Karen A. Frenkel - Journalist Profile | Connect with top journalists

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Biography

Science/Technology Reporter, Editor, Author and Documentary Filmmaker For most of my career I was an award-winning science and technology journalist, author, and documentary producer. I wrote for many kinds of readers: lay, professional, business, kids, and pretty much anyone interested in high-technology and science. In addition to explanatory journalism, I also wrote about the impact of science and technology on culture. I made two documentaries for public television about the impact of technology on society––one on women and computing, the other about elearning. During the past decade, I transitioned from reporting to narrative nonfiction. My parents were European Jews and I knew I had a dramatic story to tell about their struggles to outwit the Nazis' thoroughness. People sometimes assume that all Holocaust survivors were in concentration camps, but that was not so in my mother's case. My father was a refugee, but those who escaped Europe before the Nazi onslaught were often silent in the face of the suffering of their brethren stranded in the Third Reich. My mother survived as slave laborer in Germany posing as a Polish Catholic. I applied my investigative skills to my family history and researched my parents' and sole-surviving grandparent's stories of survival. By scouring family documents and online and read-world archives, I filled gaps and honored my lost relatives. My quest culminated in the Family Treasures Lost and Found project, which includes my memoir (Post Hill Press, 2025), a 75-minute documentary, a five-part series edited for classrooms, and a teachers Discussion Guide. My memoir and the two documentaries share the same title, Family Treasures Lost and Found, and are described on these websites: www.familytreasuresmemoir.com and www.familytresuresfilm.com. I began my career covering robotics and computer science and still report on both. What I love about these fields is that they are interdisciplinary. I now cover technology, innovation, and entrepreneurs. I covered enterprise computing for CIOInsight.com and computer science research for Communications of the ACM. I was a Bloomberg Businessweek (Businessweek.com) contributor, reporting on new technologies for the Small Business and Innovators sections. I also covered technology and innovations for FastCompany.com. Occasionally I wrote for Science Magazine, reporting for the News of the Week and News and Analysis sections, as well as for Science NOW. Stories also appeared in U.S. News and World Report, and Scientific American. I also expanded into neuroscience due to my interest in the influences of research on the mind and brain on computer science and artificial intelligence, and vice versa. I blogged for The Foundation for Psychocultural Research, whose mission is to advance and support interdisciplinary research and training in neuroscience, psychiatry, and anthropology. I have a strong interest in science and technology's impact on culture. As a blogger I have reviewed plays, films, operas, and art exhibits that comment on science and tech for ScienceFriday.com, the site for the NPR show. I also wrote scripts for "The Loh Down on Science," a radio show hosted by Sandra Tsing Loh for Southern California Public Radio station 89.3 KPCC FM, broadcast out of California Institute of Technology. It was great to participate in injecting a little humor into science. My first online writing experience was as the technology and culture columnist for CyberTimes, The New York Times on the Web. I continued in print, though, and my articles appeared in Business Week, Discover, Forbes, Medical World News, Millimeter, Personal Computing, Publish, Technology Review, and VAR Business. My documentary, Minerva’s Machine: Women and Computing (see below) evolved from my November 1990 article on women in computing in Communications of the ACM. As Senior Writer for CACM, the flagship magazine of the Association for Computing Machinery, I covered artificial intelligence, interactive multimedia, computer aided design, computer security, computers and medicine, databases and the human genome project, high-definition television, parallel processing, and supercomputers. I still bear a fascination for the power of those machines.

Content

Total articles 298

• Available on paid plans

  About Money

  By Hannah Applebaum, Karen A. Frenkel, Adam Platt Verified, G. Just

  Oct. 13, 2024

• Available on paid plans

  Four Winters, Eight Partisans

  By Karen A. Frenkel

  Feb. 12, 2023

• Available on paid plans

  From refugees to guests

  By Karen A. Frenkel

  May. 23, 2022

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Company Info

Freelance

Freelancer.com is the largest freelancing and crowdsourcing marketplace in the world, connecting over 81 million employers and freelancers across more than 247 countries. Founded in 2009 and based in Sydney, Australia, the platform allows employers to post jobs while freelancers can bid on these projects. It is publicly traded on the Australian Securities Exchange under the ticker ASX:FLN. The platform supports a variety of work categories, including software development, writing, design, and marketing. Freelancer.com also offers contests for creative work, where employers can award prize money to winning entries. Users can choose from different membership plans, including free and paid subscriptions, which provide various benefits. The mobile app enhances project management and communication for users on the go. With a diverse customer base that includes individuals, small businesses, and large enterprises, Freelancer.com plays a significant role in the global online economy.