Grace Browne

Grace Browne is a staff writer at WIRED UK, where she covers health, science and medicine. Her reporting has doggedly followed the Covid-19 pandemic, which has entailed keeping constantly abreast of every somber development, every government twist and every new major paper. Other than the pandemic, her work focuses on where new innovations in science and medicine intersect with social and ethical questions. Her reporting has deftly guided millions of readers through complex scientific topics, with reporting that is deeply-researched, sensitively-approached, and includes the human impact aspect, always.

Welcome to the Great Reinfection (June, 2022) - As pandemic restrictions began to loosen across the world, questions arose about what life with Covid would look like. One of those questions was just how many times one could expect to be infected. Previously thought to be a rare phenomenon, repeat Covid infections were quickly becoming a common occurrence according to the data. This piece captured this trend just as it was crystallizing, and was one of the most-read pieces on the WIRED UK site in 2022. “This piece did an excellent job of drawing together the available evidence—published papers, new data and preprints, expert opinion, and trends in Omicron hotspots such as South Africa—to predict, confidently, carefully, and as it turns out, accurately, what would happen.” Rob Reddick, Science Editor, WIRED

She Was Missing a Chunk of Her Brain. It Didn’t Matter (April, 2022) - This piece sensitively told the fascinating story of a unique woman, E.G. who was born missing a large part of her brain—but has shockingly suffered vanishingly few cognitive consequences in her adult life. Using E.G. as a case study, the story spoke to the larger historical importance of case studies in neuroscience to illuminate the mysteries of the brain. The piece, one of the most-read pieces on the WIRED UK site of that year, prompted a whole host of individuals with unique brains to reach out to the researcher at the heart of the story, with one writing up their experience of realizing the scientific significance of their brain physiology for the New York Times. “This was a really strong piece because it had layers—it was the story of a patient, an explanation of the plasticity of the brain, and an insight into how science is conducted.” Rob Reddick, Science Editor, WIRED

The War Puts Ukraine's Clinical Trials—and Patients—in Jeopardy (March, 2022) - As Russia's invasion of Ukraine kicked off, this piece explored the wider ramifications the war would wreak on Ukrainians beyond just warfare. Ukraine is a global hub for clinical trials, and this piece, which involved sensitively interviewing sources who were actively fleeing to other parts of Ukraine, told the story of how the disruption of those trials would have long-lasting effects on the development of new treatments, or even prove fatal for people with end-stage diseases for whom participating in trials was a last hope. “This was a tastefully handled piece on an important but underreported implication of the invasion of Ukraine.” Rob Reddick, Science Editor, WIRED