Prashant Nair is the fourth recipient of the Pfizer Minority Medical Journalism Scholarship and the second international student in the Medical Journalism Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

A native of India, Prashant earned an integrated master’s degree in life sciences from Bharathidasan University, India, in 2000. He went on to do a Ph.D. in biochemistry at the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel, Switzerland, where he studied the intracellular mechanisms of protein trafficking before obtaining his doctorate from the University of Basel in 2004. Following a two-year post-doctoral stint in cell biology at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, Prashant decided to pursue his foremost passion: science writing, with a specific focus on health and medical issues.

Prashant has a basic research background and an in-depth understanding of the scientific enterprise. He hopes to bring this edge to his science journalism. He has freelanced for New Scientist and Science , writing on a range of topics of biomedical interest. He has also written for popular science webzines on scientific topics of interest to lay readers.

Prashant hopes to hone his writing and reporting skills through boot camp-style coursework and internship opportunities while attending the Medical Journalism Program. His special interests are centered on minority issues and mental health.

Links to a few of Prashant’s published articles:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/dn8711-walk-again-drugs-to-be-tested-on-people.html

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/dn8984--cocainetriggered-brain-changes-reversed-in-rodents.html

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/619/3

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/1017/2