Trudy E. Bell supports the National Coordination Office (NCO) for Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) as Technical Writer and Editor, responsible for publications and media production.
Prior to joining the NCO staff, Ms. Bell was an Independent Science Journalist specializing in the physical sciences, engineering, history of science, technology assessment, management and society. She has been an Editor for Scientific American magazine, Founding Senior Editor for Omni magazine, a Senior Editor for IEEE Spectrum magazine, and the Communications Specialist for the North American Operational Effectiveness Practice of the international management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. The holder of a master’s degree in the History of Science (New York University, 1978), she has written, co-authored, or edited 10 books and written some 400 articles on science and technology—19 of which have won top journalism awards.
In addition to her journalistic background, she has written and edited on contract for government agencies, corporations, and nonprofits, including Abt Associates, the Association of State Flood Plain Managers (ASFPM), the Department of Energy (DOE), the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), Lutheran Children’s and Family Services (LCAFS), McKinsey & Co., the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office (NNCO), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Ohio Aerospace Institute (OAI), the U.S. Congress’s former Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), and the University of Akron. She was lead writer for the millennium book of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers—Engineering Tomorrow: Today’s Technology Experts Envision the Next Century (with Dave Dooling and Janie Fouke; IEEE Press, 2000).
Ms. Bell has taught writing on science, technology, and medicine at both the graduate level (Polytechnic University of Brooklyn’s Graduate Program in Specialized Journalism) and the undergraduate level (New School for Social Research, New York City); she also teaches day- and week-long seminars on technical writing at corporations and universities. Since 2003, she has been the Managing Editor of the Journal of the Antique Telescope Society. In 2004 she received the Dudley Observatory’s Herbert C. Pollock Award, and in 2006 she received the American Astronomical Society’s David N. Schramm Award.
