Anil Ananthaswamy

Anil Ananthaswamy is an Indian-American science journalist and author whose work explores topics in physics, astronomy, quantum theory, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. Ananthaswamy trained as an electronics and computer engineer and worked in distributed systems software engineering and architecture before transitioning to science writing. He studied science journalism at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and served as a staff writer and deputy news editor for New Scientist magazine. His articles have appeared in Quanta, Scientific American, Nature, Nautilus, The Wall Street Journal, and Discover.

Ananthaswamy is the author of four popular science books. His first book, "The Edge of Physics," was recognized by Physics World. His second book, "The Man Who Wasn't There," received a Nautilus Book Award and was longlisted for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. His third book, "Through Two Doors at Once," was included in Smithsonian's Favorite Books and Forbes's Best Books About Astronomy, Physics and Mathematics. His book, "Why Machines Learn," addresses artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Ananthaswamy's journalism has been recognized with several honors, including the Institute of Physics' Physics Journalism Prize for his feature on the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope in New Scientist. He received an award for investigative journalism for a feature in MATTER magazine on Body Integrity Identity Disorder. He was a MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellow and received the Distinguished Alum Award from IIT Madras for his contributions to science writing.

Ananthaswamy has retrained in machine learning and deep neural networks during his time as a Knight Fellow at MIT and through eCornell, Cornell University's online program. He has served as journalist-in-residence at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing at the University of California, Berkeley.

In addition to his writing, Ananthaswamy organizes and teaches an annual science journalism workshop at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bengaluru, India, and has served as a guest editor for the science writing program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His work focuses on making complex scientific concepts in cosmology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence accessible to a broad audience.