Portfolio
Kenna Hughes-Castleberry

As a science journalist and communicator, I keep my eyes and ears open for unique stories, whether it’s artificial intelligence, animal cognition, or the strange and brilliant worlds of octopuses and corvids. I’m equally driven to spotlight the people behind these discoveries and to examine diversity across the tech landscape, especially the experiences of women and underrepresented communities who are reshaping these fields in real time.

I take a human-first approach to reporting: building trust with my sources, developing real relationships, and—when time allows—sending quotes back for clarity, following up on emerging threads, and sharing each published story with the people who made it possible. I believe this kind of care isn’t just good practice; it’s essential to maintaining strong relationships and producing journalism that reflects the full depth of lived experience.

I publish widely as a freelance science journalist, with work appearing in outlets such as National Geographic, Science Friday, Scientific American, New Scientist, Discover Magazine, Ars Technica, LiveScience, Space.com, Nature Biotechnology, Astronomy Magazine, Leaps Magazine, Hakai Magazine, The Transmitter, Nautilus Magazine, ChemistryWorld, Earth Island Journal, Phys.org, Colorado Magazine, Inside Quantum Technology, The Quantum Insider, The Deep Tech Insider, The Metaverse Insider, The Debrief, A-Z Animals and OctoNation.

Articles

Clever Carrion Crows Prove They Can Learn to Use Tools

A-Z Animals

Scientists finally sequence the vampire squid's huge genome, revealing secrets of the 'living fossil'

LiveScience

Never-before-seen adorable pink bumpy snailfish with funny little beard filmed in deep canyon off California coast

LiveScience

'Very novel and very puzzling': Unknown species of squid spotted burying itself upside down, pretending to be a plant

LiveScience

Dungeon-mastering emotions: D&D meets group therapy

Ars Technica

Crows Are Even Smarter Than We Thought

Nautilus Magazine, later republished in Big Think

Can the Octopus Adapt Fast Enough for Climate Change?

Earth Island Journal

He Found A Bizarre Octopus, But No One Believed Him

Science Friday (article and audio segment)

Cuttlefish Ink is Used for More than Just Evading Predators: It’s Part of Their Bizarre Mating Rituals

The Debrief

Earliest known sex chromosomes evolved in octopuses

New Scientist

New Study Suggests Octopuses have Individual Differences When it Comes to Problem Solving

the Debrief

Why are ravens suddenly attacking the world’s smallest penguins?

National Geographic

Number-associated neurons help crows link values to symbols

The Transmitter

What happens in a crow’s brain when it uses tools?

Ars Technica

Bioengineered spider silk without critters

Nature Biotechnology

In Graphic Detail: The Architecture of Octopus Burrows

Hakai Magazine

New Results Reveal How to Build a Nuclear Clock

Scientific American (November 2023 print issue and online)

Are There Health Risks to Using Virtual Reality Headsets at Work?

Discover Magazine

US government considers protecting octopuses used in research

Ars Technica

Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS wasn't supposed to be there — meet the astronomer who discovered it

Space [dot] com

For the first time, research reveals crows use statistical logic

Ars Technica

DNA- and RNA-based electronic implants may revolutionize healthcare

Leaps Magazine

How Could Atomic Clocks Be Used to Detect Dark Matter?

Discover Magazine

The past and present of Los Alamos came together to make Oppenheimer

Ars Technica

Understanding the octopus and its relationships with humans

Ars Technica

The Wizard in the Mountains

Colorado Magazine

AI can suggest Covid-19 antivirals from protein sequence alone

ChemistryWorld

Compound found in octopus ink kills cancer cells but not others

New Scientist

When it comes to advanced math, ChatGPT is no star student

Ars Technica

Advanced Quantum Material Curves the Fabric of Space

Discover Magazine

Earthworm robots could be an invaluable tool for exploring other worlds

Astronomy Magazine

Squid Camouflage Inspires Human Invisibility: Is it Possible?

Discover Magazine

How the Human Brain Project Built a Mind of Its Own

Leaps Magazine

How physicist Sameera Moussa went from a role model to a mystery

Ars Technica

An octopus’s stripes can act as a unique ID

Ars Technica

The Woolly Mammoth Meatball Could Kick Off a Trend of Eating Extinct Meats

Discover Magazine

AI Can’t Solve this Famous Murder Mystery Puzzle

Scientific American Op-Ed

Could AI Language Models Like ChatGPT Unlock Mysterious Ancient Texts?

Discover Magazine

Astronomers Spy a Giant Runaway Black Hole’s Starry Wake

Scientific American

We’re one step closer to reading an octopus’s mind

Ars Technica

How Sensors Using Quantum Entanglement Could Improve Earthquake Detection

Discover Magazine

From Cats to Chatbots: How Non-Humans Are Authoring Scientific Papers

Discover Magazine

New Apps Aim to Douse the Social Media Dumpster Fire

Scientific American

What’s Happening When the Deceased Send Facebook Friend Requests

Discover Magazine

An Entangled Matter-Wave Interferometer, Now with Double the Spookiness

Physics.org

A quantum video reel: Time-of-flight quantum tomography of an atom in an optical tweezer

Physics.org

Why Writing About Math and Physics Doesn’t Have to be Scary

Medium page

What We Can Learn from Mattel’s New Line of Scientist Barbies

Medium page

Should Scientists Have Social Media?

Medium page

Welcome to the Digital Afterlife

How Octopuses are portrayed in Science Fiction

Octonation

The nine-armed octopus and the oddities of the cephalopod nervous system

Ars Technica

PDFs

The Dark Side of Polling, an I,Science article about the process of polling

Biological Privacy Settings, an I,Science article about DNA databases, and cold cases

Tesla’s Desperation, an I,Science Magazine article about the challenges Tesla faced 

The Tesla Angle, an I,Science Magazine article about Tesla’s Death Ray and the FBI

Here you can find the Medicinal Plants Tour from the Denver Botanic Gardens that I created. The tour is currently the third most popular tour on their website, and has a series of corresponding YouTube videos of recipes you can try.

Here you can find the link to my undergraduate honors thesis, which I published as a book. It covers the story of me interviewing scientists and science writers around the world to talk about science communication and the lives and conservation of weedy sea dragons.