Joe Palca
Joe Palca is a science correspondent for NPR. Since joining NPR in 1992, Palca has covered a range of science topics — everything from biomedical research to astronomy. He is currently focused on the eponymous series, "Joe's Big Idea." Stories in the series explore the minds and motivations of scientists and inventors. Palca is also the founder of NPR Scicommers – A science communication collective.
Palca began his journalism career in television in 1982, working as a health producer for the CBS affiliate in Washington, DC. In 1986, he left television for a seven-year stint as a print journalist, first as the Washington news editor for Nature, and then as a senior correspondent for Science Magazine.
In October 2009, Palca took a six-month leave from NPR to become science writer in residence at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
Palca has won numerous awards, including the National Academies Communications Award, the Science-in-Society Award of the National Association of Science Writers, the American Chemical Society's James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public, the American Association for the Advancement of Science Journalism Prize, and the Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Writing. In 2019, Palca was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for outstanding achievement in journalism.
With Flora Lichtman, Palca is the co-author of Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us (Wiley, 2011).
He comes to journalism from a science background, having received a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he worked on human sleep physiology.
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Pharmaceutical companies GSK and Sanofi are partnering to work on several vaccine candidates to fight the coronavirus. -
An NPR science correspondent answers listener questions about the search for medical treatments to fight the coronavirus.
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An NPR science correspondent answers listener questions about the search for a vaccine to fight the coronavirus.
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The best protection against the coronavirus would be a vaccine. But that's probably at least a year away, even if crash development programs succeed. What can be done in the meantime? -
More than two dozen vaccines for COVID-19 are underdevelopment, and at least three have begun human tests. Here's what's being tried, and why it's now possible to develop candidates in record time.
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A treatment strategy that identifies particularly potent immune system proteins, then gins up mass quantities for a single dose might help prevent infections or quell symptoms, scientists say. -
Several teams are racing to develop therapies for COVID-19 based on antibodies, the components of immune systems that can be collected from the blood of patients who have survived the disease.
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Scientists are rolling out an old-fashioned approach they hope will help treat COVID-19. The treatment involves giving patients plasma from people who have recovered from the virus. -
Scientists hope a machine can do what a person can't: quickly analyze every physical and chemical aspect of the coronavirus and sift through the world's drugs for subtle clues that might prove useful. -
Though COVID-19 has captured the headlines, influenza places a huge burden on the health care system. This year's flu shot provides good protection, the CDC says, so do get one if you haven't already. -
The new coronavirus has spurred biotech labs in universities and companies to try to find new approaches to stopping the virus — from blocking its key enzymes to interfering with its genetics. -
An approach to treating new diseases that worked for the Ebola and Zika viruses is being tested for the new coronavirus. It involves using antibodies to the disease as a drug.
