About – Brittany Trang

Hi! I’m Brittany Trang, a scientist-turned-journalist. I’m currently a health tech reporter at STAT News.

My freelance work has been published places like Undark Magazine, Chemistry World, Chemical & Engineering News, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Billboard Magazine.

The short version of how I got here:

I have a bachelor’s in English and chemistry from the Ohio State University and a PhD in chemistry from Northwestern University, where I worked with Prof. William Dichtel to develop per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) remediation methods.

I covered health and science at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Mass Media Fellow and was a Sharon Begley Science Reporting Fellow at STAT / the MIT Knight Science Journalism Program.

The long version:

Throughout my childhood & teenage years, I wrote short stories and several (terrible) novels, started following developments in the publishing industry through blogs, and became determined to work in the publishing industry as a literary agent or editor.

However, in a long chain of events including 1) accidentally qualifying for Chemistry Olympiad prelims and 2) getting inspired by Alan Alda on Scientific American Frontiers, I eventually decided to study both chemistry and English at the Ohio State University. I started research after my first semester there and loved it enough to decide to go to grad school.

In 2017, I graduated from Ohio State and began my PhD in chemistry at Northwestern University. There, I was part of Prof. William Dichtel’s lab, where I worked on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) remediation strategies.

During grad school, I began writing about scientific life for publications such as Chemical & Engineering News and Chemistry World. I’ve also written about culture, music, and the intersection of science and indie music for publications like Billboard and Staged Haze.

During summer 2021, I found the most circuitous route possible to fulfilling my childhood dreams of becoming a full-time writer when I interned at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper as a 2021 AAAS Mass Media Fellow.

After the fellowship, I found that I was afraid of not being a scientist anymore, but I was more afraid of never trying to become a writer. After completing my PhD in 2022, I became a science reporting fellow at STAT News in Boston. I was hired full-time at STAT in 2023.

You can email me via my contact page or find me on all the socials: