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.