Welcome to my website!
Feel free to check out my written and video work at premiere universities on the East and West Coast, as well as a sampling of articles that I wrote during my years as a newspaper reporter in the San Francisco Bay Area.
I currently work at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University, as editor of the lab's online news center, which showcases the highly advanced research that takes place at the facility. The SLAC News Center also provides vital and engaging information for the facility's employees about where they work, about what's new on the main Stanford campus, and what's happening in similar labs around the world.
I previously spent five years as a writer and editor in Stanford's university-wide communications division. In 2010, I moved across the country to work as a science writer at Johns Hopkins University, with a focus on promoting the faculty and research at the Baltimore university's bioethics institute. Besides press releases, I wrote issue pieces on important, bioethics-related topics in the news, such as physician-assisted suicide, end-of-life care and even getting tested for STDs by smartphone.
These stories were featured on the institute's blog. But I also blogged personally, in order to keep friends posted when I moved to the other side of the country. That experience, along with video-production skills and a sense for how to share information via social media, were vital in my evolution from old-school journalist to web-savvy communicator.
Thanks for visiting!
Michael V. Peña (2012), michaelvpena@gmail.com
