Rebecca Hersher
Rebecca Hersher is a reporter on NPR's Science Desk, where she reports on outbreaks, natural disasters, and environmental and health research. Since coming to NPR in 2011, she has covered the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, embedded with the Afghan army after the American combat mission ended, and reported on floods and hurricanes in the U.S. She's also reported on research about puppies. Before her work on the Science Desk, she was a producer for NPR's Weekend All Things Considered in Los Angeles.
Hersher was part of the NPR team that won a Peabody award for coverage of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and produced a story from Liberia that won an Edward R. Murrow award for use of sound. She was a finalist for the 2017 Daniel Schorr prize; a 2017 Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting fellow, reporting on sanitation in Haiti; and a 2015 NPR Above the Fray fellow, investigating the causes of the suicide epidemic in Greenland.
Prior to working at NPR, Hersher reported on biomedical research and pharmaceutical news for Nature Medicine.
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Hurricane Harvey was a wake-up call for petrochemical plants along the Gulf Coast to rethink their plans for major floods. Companies are starting to plan for larger, more severe storms.
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Criminal charges against a chemical company that flooded during Hurricane Harvey are raising two big questions: When is pollution an accident? And when is it a crime?
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Climate change is causing more severe flooding around the country, and a disproportionate number of Native American communities are on the front lines. -
Multiple nuclear power facilities in Europe have reduced their electricity production because seawater, which is used to keep the reactors cool, has been warmer than usual. -
When harvests are bad, Native Americans in the region may go without rice for the year. And there have been a lot of bad years lately, as climate change causes more frequent and severe rainstorms. -
Twitter's stock tumbled 20 percent on Friday, despite the company's growing revenue. It mirrored Facebook's sharp drop earlier in the week, as investors worry that social media growth may be ebbing. -
The Internet relies on a network of cables, many buried underground along U.S. coastlines. A new analysis finds sea level rise could put thousands of miles of cable underwater in the next 15 years. -
The woman known as Jane Roe in the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision establishing a constitutional right to an abortion has died.
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The agency's next acting chief has drawn praise as a capable administrator. But critics still say the transition from Scott Pruitt is a bit like "going from a train wreck to a house on fire." -
After months of ethics scandals and investigations, the embattled Environmental Protection Agency head has resigned, the president said Thursday.
