Rick Borchelt

Canebrake Communications

Rick Borchelt is Principal at Canebrake Communications, consultants in science and natural history public engagement. He has served senior roles in communications and public affairs for the US Department of Energy, NIH, the USDA, NASA, and the National Academy of Sciences, as well as for the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University, the Whitehead Institute at MIT, the University of Maryland, the United Nations Environment Programme, and Lockheed Martin. He was press secretary to the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology under the chairmanship of Rep. George E. Brown, and special assistant for science and technology public affairs in the Clinton White House. He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2004, where he is also a former chair of AAAS Section Y (General Interest in Science and Engineering).

He is a member of the editorial board for the peer-reviewed Sage journal Science Communication, and editor of a special issue devoted to discovery science of the Journal of Science Communication. He is a past president of the DC Science Writers Association. He received a Broader Impact Champion Award in 2024 from the Center for Advancing Research Impacts in Society.

He is also a prolific freelance science writer whose work for regional community newspapers won the 2023 award for best environmental writing from the National Newspaper Association. He also is a featured columnist for Washington Gardener Magazine. He teaches natural history workshops for the Natural History Field Studies Program of Nature Forward, a DC-based environmental advocacy organization. Areas of particular interest include communication challenges of engaging the public in basic science, developing community-based public engagement in science and technology, and the Southern narrative tradition as it applies to science and technical writing.