Elizabeth Landau

Elizabeth Rosa Landau is an American science writer and communicator. She is the Senior Editor for Animals at National Geographic.^[1] She was a Senior Communications Specialist at NASA Headquarters^[2] and a Senior Storyteller at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory previously.

Landau grew up in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. As a child, she watched Carl Sagan's TV series Cosmos, which helped inspire her love of space.^[3]

She earned a bachelor's degree in anthropology at Princeton University (magna cum laude) in 2006. As a Princeton student, she completed study-abroad programs at University of Seville and Universidad de León.^[4] During her junior year in Princeton, she was the editor-in-chief of Innovation, the university's student science magazine.^[3] In the summer of 2004, she became a production intern at CNN en Español in New York.^[4] She earned a master's in journalism from Columbia University, where she focused on politics.^[5]

Landau began to write and produce for CNN's website in 2007 as a Master's Fellow, and returned full-time in 2008.^[6] Here she co-founded the CNN science blog, Light Years.^[7] She covered a variety of topics including Pi Day.^[8][9][10] In 2012, Landau interviewed Scott Maxwell about the Curiosity rover at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.^[11]

In 2014, she became a media relations specialist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she led media strategy for Dawn (spacecraft), Voyager, Spitzer, NuSTAR, WISE, Planck and Hershel.^{[12][13][14][15][16][17]} She led NASA's effort to share the TRAPPIST-1 exoplanet system with the world on February 22, 2017.^[18][19] In January 2018, she was appointed a Senior Storyteller at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.^[3] In February 2020, she became a Senior Communications Specialist at NASA Headquarters.^[2] Collaborating with Kimberly Arcand at the Chandra X-ray Observatory, she directed the 2024 NASA+ documentary Listen to the Universe, which won several awards and distinctions from film festivals in the United States and abroad.^[20] She was awarded the NASA Exceptional Public Service Medal in 2025.^[21]

Landau has written for CNN, Marie Claire, New Scientist, Nautilus, Scientific American, Vice Media, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Washington Post, and National Geographic.^{[22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]}

Landau has interviewed many prominent figures in science, such as geneticist James Watson for CNN in June 2013^[30] and astronomer Virginia Trimble for Quanta Magazine in November 2019.^[31]

• Elizabeth Landau on Twitter