Amber X. Chen

Amber X. Chen is the 2025 AAAS Mass Media Fellow for Smithsonian magazine. She is an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, studying social and environmental sciences. Her writing on science, health and the environment has also appeared in the Nation, the Guardian, Atmos magazine and Teen Vogue.

Stories from this author

A measles vaccination is administered to a child.

U.S. Measles Cases Reach a Record High Since the Disease Was Declared Eliminated 25 Years Ago

With nearly six months left in the year, the total number of cases so far in 2025 has surpassed every year since 1992

A catch of Baltic Sea cod in 1987 shows fish that grew more than three feet long, with Finnish fisheries biologist Eero Kalevi Aro.

These Cod Have Been Shrinking Dramatically for Decades. Now, Scientists Say They’ve Solved the Mystery

Eastern Baltic cod grow to much smaller sizes than they did just 30 years ago, because overfishing altered their genes, according to new research

NASA's ANITA experiment is lifted above Antarctica by a balloon and seeks to detect radio pulses connected to neutrinos.

Mysterious Radio Pulses Found in Antarctica Seem to Defy Physics, and Researchers Are Trying to Trace Their Origins

Strange signals detected by a NASA instrument more than a decade ago have continued to confound scientists, but a new paper rules out cosmic neutrinos as a source

Ibogaine extract is pictured next to the iboga root it is derived from. The psychedelic drug has shown potential to treat traumatic brain injury and opioid addiction.

Texas Will Invest $50 Million in Ibogaine Research, Testing the Psychedelic Drug’s Medical Potential

The state’s new law marks one of the largest government investments into psychedelics to date, with advocates citing the drug’s potential to help veterans with traumatic brain injury and PTSD