User:Viswam5/Shankar vedantam

Shankar Vedantam (b. 1969 in Bangalore, India) is an American author and a journalist. In 2009 he became a fellow of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University(1). Presently he is a national correspondent and a columnist for the Washington Post and writes about science and human behavior(2). Vedantam is also on the faculty at the Journalism School at Columbia University (3).

Shankar Vedantam's article touch on a wide range of subjects, most of them with a link to current events. His interests include the history of conflict over the theory of evolution, the changes over time of religious theories concerning the creation of the universe, and the effects of religious faith on health. In his articles he has explored the interplay between neuroscience and spirituality.

Books
Shankar Vedantam is the author of the book "The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives"(4). He has also published a book of short stories entitled The Ghosts of Kashmir (5). His short stories have been published in Rosebud magazine and Catamaran magazine. Tom, Dick & Harriet, a play he co-authored with Donald C. Drake, was produced in Philadelphia at the Brick Playhouse in April 2004 (6).

Early years and Education
After completing his undergraduate degree in engineering in India he obtained a master's degree in journalism from Stanford University. Prior to his Washington Post employment, he worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer, Knight-Ridder's Washington Bureau, and New York Newsday.

Awards and recognition
Shankar Vedantam has won several awards and fellowships, including the Templeton-Cambridge Fellowship on Science and Religion in 2005, the World Health Organization Journalism Fellowship in 2003-2004 and the Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship in 2002-2003.

Personal life
Shankar Vedantam presently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife and daughter.