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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For more than 150 years, scientists have known that levees increase flood risk on the Mississippi River. That hasn't stopped local officials from building up levees in response to more severe floods. -
A Chinese tomb has turned up evidence of a new species of long-extinct ape. The gibbon, called Junzi imperialis, lived and died alongside its imperial human caretaker.
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The EPA intends to block rules to prevent and respond to leaks, explosions and other disasters at chemical facilities and refineries around the U.S. That scares many people who live and work nearby. -
Climate change is increasing the frequency of rainstorms in many parts of the U.S., and those storms bring more rain. Many communities don't have the drainage systems needed to handle all the water. -
Hurricanes are moving more slowly than they used to. That means storms are dumping more rain and doing more damage when they make landfall, as Hurricane Harvey did when it lingered over Houston. -
More than 50 years after the federal government forced hundreds of Alaska Natives into boarding schools, their descendants are haunted by — and trying to overcome —residual trauma. -
Modern birds are dinosaurs without toothy jaws, and with bigger brains. Newly published research fills in some of the missing links in their evolution. -
Each night, the organisms gather in a "vertical stampede" to feed at the ocean's surface. Research suggests the columns of swimming animals can create large downward jets that help churn the waters.
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The EPA says the San Jacinto Waste Pits near Houston no longer needs Scott Pruitt's personal attention due to progress on a remediation plan. But the site is still years away from being cleaned up. -
A number of Environmental Protection Agency officials have been demoted or reassigned after raising concerns about the way EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is managing the agency, according to a report from The New York Times.
