Debora MacKenzie has been covering emerging diseases for more than 30 years as a science journalist for outlets like New Scientist magazine. She has been reporting on COVID-19 from the start, and she was among the first journalists to suggest that it could become a pandemic. From SARs to rabies and Ebola to AIDs, she's been on the frontline in reporting on how pandemics form, why they spread, and how to stop them throughout her career. She has won the American Society for Microbiology Public Communication Award and two Association of British Science Writers awards. Before becoming a journalist, she worked as a biomedical researcher.