Michaeleen Doucleff
Michaeleen Doucleff, PhD, is a correspondent for NPR's Science Desk. For nearly a decade, she has been reporting for the radio and the web for NPR's global health outlet, Goats and Soda. Doucleff focuses on disease outbreaks, cross-cultural parenting, and women and children's health.
In 2014, Doucleff was part of the team that earned a George Foster Peabody award for its coverage of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. For the series, Doucleff reported on how the epidemic ravaged maternal health and how the virus spreads through the air. In 2019, Doucleff and Senior Producer Jane Greenhalgh produced a story about how Inuit parents teach children to control their anger. That story was the most popular one on NPR.org for the year; altogether readers have spent more than 16 years worth of time reading it.
In 2021, Doucleff published a book, called Hunt, Gather, Parent, stemming from her reporting at NPR. That book became a New York Times bestseller.
Before coming to NPR in 2012, Doucleff was an editor at the journal Cell, where she wrote about the science behind pop culture. Doucleff has a bachelor degree in biology from Caltech, a doctorate in physical chemistry from the University of Berkeley, California, and a master's degree in viticulture and enology from the University of California, Davis.
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Drug resistance is no longer a matter of health. It could have massive implications for the world's economy and food supply. -
People talk a lot about the warming of the Earth by a few degrees. Now a cartoon shows you what it looks like.
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Poisoning these thirsty critters doesn't work. But researchers think they're finally getting close to figuring out a plan. -
Southeast Asia has all the right ingredients for a massive outbreak. But it also has a hidden advantage that could keep the virus from spreading. -
It's best known as a hallucinogenic club drug here in the U.S., but in many countries, ketamine has a more noble role. -
Before the games, computer scientists weren't worried about the spread of Zika. But some public health experts were. What does the data show? -
A virus is generally like a little ball with a few genes. Now scientists have found one that's broken up into five little balls — as if it were dismembered. -
Babies born with small heads are "just the tip of the iceberg" of what Zika does to a fetus's brain, says Dr. Deborah Levine, a contributor to a new study.
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Some people are trying to treat autoimmune problems with an unlikely tool: worms that live in your gut, permanently. Scientists are finally starting to figure out whether they work. -
It seemed his vision of a world free of Guinea worm would come true this year. But the dogs of Chad have turned out to be a major problem.
