Usha Lee McFarling, a contributing writer for STAT, covers the people and trends behind biomedical advances in the western U.S. She previously reported for the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, and the San Antonio Light, where she covered killer bees, bat rabies outbreaks, and cases of leprosy linked to armadillo taxidermy. Her work on the diseased state of the world's oceans earned the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism. Usha graduated from Brown University with a degree in biology and later earned a masters degree at Berkeley after spending years studying the behavior of desert woodrats. When not writing, she can be found on the closest ski slope — especially during El Nino years.