Nahant native captures science writing award

NAHANT – Nahant native Julia Cort was willing to do whatever it took to get the story, including wearing a blindfold during a car ride to a secret “diamond farm.”For her efforts, the professional television journalist at NOVA scienceNOW has won a prestigious Kavli Science Journalism Award for the production of “Diamond Factory,” which aired in June.To make the winning segment possible, host Neil deGrasse Tyson visited a production facility “that makes diamonds good enough to fool a jeweler,” said Carol McFall, NOVA marketing and communications manager. “The segment described the properties of diamonds, the advances in materials science that allow their manufacture, the advantages of lab-made diamonds over natural diamonds and their potential use in fields such as electronics, transportation and communications.”Warren Leary, formerly a science writer with The New York Times, called the segment “a good showcase for science and engineering that the public can understand and enjoy.”Cort said chemistry is usually a tough subject for television, but this was irresistible, since the story also involved secret locations including one in Massachusetts, a blindfolded host and writer, 3,000-degree Fahrenheit plasma and a character who regularly deals in 100-carat diamonds.”I’m thrilled and extremely honored that the AAAS chose to recognize this NOVA scienceNOW piece and I’m delighted to know that even scientists are not immune to the allure of bling,” she said.Cort earlier this year won an American Institute of Physics award for Best Science Writing for the NOVA scienceNOW piece on “Asteroids.” The latest honor was from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which gave out its Kavli Science Journalism Awards for 2009.Cort began her career at WGBH 18 years ago. She was born in the Philippines where her late father, John, was stationed in the Peace Corps. The Cort family – she is the youngest of 10 siblings – moved to Nahant when she was 7. The peninsula became her home, a place where she could explore the rocks and beaches. She attended Nahant schools, graduated from St. Mary’s High School in Lynn and entered Harvard. Seized by a passion for filmmaking, Cort temporarily left college to experience the movie-making worlds of New York and Los Angeles. Eventually she returned to complete her undergraduate degree and found a niche at NOVA.”I love my job. It’s a lot of fun,” said Cort, who occasionally visits her mother, Helen, and two sisters, all of whom live in Nahant. “These days I work primarily on the (television) magazine series.”A senior producer at NOVA ScienceNOW, Cort agreed to have her vision blocked en route to a secret laboratory where scientists are creating synthetic diamonds that one day may replace silicon chips as the primary conductors in micro-electric circuitry. “We had to meet at a parking lot and be driven to the place where they make the diamonds,” she said. “We had to wear blindfolds because the people involved don’t want anyone to know where it’s happening.”Independent panels of science journalists select the winners of the awards. The winners for each category receive $3,000 and a plaque at the 2010 AAAS Annual Meeting in San Diego in February.