Environmental Reporting Fellowships
2009-2010 Fellows

Sindya Bhanoo writes about health technology for The Industry Standard in San Francisco and is a contributor to The Washington Post's weekly health section. Previously, she worked as a health reporter for The Baltimore Sun and as a patent examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. She moved to India in 2004, where she first considered a career in journalism. She has worked as a freelance writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, The Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, Khabar Magazine, India Abroad and India Currents Magazine. She was also a technology reporter for VeriSign in Bangalore, India and an E-Reporter for the Pechiney Corporation in Paris, France.

Bhanoo was recently awarded a Kaiser Family Foundation Media Fellowship in Health Reporting. She received the 2007 Wired Magazine Award of Excellence In Technology Reporting and the 2006 SAJA Award for Outstanding Editorial. She was awarded the AAJA Ken Wong Memorial Scholarship in 2007, and the Mark Felt Scholarship for Investigative Reporting, also in 2007. Bhanoo earned a Masters degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2008 and a Bachelors in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in 2002.

Bhanoo will report on science and the environment at The New York Times for her Metcalf fellowship.

Marina Giovannelli is an independent radio journalist who recently covered science, the environment and immigration for WHQR, the National Public Radio affiliate in Wilmington, North Carolina. The Associated Press named Giovannelli "Rookie Reporter of the Year" for 2008 in North Carolina and awarded her reporting "Best Use of Sound". Giovannelli continues to work as a freelance producer for NPR's Morning Edition, a position she has held intermittently since completing an internship for NPR's Science Desk. There, she worked on the award-winning environmental series Climate Connections. Giovannelli has reported from Mexico for NPR's Foreign Desk and is a regular contributor to NPR's hourly national newscast.

A 2007 graduate of the University of California, San Diego, Giovannelli received a B.S. neuroscience, with minors in environmental chemistry and sociology of healthcare. While at UCSD, she worked in a volcanology lab in the Geosciences Division at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, became a certified Advanced Open Water SCUBA diver, and competed for the UCSD Snowboard Team. Giovannelli also traveled to Namibia as a field researcher for the Gobabeb Research Center, where she conceptualized, designed and built a solar desalination system as a model for sustainable technology in a desert ecosystem. A native of Mexico City, Giovannelli is fluent in both English and Spanish.

Giovannelli will fulfill her Environmental Reporting Fellowship at The World, a radio program produced in Boston. The World is a co-production of WGBH/Boston, PRI, and the BBC World Service, and airs weekdays on over 200 stations across the country.