Bill Gourgey
Contributing Writer
Bill Gourgey is a Popular Science contributor and unofficial digital archeologist who enjoys excavating PopSci’s vast archives to update noteworthy stories (yes, merry-go-rounds are noteworthy). A former IT consultant to Fortune 500 companies, Bill’s tech career began when he was a kid, singeing himself on his dad’s soldering iron while trying to repair the family TV, which never recovered. Bill now lives in Washington, DC but has not forsaken his hometown, NYC, where drivers know that green means go.
Highlights
- Enjoys unearthing Science Past’s hidden treasures and tracking down their untold contemporary connections.
- When not plumbing Science Past, likes to grok Science Future. Still believes that just as tech got us into this (you name it) mess, so tech can get us out.
- Besides bylines in Popular Science, WIRED and OneZero, penned several novels including the Glide Trilogy (2014 Beverly Hills Book Award winner in Science Fiction) and Cap City Mysteries.
Experience
Bill is an adjunct faculty member at Johns Hopkins. He also teaches rising high school seniors at MIT’s Office of Engineering Outreach. For more than two decades (Accenture), he designed and developed software for the communications, utilities, finance, and tech industries. He’s held advisory positions at several startups and nonprofits (SMRxT, Tsymmetry, Infinia ML, JBWS). Bill’s stories tend to explore technology’s dual-edged promise such as the limits of telemedicine’s expanding role, AI’s underutilized potential to elevate our climate game, and how slow-moving airships could accelerate disaster relief.
Bill likes to talk tech nearly as much as he likes to write about it. He’s served as moderator, speaker, and panelist at venues like the National Association of Science Writers 2021 Conference, Publishers Weekly 2017 BookExpo, and Digital Hollywood (NY 2011). He’s also Managing Editor of Delmarva Review, a literary journal. In his spare time (lol), he sketches unworldly satellite cartoons.
Education
Bill is a graduate of Cornell University with a double major in Electrical Engineering and Materials Science. He has a masters degree in Science Writing from Johns Hopkins University. Bill feels fortunate to be living in a time when online education is no more than a mouse click away: Whenever his coding gets too rusty, he dives back into CE courses like those offered at MIT (Big Data, IoT, Cybersecurity).
Favorite weird science fact
In September 1926 Popular Science covered the invention of an airplane-auto (p. 46), with “wings that fold like a beetle’s.” The inventor? None other than Sherman Fairchild (IBM, Fairchild Industries). Alas, a century on we’re still waiting, although, air taxi anyone?
Notable Work
- The Brilliant 10: The most innovative up-and-coming minds in science Popular Science
- Can we make ourselves more empathetic? Popular Science
- Can music help animals relax? Popular Science
- How Artificial Intelligence Could Prevent Natural Disasters Wired
- The pandemic could be a long-awaited turning point for telemedicine Popular Science