About Bijal
Bijal P. Trivedi is an award-winning freelance journalist specializing in longform narrative features about biology, medicine, and health. She currently works as the senior science editor for National Geographic. She has just completed her first book, Breath from Salt: A Deadly Genetic Disease, a New Era in Science, and the Patients and Families Who Changed Medicine Forever.
Trivedi’s writing has been featured in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2012, National Geographic, Scientific American, Wired, Science, Nature, The Economist, Discover, and New Scientist. Her work has taken her from the Mexico-Guatemala border where she covered the use of genetically modified mosquitoes for fighting the dengue virus to the behind the scenes at Massachusetts General Hospital where she watched trauma surgeons test hypothermia to save pigs with life-threatening injuries to Moscow’s Star City where she blasted off with space tourism entrepreneurs on the “Vomit Comet” for astronaut training. She also edited the NIH Director’s Blog and, prior to that, helped launch the National Geographic News Service in partnership with the New York Times Syndicate, which she wrote for and edited. Her undergraduate fascination with biochemistry and molecular biology at Oberlin College compelled her to pursue a master’s degree in molecular/ cell/developmental biology at UCLA. Her love of writing drew her to journalism rather than to a lab bench—and to a second master’s degree in science journalism from New York University.
Trivedi has focused on long-form feature stories on complex scientific topics from genetic testing and art authentication to the carbon footprint of our diet and genetically modified mosquitoes. Her New Scientist story “Slimming for Slackers” won the 2006 Wistar Institute Science Journalism Award. “Life on Hold,” also written for New Scientist, won the 2005-2006 Michael E. DeBakey Journalism Award. “The Rembrandt Code,” published in Wired, was tagged “Outstanding story on any subject: Print” by the South Asian Journalists Association. Trivedi co-authored “A Guide To Your Genome” that won the 2009 National Institutes of Health “Gold” Plain Language Award. Most recently, her feature “The Wipeout Gene” was selected for the The Best American Science and Nature Writing: 2012.
Trivedi taught in New York University’s graduate Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program from 2007-2012.
Trivedi has lived in the UK and Australia, and is now based in Washington, DC.
