Irena Hwang
I covered public health and the agencies that oversee it, including the FDA and CDC.
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What I Covered
I used computational analysis tools to identify and quantify public health issues.
My Background
I joined ProPublica in 2021. Here, I’ve reported on a wide range of issues, including criminal justice, food safety, environmental justice and race.
Prior to ProPublica, I worked at NPR, The Associated Press and The Dallas Morning News. Before my career in journalism, I completed a doctorate in electrical engineering at Stanford University, with a focus on bioinformatics and signal processing. I studied electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
How Not to Count Salmon
Data reporter Irena Hwang thought counting fish to evaluate the hatchery system in the Pacific Northwest sounded like a fun project. That was before she started asking biologists about what the publicly available data could really tell us.
Local Reporting Network
The U.S. Has Spent More Than $2 Billion on a Plan to Save Salmon. The Fish Are Vanishing Anyway.
The U.S. government promised Native tribes in the Pacific Northwest that they could keep fishing as they’d always done. But instead of preserving wild salmon, it propped up a failing system of hatcheries. Now, that system is falling apart.
Local Reporting Network
The Disappearance of Hispanic Drivers From Traffic Records
In Louisiana, law enforcement agencies have been accused of targeting Hispanic drivers in traffic stops and identifying them as white on tickets. Misidentification makes it impossible to track racial bias, experts say.
Local Reporting Network
How ProPublica Used Genomic Sequencing Data to Track an Ongoing Salmonella Outbreak
For a ProPublica reporter who did Ph.D. work in bioinformatics, data on bacterial DNA helped reveal how a once-rare salmonella strain spread through the chicken industry.
America’s Food Safety System Failed to Stop a Salmonella Epidemic. It’s Still Making People Sick.
A dangerous salmonella strain has sickened thousands and continues to spread through the chicken industry. The USDA and companies know about it. But contaminated meat continues to be sold.
In a California Desert, Sheriff’s Deputies Settle Schoolyard Disputes. Black Teens Bear the Brunt.
Deputies in California’s Antelope Valley are disproportionately citing Black teens, often for minor infractions, like getting in fights or smoking.
Local Reporting Network