president of the National Association of Science Writers from 1999 to 2000. He currently serves on Society for Science & the Public's board of trustees.
Background
He received a PhD in psychology from the University of California at Santa Cruz where he worked on human sleep physiology.
Palca began his career in journalism in 1982 at the CBS affiliate in Washington, DC. He left television in 1986 to become a print journalist; he was both a Washington news editor at Nature and a senior correspondent for Science. He went on to join NPR in 1992.
He left NPR in late 1999 for a year to study human clinical trials as a 'Kaiser Family Foundation Media Fellow'.
Awards
- National Academies Communication Award
- Science-in-Society Award from the National Association of Science Writers
- James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public from the American Chemical Society
- Journalism Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science
- Ohio State Award