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ASU Commencement is May 3rd!

Vikki Valentine

Vikki Valentine is a senior supervising editor on NPR's science desk. She oversees the network's global health and development coverage across broadcast and digital platforms. Previously, Valentine was the network's climate change, energy, and environment editor and in this role was a recipient of a 2012 DuPont Award for coverage of natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania.

Valentine led a team that won a 2014 Peabody for its on-the-ground coverage of the largest Ebola outbreak in history: an epidemic in West Africa that spread to nearly 30,000 people. That coverage was also recognized by the Edward R. Murrow awards, a Pictures of the Year International's Award of Excellence, and by the Online News Association.

She was lead editor on the Gracie Award-winning series "#HowToRaiseAHuman" and "#15Girls." The 2018 series "#HowToRaiseAHuman" searched remote parts of the world and human evolutionary history for lost secrets to raising kids. The 2015 series "#15Girls" explored the pervasive and deadly discrimination girls in developing countries face.

Valentine won the 2009 National Academies Communication Award for the year-long multimedia project "Climate Connections." The series was also recognized by the 2008 National Academy of Sciences award, the Metcalf award for environmental journalism, the White House News Photographers Association awards, and the Webbys.

Prior to NPR, Valentine worked as a daily science news editor at Discovery.com and as a features editor and reporter at The Baltimore Sun. Her writing has also been published by The New York Times, National Geographic, Smithsonian Channel, Marketplace, Science Magazine, and Washingtonian Magazine.

Valentine received a master's from University College London's Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine. Her bachelor's is from the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Writing under the name V.L. Valentine, she is the author of the historical thriller, The Plague Letters, and the forthcoming Begars Abbey.

  • To learn more about data safety monitoring boards and their role in protecting patients who participate in drug studies, NPR turned to statistician David DeMets. He says the current watchdog system for patient safety is a good one, but there are practical limits on the extent to which drugs can be monitored.
  • Republican and Democrat lawmakers on Capitol Hill are calling for a halt to a deal that hands over operations at six U.S. ports to a company owned by Dubai. President Bush threatened to veto any legislation seeking to delay the $6.8 billion takeover. A look at why the transaction is so controversial.
  • In 1953, an Oklahoma physician and amateur astronomer photographed what he believed was an asteroid crashing on the moon. No one believed him. Decades later, research from NASA suggested he was right.