Laurie Garrett is a Pulitzer prize

Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

-winning science journalist and writer of two bestselling books. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism in 1996 for a series of works published in Newsday

Newsday

Newsday is a daily American newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties and the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, although it is sold throughout the New York metropolitan area...

, chronicling the Ebola virus

Ebola

Ebola virus disease is the name for the human disease which may be caused by any of the four known ebolaviruses. These four viruses are: Bundibugyo virus , Ebola virus , Sudan virus , and Taï Forest virus...

 outbreak in Zaire

Zaire

The Republic of Zaire was the name of the present Democratic Republic of the Congo between 27 October 1971 and 17 May 1997. The name of Zaire derives from the , itself an adaptation of the Kongo word nzere or nzadi, or "the river that swallows all rivers".-Self-proclaimed Father of the Nation:In...

.

Biographical information

Garrett graduated with honors in biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz

University of California, Santa Cruz

The University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, is a public, collegiate university; one of ten campuses in the University of California...

. She attended graduate school in the Department of Bacteriology and Immunology at University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

 and did research at Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 with Leonard Herzenberg

Leonard Herzenberg

Leonard Arthur "Len" Herzenberg is an immunologist, geneticist and professor at Stanford University. His contribututions to the development of cell biology made it possible to sort viable cells by their specific properties....

. During her PhD studies, Garrett started reporting on science news for radio station KPFA

KPFA

KPFA is a listener-funded progressive talk radio and music radio station located in Berkeley, California, broadcasting to the San Francisco Bay Area. KPFA airs public news, public affairs, talk, and music programming. The station signed on-the-air April 15 1949, as the first Pacifica Station...

. The hobby soon became far more interesting than graduate school and she took a leave of absence to explore journalism. Garrett never completed her PhD. At KPFA Garrett worked in management, in news, and in radio documentary production. A documentary series she co-produced with Adi Gevins

Adi Gevins

Adi Gevins is a San Francisco Bay Area-based radio documentarian who has been referred to as the "fairy godmother of community radio". She has won an Ohio State Award, an American Bar Association Silver Gavel, numerous Golden Reels from the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, and two...

 won the 1977 Peabody Award

Peabody Award

The George Foster Peabody Awards recognize distinguished and meritorious public service by radio and television stations, networks, producing organizations and individuals. In 1939, the National Association of Broadcasters formed a committee to recognize outstanding achievement in radio broadcasting...

 in Broadcasting, and other KPFA production efforts by Garrett won the Edwin Howard Armstrong award

Edwin Howard Armstrong award

The Major Armstrong award, named after the inventor of FM radio, Edwin Howard Armstrong, is presented "to AM and FM stations for excellence and originality in radio broadcasting" by the Armstrong Memorial Research Foundation at Columbia University...

. She won a George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting in 1997 for "Crumbled Empire, Shattered Health" in Newsday

Newsday

Newsday is a daily American newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties and the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, although it is sold throughout the New York metropolitan area...

, "a series of 25 articles on the public health crisis in the former Soviet Union." She won another Polk award in 2000 for her book Betrayal of Trust, "a meticulously researched account of health catastrophes occurring in different places simultaneously and amounting to a disaster of global proportions."

Garrett is currently the Senior Fellow of the Global Health Program at the Council on Foreign Relations

Council on Foreign Relations

The Council on Foreign Relations is an American nonprofit nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs...

. She has worked on a broad variety of issues including SARS, avian flu, tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

, malaria

Malaria

Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...

, shipping container clinics

Shipping container clinic

A shipping container clinic is a type of shipping container architecture using intermodal containers as the structural element of a medical clinic that can be easily deployed to remote regions of the world...

, and the intersection of HIV

HIV

Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...

/AIDS

AIDS

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...

 and national security.

Books

Laurie Garrett is the author of the following books:

• The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance (Penguin; 1995) ISBN 0-1402-5091-3

  discusses the vulnerability of the world to disease due to the lack of attention and funding given to health.

• Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health (Hyperion; 2001) ISBN 0-7868-8440-1
• I Heard the Sirens Scream: How Americans Responded to the 9/11 and Anthrax Attacks (Amazon.com Kindle e-book; 2011)

External links

• Laurie Garrett's Web site
• Interviews with Laurie Garett on bigthink.com, June 2009
• Laurie A. Garrett at Council on Foreign Relations
• Laurie Garrett on TED
  TED (conference)
  TED is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading"....
  
  ; includes a video of her.
• http://www.aegis.com/NEWS/NEWSDAY/1997/ 1997 Newsday articles by Garrett