Boyce Rensberger is director of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowships program at MIT. The program gives opportunities for science, medical and environment writers on sabbatical to study at MIT and Harvard. Rensberger also is co-director of the summer Science Journalism Program at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA.

Rensberger came to MIT in 1998 after having been a science journalist for more than 32 years, beginning in 1966 at the Detroit Free Press. His career has included long stints at The New York Times (1971–1979) and the Washington Post (1984–1998). He also was head writer of the PBS science series for children, 3-2-1 Contact! From 1981–1984 he was senior editor of Science 81–Science 84 magazine (the magazine changed its name each year). Rensberger has written four popular science books, most recently Life Itself: Exploring the Realm of the Living Cell.

Rensberger has twice won the AAAS’s top award for science writing. He won the American Chemical Society’s 2003 Grady-Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public. In 1973–74 he was an Alicia Patterson Fellow, spending a year in East Africa studying human evolution and wildlife conservation. In 1987 he was a science writing fellow at the Marine Biological Laboratory. He is a fellow of the AAAS and chairs its Committee on the Public Understanding of Science and Technology.