About the Editors
Akin Jimoh, Chief Editor
Akin Jimoh is a leader in promoting science and public health journalism in his native Nigeria and across the African continent. He was the first news editor for the World Federation of Science Journalists’ website and played key roles as a mentor and anglophone coordinator (2009 - 2013) in the Science Journalism Cooperation (SjCOOP) Project.
A medical physiologist and health promotion/education specialist by training, Jimoh started his journalism career in 1990. He became a health reporter with Nigeria’s leading publication, The Guardian, where he expanded the health section to also cover areas in science and public health. He was also involved in the conceptualization of the ‘revenue spinning’ CompuLife section at the Guardian, focusing on emerging markets in technology in Nigeria in the 1990’s.
Between 2013 and 2017, Jimoh provided professional expertise to the Nigeria Polio Eradication Programme as a communication specialist to shape media response to the polio programme at the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
A Knight Fellow at MIT in Science Journalism (1999/2000) and Bell Fellow in Population and Development Studies at Harvard School of Public Health (1995/96) he founded Development Communications (DevComs) Network, a media development organisation in science and public health journalism based in Lagos.
He has been a consulting editor at Africa Science Technology and Innovation (AfricaSTI) News, an online science publication. Jimoh regularly volunteers for the Nigeria Academy of Science in the area of science communication.
Lynne Smit, Senior Editor
Lynne Smit is a South African journalist and communicator who enjoys understanding and ‘translating’ the most complex and technical of subjects, finding the right angle for the target audience, and writing copy that people want to read. She enjoys using multimedia and social media techniques, including scripting, recording and editing podcasts. Her skills also include photography, design and layout.
Her career track record includes 30 years’ experience working as a reporter and sub editor on various publications, including newspapers in South Africa and the Financial Times in London.
She was a mentor in the World Federation of Science Journalists’ SjCOOP programme. She is past president of the South African Science Journalists’ Association and past chair of the South African Freelancers’ Association. She is also the author of five college textbooks and the editor of The Architect and the Scaffold, a book on the teaching of evolution in South Africa.
She has worked for a number of international organisations, including the WHO as senior writer in the WHO African Region headquarters in Brazzaville, and has provided communications services to the UK’s Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology, UNESCO, The EU, and international conferences mostly in the health, technology and innovation arenas.
Mohammed Yahia, Executive Editor
Mohammed Yahia is the executive editor of Nature Portfolio in the Middle East, which is part of Springer Nature. He joined 11 years ago as the launch editor of Nature Middle East, an online portal that focuses on science and science-related news from the Arab world. He now works with the editorial teams of several publications in the Middle East and Europe, including Nature Italy, Nature Arabic Edition and For Science, the Arabic version of Scientific American.
Mohammed is also the past president of the World Federation of Science Journalists (WFSJ) and has been the vice president of the Arab Science Journalists Association for the past four years.
Prior to joining Springer Nature, Mohammed was the Middle East and North Africa regional coordinator for SciDev.Net and has written for several different publications around the world, including Nature, IDRC, CancerWorld, The Daily Star Egypt and SNF’s Horizons. He has travelled extensively in the region, giving workshops in English and Arabic to journalists on how to use the internet to improve the quality of their work.
After receiving his bachelor degree in pharmacology, he spent a couple of years working in community pharmacies and large pharma companies before he ended up in science journalism, and has never looked back since.
