Nell Greenfieldboyce

Doby Photography / NPR

Nell Greenfieldboyce is a NPR science correspondent.

With reporting focused on general science, NASA, and the intersection between technology and society, Greenfieldboyce has been on the science desk's technology beat since she joined NPR in 2005.

In that time Greenfieldboyce has reported on topics including the narwhals in Greenland, the ending of the space shuttle program, and the reasons why independent truckers don't want electronic tracking in their cabs.

Much of Greenfieldboyce's reporting reflects an interest in discovering how applied science and technology connects with people and culture. She has worked on stories spanning issues such as pet cloning, gene therapy, ballistics, and federal regulation of new technology.

Prior to NPR, Greenfieldboyce spent a decade working in print, mostly magazines including U.S. News & World Report and New Scientist.

A graduate of Johns Hopkins, earning her Bachelor's of Arts degree in social sciences and a Master's of Arts degree in science writing, Greenfieldboyce taught science writing for four years at the university. She was honored for her talents with the Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award for Young Science Journalists.

Lawmakers Seek Protections For Workers Against Lung Damage Tied To Making Countertops

By Nell Greenfieldboyce • Oct 7, 2019

Lawmakers in Congress are calling on the Department of Labor to do more to protect workers who may be unsafely cutting "engineered stone" used for countertops.

The material contains high levels of the mineral silica, and breathing in silica dust is dangerous. While silica is found in natural stones, like granite, engineered stone made of quartz can be more than 90% silica.

Workers Are Falling Ill, Even Dying, After Making Kitchen Countertops

By Nell Greenfieldboyce • Oct 2, 2019

Artificial stone used to make kitchen and bathroom countertops has been linked to cases of death and irreversible lung injury in workers who cut, grind and polish this increasingly popular material.

The fear is that thousands of workers in the United States who create countertops out of what's known as "engineered stone" may be inhaling dangerous amounts of lung-damaging silica dust, because engineered stone is mostly made of the mineral silica.

A Peculiar Solar System Has Scientists Rethinking Theories Of How Planets Form

By Nell Greenfieldboyce • Sep 26, 2019

An oddball solar system discovered not too far from our own is forcing astronomers to reexamine their ideas about how planets get created.

In the journal Science, researchers report they detected a small, dim red dwarf star, about 30 light-years from Earth, being tugged by the gravity of what must be a huge, Jupiter-like planet.

As Made-To-Order DNA Gets Cheaper, Keeping It Out Of The Wrong Hands Gets Harder

By Nell Greenfieldboyce • Sep 24, 2019

Patrick Boyle recalls that by the time he got his Ph.D. in biology in 2012, he had worked with just a few other people and managed to manufacture six genes, the basic units of heredity.

"Today, we are synthesizing more than 10,000 genes every month," he says, showing off a lab at a Boston biotech company called Ginkgo Bioworks.

North America Has Lost 3 Billion Birds, Scientists Say

By Nell Greenfieldboyce • Sep 19, 2019

Over the past half-century, North America has lost more than a quarter of its entire bird population, or around 3 billion birds.

That's according to a new estimate published in the journal Science by researchers who brought together a variety of information that has been collected on 529 bird species since 1970.