Knight Science Journalism at MIT – Food Boot Camp, deadline Jan 18

We are now accepting applications for our Food Boot Camp which will be held on the MIT campus from Tuesday, March 27 to Friday, March 30, 2012. 

From lethal baby formula to tainted peanut butter, from biofuel bonanzas to food riots, from lean and local organics to fat-loaded meals for children, food is now routinely in the news. Researchers are speaking in terms of dramatic change and possible crises on topics of how food is grown, distributed and consumed. To help journalists explain the facts to readers, the Knight Science Journalism at MIT is offering a four-day course on some of the most important food-related issues.

Twelve journalists will be chosen to attend the Boot Camp, joining the twelve Knight Fellows already in residence at MIT. Applicants may be journalists who already cover science, medicine or health, or those who wish to prepare themselves to cover these fields. Applicants may be reporters, writers, editors or producers and must have at least three years of full-time experience in journalism. 

If selected, we will reimburse you for up to $750 of your travel expenses to Cambridge and pay for your hotel room and most meals. Participants are required to attend all sessions, which begin on Tuesday, March 27 and end on Friday, March 30. 

Hank Cardello has spent 30 years as a food industry insider, having served as President of Sunkist Soft Drinks, Inc. and marketing executive with Coca-Cola, General Mills, RJR Nabisco and Canada Dry. He is a Visiting Fellow with the Hudson Institute and a frequent contributor to the Atlantic. Cardello is the author of Stuffed: An Insider’s Look at Who’s (Really) Making America Fat.

J. Glenn Morris, the director of the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida, is a former officer at the Centers for Disease Control and has served on numerous National Academies of Science food safety committees. He is an expert on the emergence of E. coli as a human killer that is carried in food.

Robert Paarlberg is professor of political science at Wellesley College and adjunct professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.   He writes and consults in the area of international food and agricultural policy.  Paarlberg travels frequently to Africa, and his 2008 book, Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa, argued that Europe’s hostility toward the use of genetic engineering in farming had slowed the uptake of this technology in Africa.  His 2010 book from Oxford University Press is titled Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know.    

Robert Tauxe is Deputy Director of the Division of Foodborne, Bacterial and Mycotic Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Michael R. Taylor is Deputy Commissioner for Foods at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.  Mr. Taylor is a nationally recognized food safety expert, having served in high-level positions at the FDA and USDA, as a research professor in academia, and on several National Academy of Sciences expert committees.

Please visit http://mit.edu/knight-science for more details and application information. 

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