Monika Mondal to be “Journalist in Residence” at HITS

The Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies gives science journalists the opportunity to deepen their knowledge of computer-based, data-driven science with a longer stay at the institute. For the eighth time, the program was announced internationally. Candidates from six continents applied. A committee of science journalists and scientists selected Monika Mondal (India) as “HITS Journalist in Residence” for 2026. 

Indian science journalist Monika Mondal will be the next “Journalist in Residence” at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS). She will join the institute in February 2026.

Mondal is an aspiring, but already award-winning science journalist from Delhi/India. With an academic background in Electronics and Communication Engineering, and Development Studies, she has been working as a freelancer and has published articles in Nature, C&En, Wired, The Guardian, and The Hindu since 2020. She has earned a fellowship from the Pulitzer Center, the Alexander von Humboldt German Chancellor’s Fellowship, won the Thomson Foundation Journalist Award in 2021, and others. Her journalistic work covers a wide range, spanning from life science to astronomy.

During her stay at HITS, Monika Mondal will pursue a nonfiction book project with the working title “Living in Emergence.” “I would like to develop a work that helps us understand life in all its complexity”, she says. Her goal is to document not only scientific discoveries but also the process, the making of science. “I am eager to develop this project in dialogue with the HITS researchers and to gain a rare, meta-level view of the scientific method that is almost impossible to achieve as an external reporter, particularly for an independent journalist from the global south.”

To date, thirteen journalists from Canada, the U.S., Australia, India, Spain and Germany have been awarded the HITS fellowship — which started in 2012 with the award-winning German science journalist Volker Stollorz, now chief editor of the German Science Media Center in Cologne (https://www.sciencemediacenter.de/en/), an organization run by journalists that provides journalists with what they need.

HITS is a private, non-profit basic research institute. It was founded by the Klaus Tschira Foundation in 2010. At HITS, currently around 130 scientists from more than 30 countries work in 11 research groups in areas where large amounts of data are produced and processed – from Molecular Biology to Astrophysics. One of the institute’s aims is to make the public more aware of the importance of computer-based, data-driven science, especially in natural sciences. 

Press Contact:
Dr. Peter Saueressig
Head of Communications
Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS)