NSIKAN AKPAN ’06
THE STORY OF SCIENCE
Nsikan Akpan ’06 accepted a position as science editor at National Geographic in January 2020. “It was the very beginning of the pandemic,” he recalls. “The outbreak was starting to become more serious every day. I wrote a story about the novel coronavirus, which is what we were calling it back then. The story discussed how this new virus was showing signs of being similar to other serious viruses like SARS and MERS, and what that might mean.” The piece, which was written for the website, got a lot of traffic. National Geographic put Akpan in charge of its online COVID coverage. He developed a health journalism team, and his desk averaged about four new stories per week. “It was wild to suddenly have millions of people read the stories we were writing,” he says. “We were looking to report impactful stories about the coronavirus. We focused on uncovering stories in the pandemic rather than breaking health news. It was more about finding that second angle to put things into context for people. For example, we examined how
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ON AND OFF CAMPUS
socioeconomics played a role in millennials and Gen Z causing outbreaks. These generations spread the virus because they needed to go to work in person, not because they were going to bars or parties. In March, we wrote about how the stress of the pandemic was affecting everyone’s dreams. Several other outlets copied that story. It was a great year. We expanded the scope of National Geographic’s coverage. We were influencing the media landscape, driving the conversation, and complicating the narrative.” Passionate about communicating complex scientific ideas to a mainstream audience, Akpan ignites people’s curiosity about how the world works. “I try to cover topics that no one else is covering,” he says. “Like a random case of a person who was fully vaccinated for measles and ended up getting the measles. I can take something very technical and explain it to people. It’s about finding the scoops that people are ignoring because they are too hard to tell, sciencewise. A story in plain
view. Long-form magazine writing and broadcast are the two forms that pull on me.” Akpan’s parents came to the United States from Nigeria in the 1970s, when his father won a presidential scholarship to study civil engineering. However, he experienced racism in the program and then funding dried up, so his father left school and went to work in construction. His mother, who was trained as an accountant, also struggled to find a highpaying job, so she worked at a school cafeteria to help support their family. Akpan grew up in the Atlanta suburbs— first Alpharetta and later Woodstock, Georgia—and remembers seeing a bulletin for a KKK rally as a kid, as well as having to navigate other examples of racism. His teachers recognized his talent but had a difficult time getting him into advanced placement or gifted classes. Finally, a program called Duke TIP that seeks out promising students across the country recognized his academic potential. “In freshman year of high school, I got a
