Nicholette Zeliadt manages The Transmitters’s staff reporters and interns, and she commissions and edits news articles. She joined The Transmitter as news writer in 2014. Before that, she was a freelance writer and editor. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Scientific American, Nature Medicine, Science and The Scientist.

Education

  • Ph.D. in environmental health, University of Minnesota
  • B.A. in biochemistry, University of Iowa

Fellowships

  • AAAS Mass Media Fellowship

Explore more from The Transmitter

New Stanford initiative aims to build digital twin of human brain

The effort, funded by private donors, seeks to train the model on a trove of MRI and magnetoencephalography data that scientists plan to collect over the next five years—but questions about its scientific utility and feasibility remain.

By Natalia Mesa
2 November 2026 | 0 min watch
Illustration of cake with genetic code inside.

The genome offers a recipe, not a blueprint, for the brain

During brain development, genes set the rules and turn the knobs; self-organization does much of the rest.

By Ila Fiete
2 November 2026 | 8 min read
Illustration of four faces of a rhesus macaque transitioning from opaque to transparent.

Autism research involving monkeys contends with uphill battle

Macaques and marmosets recapitulate the condition’s core traits better than mice can, but funding uncertainty and challenges at primate centers in the United States could make this work difficult to continue.

By Diana Kwon
2 November 2026 | 8 min read