
Geoff Brumfiel
Geoff Brumfiel works as a senior editor and correspondent on NPR's science desk. His editing duties include science and space, while his reporting focuses on the intersection of science and national security.
From April of 2016 to September of 2018, Brumfiel served as an editor overseeing basic research and climate science. Prior to that, he worked for three years as a reporter covering physics and space for the network. Brumfiel has carried his microphone into ghost villages created by the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan. He's tracked the journey of highly enriched uranium as it was shipped out of Poland. For a story on how animals drink, he crouched for over an hour and tried to convince his neighbor's cat to lap a bowl of milk.
Before NPR, Brumfiel was based in London as a senior reporter for Nature Magazine from 2007-2013. There, he covered energy, space, climate, and the physical sciences. From 2002 – 2007, Brumfiel was Nature Magazine's Washington Correspondent.
Brumfiel is the 2013 winner of the Association of British Science Writers award for news reporting on the Fukushima nuclear accident.
-
Research shows some hammerhead sharks hold their breath when diving deep under water. They do it to keep their bodies from getting too cold. (Story aired on All Things Considered on May 11, 2023.)
-
In South Texas, the commercial spaceflight company SpaceX is preparing to test a huge, stainless-steel rocket. The machine could one day carry humans to the moon, Mars and beyond.
-
New startups believe chatbot technology could help reduce the burden on physicians. But some academics warn bias and errors could hurt patients.
-
It's an intriguing finding that suggests life as we know it may have been seeded by asteroids and meteors.
-
Arms control experts warn that the suspension of the New START treaty is part of a troubling global rise in nuclear weapons.
-
President Biden says the aerial objects shot down over the U.S. may have been scientific balloons. Some researchers are concerned that the diplomatic fight over balloons could disrupt their work.
-
Satellite data show water levels plummeting at the Kakhovka Reservoir. The reservoir supplies drinking water, irrigates vast tracts of farmland, and cools Europe's largest nuclear plant.
-
A devastating earthquake has struck southern Turkey and Northern Syria. It's a seismically active part of the world known for big quakes. (Story first aired on All Things Considered on Feb. 6, 2023.)
-
A devastating earthquake has struck southern Turkey and Northern Syria. It's a seismically active part of the world known for big quakes. (Story first aired on All Things Considered on Feb. 6, 2023.)
-
Computers traditionally excel at rocketry, so why do new artificial intelligence programs get it wrong?