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Vikki Valentine

Vikki Valentine is a senior supervising editor on NPR's science desk. She oversees the network's global health and development coverage across broadcast and digital platforms. Previously, Valentine was the network's climate change, energy, and environment editor and in this role was a recipient of a 2012 DuPont Award for coverage of natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania.

Valentine led a team that won a 2014 Peabody for its on-the-ground coverage of the largest Ebola outbreak in history: an epidemic in West Africa that spread to nearly 30,000 people. That coverage was also recognized by the Edward R. Murrow awards, a Pictures of the Year International's Award of Excellence, and by the Online News Association.

She was lead editor on the Gracie Award-winning series "#HowToRaiseAHuman" and "#15Girls." The 2018 series "#HowToRaiseAHuman" searched remote parts of the world and human evolutionary history for lost secrets to raising kids. The 2015 series "#15Girls" explored the pervasive and deadly discrimination girls in developing countries face.

Valentine won the 2009 National Academies Communication Award for the year-long multimedia project "Climate Connections." The series was also recognized by the 2008 National Academy of Sciences award, the Metcalf award for environmental journalism, the White House News Photographers Association awards, and the Webbys.

Prior to NPR, Valentine worked as a daily science news editor at Discovery.com and as a features editor and reporter at TheBaltimoreSun. Her writing has also been published by The New York Times, National Geographic, Smithsonian Channel, Marketplace, Science Magazine, andWashingtonianMagazine.

Valentine received a master's from University College London's Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine. Her bachelor's is from the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

  • Nimmu, 15, on the terrace of the Veerni Institute. To stay in school, she needs to pass a national test this March. The problem: "I'm not a great student," she says. Because child marriage is illegal in India, we can't use her full name.
    Why This Child Bride Needs Good Grades: #15Girls
    Nurith Aizenman
    Nimmu attends the Veerni boarding school in Jodhpur, India. The grade she gets on a national exam this year will decide her future.
  • Meet the Nominees
    Vikki Valentine
    An International Astronomical Union panel has recommended that our solar system recognize dwarves and plutons.
  • War Is a Helluva Teacher
    Vikki Valentine
    Soldiers who are burned in Iraq owe a debt to the members of the Guinea Pig Club. That's how badly burned Royal Air Force pilots from World War II referred to themselves. As doctors struggled to care for the men, they made major advances in treatment for burn victims — in the medical arena and in the psychological arena as well.
  • Solving a 50-Year-Old Moon Mystery
    Vikki Valentine
    In 1953, an Oklahoma physician and amateur astronomer photographed what he believed was an asteroid crashing on the moon. No one believed him. Decades later, research from NASA suggested he was right.