BiographyFreelance Science and Technology Writer/ Ms. Frenkel is an award-winning technology, science, and medical journalist and author. She freelances for Scientific American, Scientific American MIND, and The Village Voice. She recently started blogging about science and culture for www.talkingscience.org, which Science Friday's Ira Flatow founded as a forum for discussing issues regarding science media. Freelance Editor Ms. Frenkel has edited two memoirs: one a Holocaust survivor's tale, the other about a young woman in post-war Europe. Conspicuously Invisible: Wartime Memories of a Jewish Boy from Wilno, is by William Begell. Famous for its Jewish population in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Wilno was known as the "Jerusalem of Lithuania," became part of Poland in the 1920s, and is now Vilnius in Lithuania. The book details Begell's boyhood among his 14 family members, his cunning as a young boy and pranks he pulled with friends. He traces the hardships during the Russian and German occupations and life in the Jewish ghetto. His cleverness developed in order to survive and eventually he eluded the Nazis by escaping from a labor camp. He is the sole survivor of his family. The memoir is currently under review by agents. The Longed-For Hour, by Miriam Rosin, takes its name from a song Jewish partisans sang. The author, a Jewish woman from South Africa, left her country to work with Jewish children in a Displaced Persons Camp after World War II. The experience spawned her desire to live in Palestine and fight for the founding of the Jewish State. She documents the struggle between her and the man she loved, who wanted to marry her and remain in South Africa. She was forced to choose between her political ideals and having a safe, secure life and children. Oral History Interviewer Ms. Frenkel has interviewed Pew Scholars for the Pew Trusts Biomedical Sciences Oral History and Archives Project under the auspices of the Chemical Heritage Foundation. She has also conducted interviews for three projects at Columbia University’s Oral History Research Center: the 9/ Author She is also an author and recently wrote three physics books for fourth graders: Looking at Light, Listening to Sound, and Sound and Light Technology published by the Benchmark Education Company in 2006. She co-authored with Isaac Asimov Robots: Machines in Man’s Image (Harmony Books, 1985), which was translated into German, Hungarian, Japanese, and Spanish. It was selected by the United States Information Agency as one of 1,000 books to represent the diversity of American culture in a traveling book exhibit that toured the Soviet Union in 1987. Beginning at the Moscow Book Fair, the exhibit was called “Many Booked America: the People, Politics, and Government of the United States.” Ms. Frenkel is also writing her first novel. Scripts, Columns, and Earlier Magazine Articles Ms. Frenkel has written scripts for "The Loh Down on Science," a radio show hosted by Sandra Tsing Loh for Southern California Public Radio station 89.3 KPCC FM, broadcast out of California Institute of Technology. Ms. Frenkel was technology and culture columnist for CyberTimes, The New York Times on the Web. She has written over sixty articles on science, medicine, high-technology, and computer science for lay, business, and computer science readers. Her articles have appeared in Business Week, Discover, Forbes, Medical World News, Millimeter, Personal Computing, Publish, Technology Review, and VAR Business. Her documentary, Minerva’s Machine: Women and Computing evolved from Ms. Frenkel’s November 1990 article on women in computing in Communications of the ACM. As Senior Writer for CACM, the flagship magazine of the Association for Computing Machinery, Ms. Frenkel has also written about artificial intelligence, interactive multimedia, computer aided design, computer security, computers and medicine, databases and the human genome project, high-definition television, parallel processing, and supercomputers. Documentary Director/ She directed, co-wrote, and co-produced net.LEARNING, winner of the 1998 National Education Reporting Award, Best Television Documentary and Feature. The two-hour documentary profiles students and teachers engaged in distance education in cyberspace. She is also co-executive producer and originated the project with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Net.LEARNING aired on Public Television stations nationwide during the 1998 - 1999 season. It was rebroadcast during the 1999-2000 season. Ms. Frenkel’s first documentary is the award-winning Minerva’s Machine: Women and Computing. She was Creator, Writer, and Executive Producer for the one-hour film, which aired on Public Television during the 1995 - 1996 and fall 1998 seasons. Minerva’s Machine received the 1997 Exceptional Media Merit Award (EMMA) for Best Television Documentary (Small Market), which is co-sponsored by the National Women’s Political Caucus and Radcliffe College. Minerva’s Machine also was awarded First Place, Documentary by BACA, the Brooklyn Arts Council, for its 30th Annual Film and Video Festival. It was also Runner Up, Best Television Series for 1995 by The Computer Press Association. Minerva’s Machine premiered in fall 1995 on San Jose’s PBS station, KTEH - Channel 54 and on over 60 other local PBS stations nationwide. It was rebroadcast in fall 1998. Honors and Awards • Guest Speaker: The New York Academy of Science, based on “The Human Genome Project and Informatics” (November 1991, CACM). • Net.LEARNING: 1998 National Education Reporting First Prize, Television Documentary and Feature • Minerva's Machine: Women and Computing: Best Documentary in a Small Market, 1997 EMMA (Exceptional Merit Media Award), given by National Women’s Political Caucus and Radcliffe College • Best Documentary, Brooklyn Arts Council’s 30th Annual International Film and Video Festival • Best Television Series, Runner Up, Eleventh Annual Computer Press Award Education Ms. Frenkel has an M.S. in Science Communication from the Journalism Department of Boston University’s School of Communication. Her undergraduate degree from Hampshire College is a B.A. in philosophy of science and psychology. Professional Affiliations • Past Board Member, Director of Programming, New York Women in Film and Television, Co-Chair, Documentary Subcommittee • National Association of Science Writers • Science Writers in New York • Society of Professional Journalists • The Deadline Club • The Authors Guild • Writer’s Guild of America East associate member • The Oral History Association |
|
