Nikita Amir is a news contributor for the science section of Popular Science. She first interned at the magazine as a student in the spring of 2021 and couldn’t help but find her way back to cover research on anything climate- or energy-related. She is originally from Dubai and currently lives in Chicago, Illinois.
Highlights
- Invested in climate science and the future of energy especially as they relate to issues of equity both domestically and internationally
- Science writing intern at the national particle physics laboratory Fermilab
- Bylines in PopSci and Discover
Experience
Nikita has been covering science news for PopSci since December 2021. So far she’s cast a wide net covering environment stories ranging from applied ecology in Indonesian cocoa farms to tree science in the Amazon to energy infrastructure here in the US. While she’s interested in covering any and all environment and sustainability issues, she’s particularly invested in looking at climate adaptation and mitigation across borders, and will be taking on a Masters in environmental and social policy at UCL in London next year to pursue that work.
Education
Nikita graduated from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism in 2021 with a degree in journalism and a double major in history focusing on the Americas. She hopped back and forth between the creative and editorial teams of the quarterly magazine North by Northwestern during her time there.
Favorite weird science fact
Dog paws produce a bacteria that makes them smell like Fritos or any other corn chips of your choosing. Writing this from experience.
Notable Work
- Light Pollution Threatens Millennia-old Indigenous Navigation Methods Discover
- A million 'super trees' are coming to clean Houston's air in the next decade Popular Science
- Less ice in the Arctic could mean more wildfires in the US Popular Science
- Want to better understand the biodiversity of a forest? Ask the locals. Popular Science
- Portfolio Nikita Amir