Barbara Gastel

Barbara Gastel, a physician specializing in biomedical writing and editing, is professor of integrative biosciences, humanities in medicine, and biotechnology at Texas A&M University, where she coordinates the master's degree program in science and technology journalism.

Gastel earned a BA from Yale and an MD and MPH from Johns Hopkins. After medical school, she did an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) mass media fellowship at Newsweek. She then worked in communication and administration at the National Institutes of Health. She also has taught science writing at MIT. Before joining the Texas A&M faculty in 1989, she was assistant dean for teaching at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.

Since early in her career, Gastel has worked to promote international communication of science. She was visiting professor of technical communication from 1983 to 1985 at what is now Peking University Health Science Center, and she later led the US aspect of a program to teach English-language biomedical writing and editing in Asia. She also has played lead roles in AuthorAID, an international program to help researchers in developing countries write about and publish their work.