Madeleine Turner (mrturner@mit.edu)

Madeleine grew up in Los Angeles County, where every day feels like summer. Swapping the SoCal heat for shade under redwood trees, she attended the University of California, Santa Cruz. Through her college years, she spent many hours organizing student-led classes, picking strawberries for an agroecology lab, and learning to hula-hoop (a quintessential Santa Cruz activity). She always identified as an enthusiastic reader, but didn’t discover a love for writing until taking a science communications class in her junior year. After graduating with a degree in ecology and evolutionary biology, she became a social media intern for Sempervirens Fund, a nonprofit focused on protecting redwood forests in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Today she contributes to Los Gatos Magazine, a local events and lifestyle publication, and Save the Redwoods League’s Giant Thoughts blog, where she writes about redwood science and wildlife. She is thrilled to be part of the MIT Science Writing class of 2019, and looks forward to honing her journalistic skills and expanding the scope of her work.