Smithsonian.com

Joseph Stromberg

Mohi Kumar

Mohi Kumar is a science writer, editor and essayist based in Houston, Texas, and also the editor of Surprising Science. Originally from the Seattle area, she became fascinated with geology after repeated family trips to Mount St. Helens as it recovered from its 1980 blast.

Joey Stromberg covers science, technology, the environment and other topics for Smithsonian magazine, contributing to the Surprising Science and Around the Mall blogs. A graduate of Washington University in St. Louis with majors in environmental studies and anthropology, he spent a year in India on a Clinton Fellowship before coming to the magazine.

Rachel Nuwer

Rachel Nuwer is a science writer and producer based in New York. Her love for nature and science began at the bayous and beaches of her native South Mississippi. She earned a bachelor’s in biology from Loyola University New Orleans, followed by a master’s in ecology from the University of East Anglia in England. She also picked up a second master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. She writes for venues such as the New York Times, Science and Grist. When she can, she enjoys traveling and photographing her adventures. So far, she’s at 43 countries and counting.

Claire Martin

Claire Martin‘s writing has appeared in Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Popular Mechanics and many other publications. She is a former senior editor of Outside and was deputy editor of Men’s Journal.

Previous writers:

Sarah Zielinski was an associate editor at Smithsonian magazine, where she worked on many of the science and nature articles. She has a bachelor’s degree in biology and went into journalism so that she could keep learning about all of science—or at least the parts she thought were fun and interesting. She wrote for Surprising Science from November 2008 to January 2012, and her post “Rare Earth Elements Not Rare, Just Playing Hard to Get” received the 2010 DC Science Writers Association News Brief Award.

The Surprising Science blog header and logo were designed by Jamie Simon.