Meredith Rizzo
Meredith Rizzo is a visuals editor and art director on NPR's Science desk. She produces multimedia stories that illuminate science topics through visual reporting, animation, illustration, photography and video. In her time on the Science desk, she's reported from Hong Kong during the early days of the pandemic, photographed the experiences of the first patient to receive an experimental CRISPR treatment for sickle cell disease and covered post-wildfire issues from Australia to California. In 2021, she worked with a team on NPR's Joy Generator, a randomized ideas machine for ways to tap into positive emotions following a year of life in the pandemic. In 2019, she photographed, reported and produced another interactive visual guide exploring how the shape and size of many common grocery store plastics affect their recyclability.
Her video work has included science explainer videos on the physics of bullets to how long you can be contagious with the flu, and an animated series on the science of invention. As an art director, she helped build NPR's network of freelance illustrators and animators, growing the community through NPR's Illustration Tumblr. She has also art directed for three seasons of the NPR podcast Invisibilia.
Rizzo holds a master's degree in New Media Photojournalism from Corcoran College of Art + Design and a bachelor's degree in photography from Wolverhampton University in the U.K. Prior to joining NPR in 2013, she photographed artifacts from the Library of Congress' collections, contributing to a public archive of more than 150,000 images over four years.
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Hahna Alexander initially invented a shoe that could charge a battery, but no one wanted to use it. "You have to invent something that people can't live without," she says.
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One week after Hurricane Irma slammed Florida, residents of Collier County are in the early stages of the recovery process. -
The blood thinner warfarin, which prevents blood clots, owes its existence to some cows who got very sick after eating spoiled hay — and to a chemist who spent years trying to figure out why.
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Nicole O'Hara was 29 when she had a double mastectomy after a cancer diagnosis. She chose to cover the scars with a tattoo that blooms like her garden, with apple blossoms, bluebells and heather.
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Children of people in the country illegally often experience fear and worry — with the shadow of deportation as a constant presence. How can they work through those emotions? One workshop uses comics.
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Years of treating grievously injured people starts to wear on a person, a trauma nurse in Minneapolis says. She explores "compassion fatigue" in a semi-autobiographical poem.
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After an incorrect dose of a chemotherapy drug for Crohn's disease caused Anne Webster's bone marrow to shut down, she decided that, if she survived, she'd write about her experience. -
The science community feels threatened under the current administration. Researchers, educators and activists took to the nation's capital to say that cuts to scientific funding affect us all. -
A shy woman becomes a brave warrior princess. A man calls on Captain America to help him lose 45 pounds. In costume role play they become part of a community where they can transform themselves. -
An architect looked at communities that serve older adults, and didn't like what he saw. By changing habits earlier in life, he says, we can create vibrant communities that will sustain us.
