Senior Writer
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Expertise: Biological and physical sciences | Social science research | Science Policy | Technology trends on campus | Internet security and cyberinfrastructure | Medical schools and training
Background: Fischman is the senior writer on science at The Chronicle of Higher Education. He has written about the discovery of human ancestors in South Africa, the ethical quandaries of brain surgery experiments, scientific attempts to predict criminal behavior, ancient climate change, and attempts to reinvent the Internet. He also writes for The Chronicle's Percolator blog.
He joined The Chronicle in 2007. Previously he was a senior writer and a deputy editor at U.S. News & World Report (1999 to 2007), where he wrote cover stories about health care and science and worked on the magazine’s annual “America’s Best Hospitals” rankings. From 1996 to 1998 he was editor in chief at Earth magazine which covered planetary science. Before that he was deputy news editor at Science, in Washington (1993-96), where he covered paleontology and biology. He spent the four previous years as a senior editor at Discover magazine, in New York and Los Angeles.
Fischman graduated with high honors from Wesleyan University in 1982, with a bachelor’s degree in anthropology.
He has written articles for magazines such as National Geographic, for which he wrote the January 2010 cover story on bionic limbs, and is the author of The Ultimate Guide to Medical Schools (Sourcebooks Publishing, 2004).
Honors: Award of Excellence, American College of Emergency Physicians, 2008, for a U.S. News article on the shortage of specialty doctors in emergency rooms | National Magazine Award finalist for U.S. News article, “How to Be a Smart Patient,” 2005 | Writer in residence, medicine and journalism, University of Wisconsin at Madison, 2005 | Excellence in Health Care Journalism Award, third place, Association of Health Care Journalists, 2005 | Ocean Science Writing Fellow, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 2000 | Science Writing Fellowship, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Mass., 1995 | Blakeslee Award for excellence in medical reporting, American Heart Association, 1988.
Media appearances: Fischman has appeared as an expert for comment on broadcast media including CNN Headline News, MSNBC News Live, American Public Media’s Marketplace Radio, and WTOP Radio, in Washington, a CBS Radio affiliate.
Speaking and presentations: Talks on technology trends in education at the Educause technology meeting, the Consumer Electronics Show, and at Drexel University.
