Starre Julia Vartan

Friend and fellow journalist Jim Motavalli thought my trip across the US in an $850 van he helped my buy in Connecticut and drove to Washington state was worth an article, and here it is! (You’ll have to read why I did such a thing—which led my friends in Connecticut to call me “eccentric”— in […]

Pleased to have an honorable mention in this list of Best Short-form Science Writing!

I’ve been working on this article for years (in my head), so it’s amazing to finally see it in print! This is for Medium’s new science section, “Elemental” and it’s about how women are just as physically strong as men, and maybe stronger. If you disagree, read through the science I put together here, and think […]

What a fascinating piece to research and report. From the article: “Would-be organ printers previously have been stymied by the complexity of certain organs. Our lungs and livers, for example, contain physically and biochemically entangled networks of blood vessels and airways (in the lung) or bile ducts (in the liver). Being able to recreate this […]

For my first article National Geographic, a positive human-wildlife story! This story highlights a brand-new wildlife crossing on I90 east of Snoqualmie pass (my rainy-day pic, above) which unites animals from the north and south Cascades regions so their populations aren’t cut off from each other by a hazardous road. There are beautiful underpasses too. Read the story for more […]

Travel is good for your health—mental and physical. I wrote about the research behind that simple, irrefutable fact.

My first article published in 2018, and one of my favorites to report on in 2017! “Thousands of sailors perished in stormy seas throughout the Caribbean in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. Surely they would never have guessed that their terrifying ends would help scientists in the future. But creative researchers have found a […]