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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Protests in China have cast a spotlight on the country's "zero COVID" policy. But why is China still relying on restrictions when the rest of the world has mostly moved on?
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For nearly three years, China has enforced incredibly strict rules to keep coronavirus transmission in check. But now they're facing a potentially deadly omicron surge. -
A study shows that survivors of the bubonic plague, which lasted from 1346 to 1353, may have passed on the ability to survive other pandemics. (Aired on All Things Considered on Oct. 19. 2022.)
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Nearly half of Europeans died from the plague. Now a new study shows a protective gene mutation that survivors passed on to help with future outbreaks might cause other problems. -
Early fears of an escalating outbreak have not come to pass. Scientists are finding that the virus needs a very particular set of circumstances to spread effectively. -
New daily monkeypox cases have been falling, and the CDC says cases are probably going to plateau or decline over the next few weeks.
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Throughout the pandemic, some people have avoided catching COVID — despite multiple exposures. Do their immune systems have some type of protection that others are missing?
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We crunch the current numbers for high-risk and low-risk groups. We also look at how the risk of monkeypox compares with chances of catching COVID, of being in a fatal car crash and of a shark attack.
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A new study suggests that. yes, there are superdodgers. But explaining why they've been able to avoid the virus is a bit complicated. -
So sweat doesn't really smell bad at all. But when bacteria eat the sweat — nostrils, look out! Only it turns out that these sweat-eating critters are responsible for a big health benefit.
