Rob Stein
Rob Stein is a correspondent and senior editor on NPR's science desk.
An award-winning science journalist with more than 30 years of experience, Stein mostly covers health and medicine. He tends to focus on stories that illustrate the intersection of science, health, politics, social trends, ethics, and federal science policy. He tracks genetics, stem cells, cancer research, women's health issues, and other science, medical, and health policy news.
Before NPR, Stein worked at The Washington Post for 16 years, first as the newspaper's science editor and then as a national health reporter. Earlier in his career, Stein spent about four years as an editor at NPR's science desk. Before that, he was a science reporter for United Press International (UPI) in Boston and the science editor of the international wire service in Washington.
Stein's work has been honored by many organizations, including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Association for Cancer Research, and the Association of Health Care Journalists. He was twice part of NPR teams that won Peabody Awards.
Stein frequently represents NPR, speaking at universities, international meetings and other venues, including the University of Cambridge in Britain, the World Conference of Science Journalists in South Korea, and the Aspen Institute in Washington, DC.
Stein is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He completed a journalism fellowship at the Harvard School of Public Health, a program in science and religion at the University of Cambridge, and a summer science writer's workshop at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass.
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At a hospital in Kentucky, a man who had been declared dead after a drug overdose was moving and visibly crying as he was prepped for surgery to donate his vital organs. The surgery was stopped, and the man is alive three years later.
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Two American biologists have won this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering a crucial way genes are regulated.
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So far, very few people have been rolling up their sleeves to get the latest COVID-19 vaccines according to the first data from the CDC tracking demand for the new shots.
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It’s been almost a year since the Food and Drug Administration approved the first genetic treatments for sickle cell disease. So far, only a few patients have received the long-awaited treatments.
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The stress and isolation of the pandemic appears to have caused adolescent brains to have accelerated maturation, with girls brains maturing faster than boys, according to new research.
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Health officials are planning another fall campaign designed to encourage everyone six months and older to get updated COVID and flu vaccines, but are scaling back the recommendation for RSV vaccines.
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Two of the updated COVID-19 vaccines have arrived at pharmacies all over the country. On Friday, the FDA authorized the Novavax shot, which is also expected to be available in the coming days.
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The nation — and Olympic athletes, like Noah Lyles — are in another summer surge of COVID infections. CDC officials say the virus has become endemic. That means it is here to stay in a predictable way.
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With a skin sample from a 52,000-year-old woolly mammoth, scientists at the Center for Genome Architecture at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston are gaining new insights into what made the animals tick. The findings could also help controversial de-extinction efforts.
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Many transplant programs are using a controversial procedure called normothermic regional perfusion to obtain organs from donors. After a donor is declared dead, circulation is restarted with a pump.
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Doctors say they can boost the odds donated organs will be usable by restarting blood circulation with a pump after donors are declared dead. Critics say the procedure blurs the definition of death.
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Rick Slayman, who in March became the first living person to receive a kidney from a genetically modified pig, has died. One of his doctors talks about what was learned from the historic transplant.