Scientists could turn cement plants into giant carbon sinks
Bolting direct air capture onto clinker kilns could strip most of cement's climate cost out by 2050, according to the modelling.
Science journalist · Nagpur, India
Ten years of reading the paper so the story survives it
I am a science journalist and a founding editor at Tech Explorist. Most days start with an embargoed paper and end with a sentence someone repeats at dinner. Astronomy is the beat I read for pleasure; everything else I read for work.
Open to commissions and story tips
The beat
- Astronomy and space
- Physics and quantum matter
- Neuroscience
- Climate and environment
- Biology and evolution
- Health and medicine
- Materials and energy
- AI and emerging tech
Selected work
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Study unveils air-stable ultrathin superconductors for quantum devices
MIT grew a wafer-scale superconductor one layer thick that survives contact with air, which is exactly what compact quantum circuits have been waiting for.
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This AI watches your bubbles to monitor your health underwater
An autonomous underwater robot, tested off Barbados, reads a diver's exhaled bubbles to track their breathing in real time.
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Hidden chemical loophole could delay ozone layer recovery by years
Feedstock chemicals the Montreal Protocol never covered are leaking, and they push the ozone layer's repair further out than the treaty assumed.
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Scientists trace the evolution of a key protein behind hearing
The ion channels that convert vibration into hearing turn out to have a far longer evolutionary history than anyone had traced.
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A powerful 'kick' sends electrons flying across solar materials
A Cambridge team built a molecule in which one vibration hands off charge faster than the vibration itself finishes.
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Can training your sense of smell improve memory?
A UC Irvine trial found that nightly exposure to scent lifted memory scores in older adults, with almost no effort required from them.
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Dream engineering may improve creative problem-solving
Everyone believes dreams spark creativity. The evidence was thin, so researchers tried steering the dreams and measuring what came out.
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The science behind how experiences become memories
Fruit flies that cannot assemble functional amyloids cannot hold on to a memory either, which points at a mechanism shared across species.
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A new quantum state of matter could power future technologies
Rice-led work joins quantum criticality to electronic topology and lands on a state neither field predicted on its own.
Where the bylines live
About
I started at Tech Explorist and never really left. A decade of daily science reporting has taken me through particle physics, fossil beds, ozone chemistry, sleep labs and the inside of a fruit fly's memory. The beat is wide on purpose, because curiosity does not respect departmental boundaries.
I do not simplify by cutting things out. I simplify by finding the one image that carries the finding intact, then writing to the shortest length the science survives.
I work alongside my husband, the entrepreneur Amit Malewar, whose publications gave me my first byline and my first argument about a headline.
Science is not a body of facts. It is a way of arguing with the universe and writing down what it says back.
10+Years on the beat
3,500+Stories filed
6Mastheads
Working with me
What kind of stories do you take on commission?
Single-study news, explainers and short features across astronomy, physics, climate, neuroscience and biology. I work from the paper rather than the press release, so send the DOI or the preprint link if you have one.
How should a researcher or press officer pitch you?
Two sentences: what the finding is, and why it is not what everyone already assumed. Attach the paper. If it is embargoed, say when the embargo lifts. I read everything and reply to most of it within a few days.
Do you handle corrections?
Corrections go to the top of the pile. If a paper of yours has been misreported, say so in the first line of the email and it gets read the same day.
What languages do you work in?
I write in English and can interview in Hindi and Marathi.
Contact
Send a paper, a pitch or a correction.
hello@pranjalmalewar.comEmail lands directly in my inbox, keeps your attachments intact, and gives you a copy of what you sent. Attach the paper or the preprint link if you have one.
- Based in
- Nagpur, Maharashtra, India
- Time zone
- IST, UTC+5:30
- Typical reply
- Within a few days
- Corrections
- Same day