Michaeleen Doucleff
Michaeleen Doucleff, PhD, is a correspondent for NPR's Science Desk. For nearly a decade, she has been reporting for the radio and the web for NPR's global health outlet, Goats and Soda. Doucleff focuses on disease outbreaks, cross-cultural parenting, and women and children's health.
In 2014, Doucleff was part of the team that earned a George Foster Peabody award for its coverage of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. For the series, Doucleff reported on how the epidemic ravaged maternal health and how the virus spreads through the air. In 2019, Doucleff and Senior Producer Jane Greenhalgh produced a story about how Inuit parents teach children to control their anger. That story was the most popular one on NPR.org for the year; altogether readers have spent more than 16 years worth of time reading it.
In 2021, Doucleff published a book, called Hunt, Gather, Parent, stemming from her reporting at NPR. That book became a New York Times bestseller.
Before coming to NPR in 2012, Doucleff was an editor at the journal Cell, where she wrote about the science behind pop culture. Doucleff has a bachelor degree in biology from Caltech, a doctorate in physical chemistry from the University of Berkeley, California, and a master's degree in viticulture and enology from the University of California, Davis.
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After decades of wondering, an NPR reporter finally figures out how her husband's family dog knew when the school bus would arrive every day. She did some digging — and now it all makes scents.
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Scientists predict China will see the largest COVID surge of the pandemic this winter, with hundreds of millions of people infected. But some experts say that it could have been even worse.
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For nearly three years, China has enforced incredibly strict rules to keep coronavirus transmission in check. But now they're facing a potentially deadly omicron surge.
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A study shows that survivors of the bubonic plague, which lasted from 1346 to 1353, may have passed on the ability to survive other pandemics. (Aired on All Things Considered on Oct. 19. 2022.)
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New daily monkeypox cases have been falling, and the CDC says cases are probably going to plateau or decline over the next few weeks.
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Throughout the pandemic, some people have avoided catching COVID — despite multiple exposures. Do their immune systems have some type of protection that others are missing?
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Is it a sexually transmitted disease? Can you get it on a crowded bus? Trying on clothes? We talk to specialists about how this virus is transmitted and what kinds of precautions are warranted.
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Dr. Dimie Ogoina detected monkeypox in an 11-year-old patient in 2017 and saw many other cases since. He's tried to warn health officials that the virus has changed the way it spreads — to no avail.
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The COVID-19 pandemic is having a surprising silver lining — it's breathing new life into the fight against HIV by accelerating the development of a new type of HIV vaccine.
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A new coronavirus variant is a bit like Frankenstein, with the head of omicron and the body of delta. Scientists are eager to learn more about the origins of hybrid variants like "deltacron."