Ed Yong is a renowned science journalist, currently working as a reporter for The Atlantic, based in Washington DC. His work is regularly featured on The Atlantic's website, as well as in various other prominent publications such as National Geographic, the New Yorker, Wired, Nature, New Scientist, and Scientific American. Yong's writing covers a wide range of topics, all related to the natural world, from the quirky behavior of animals to the complex lives of scientists, and from the intricate relationships between microbes and animals to the loss of biodiversity.
Throughout his career, Yong has received numerous awards for his work, including the Michael E. DeBakey Journalism Award for biomedical reporting in 2016, the Byron H. Waksman Award for Excellence in the Public Communication of Life Sciences in 2016, and the National Academies Keck Science Communication Award in 2010 for his old blog "Not Exactly Rocket Science". He is also a regular speaker and radio guest, and his TED talk on mind-controlling parasites has been viewed over 1.5 million times. Yong's first book, "I Contain Multitudes", which explores the partnerships between animals and microbes, was published in 2016 and became a New York Times bestseller. The book received critical acclaim and was listed in best-of-2016 lists by several publications, including the New York Times, NPR, and the Economist. Bill Gates praised the book as "science journalism at its finest".