Paola Rosa-Aquino is a freelance journalist covering science and the environment. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, she’s been writing about space, climate change and environmental justice for more than four years and has been a Popular Science contributor on space since 2019. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her canine co-worker Cece. 

Highlights

• Freelance science journalist with a particular obsession with telling untold and offbeat science stories.
• Passionate about bringing diverse voices to environmental reporting, imbuing journalistic coverage with critical and fresh perspectives.
• Bylines in The Guardian, New York Magazine, Grist, WIRED, New York Times, and Space.com

Experience

Paola grew up near Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory, where she fell in love with talking about far-flung places in the cosmos. But when Hurricane Maria barreled into her island, her focus fell back to Earth. She cut her teeth in science journalism as an intern at Gizmodo’s environmentally-minded Earther website and as a senior fellow at Grist, where she covered the intersection of race and the environment. Around that time, Paola also helped found the Uproot Project, a network of environmental journalists of color born over frustrations about the lack of representation of journalists of color in newsrooms across the country covering marginalized communities that are hit first and the hardest by the climate crisis. As a fellow–and then as freelance weekend writer at New York Magazine–she covered disease and public health when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Paola’s been freelancing for PopSci since 2019; some of her other freelance work has appeared in The Guardian, Wired, New York Times, and Space.com.

Education

Paola graduated from Cornell University with a degree in Astronomy with a focus in Communications and Science and Technology Studies. She also is working toward a Master of Arts in science writing from Johns Hopkins University.

Favorite weird science fact

If you fell into a black hole your body would undergo what is known as spaghettification.

Notable Work

• Fix, or Toss? The 'Right to Repair' Movement Gains Ground The New York Times
• Humans Are On Track to Export Our Environmental Problems to Space Wired
• Meet The Communities Fighting to Bring Back Their Stars Gizmodo
• Life in the Shadow of ‘Clean Coal’ The Atlantic
• Could a solar-powered uprising reshape Puerto Rico? Grist