Speakers

Jennie Erin Smith is a freelance science reporter and a frequent reviewer of science and natural history books for the Times Literary Supplement (London) and The Wall Street Journal. Her reporting has appeared in the New York Times, Undark, Nautilus, The New Yorker, and other publications. Jennie is the author of Stolen World (Crown, 2011), a nonfiction book about wildlife smugglers. A U.S. citizen, Jennie moved to Medellín in 2018 to research her forthcoming narrative about a large Colombian family with early onset, genetic Alzheimer’s disease. Thousands of members of that family have participated in nearly 40 continuous years of clinical investigations led by Dr. Francisco Lopera, a Colombian neurologist. Jennie’s manuscript, which will be published in 2024 by Riverhead, an imprint of Penguin Books, was recently honored by Stanford University’s McCoy Center for Ethics in Society for its exploration of ethical issues, especially questions related to clinical research conducted in vulnerable populations in lower-income countries. Jennie is a member of the Colombian science
journalists’ association (ACPC) and interested in promoting more original, long-form narratives of science in Latin America.