Vanessa Schipani
Philosopher. educator. Journalist.
BIO
I grew up in South Florida catching lizards and swimming in the Atlantic Ocean. At the University of Florida, I obtained a B.S. in Zoology and a B.A. in Philosophy. During and after college, I worked in biology labs studying horseshoe crab mating behavior, spotted owl population dynamics, deep sea microbiology and avian conservation genetics.
In 2009 I began a career in science journalism. Since then, I've reported on a spectrum of scientific topics, including quantum physics, evolutionary biology, genetics, medicine, climate change, public health, science policy, neuroscience and psychology. I've been published in various outlets, such as Scientific American, FactCheck.org, CNN, The Huffington Post, NBC, MSN.com, USA Today, Quanta, UnDark, Science Friday, The Scientist, BioScience, EARTH, The American Scholar and EuroScientist.
In 2017, I finished a masters in the History and Philosophy of Science from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. My thesis used the history of the gene concept in biology to understand the contemporary use of the connectome (a map of the brain's neural connections) as a concept in neuroscience. I argued that when scientists organize around these concepts, they unify their disciplines. As a grad student, I also wrote about the relationship between science and the public, the difference between science education and science propaganda and the role of intuition in science.
Cultivating my skills as a philosopher has undoubtedly fed my ability to contextualize the nuanced nature of scientific fact for the public as a journalist. From January 2016 to June 2018, I worked full-time as the science writer for FactCheck.org, where I corrected false and misleading claims about science made by U.S. politicians. While there, I covered the 2016 presidential election and the early years of the Trump administration.
I'm now a Ph.D. Candidate in Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. When I'm not working, I write poems about time and family; I bake bread, pastries and cakes, and I grow the staples of Italian cooking: tomatoes, basil, oregano and arugula. I live on a beautiful, tree-lined street in West Philadelphia.