Trevor Butterworth biography

Trevor Butterworth is founding Executive Director Sense About Science USA (SAS USA), a nonprofit promoting scientific and statistical literacy, the value of evidence, and the importance of science communication.

SAS USA partnered with the American Statistical Association to create STATScheck, a free statistical help service for journalists staffed by volunteer statisticians at academic institutions across the U.S. that has helped hundreds of journalists since its inception. SAS USA has run innovative statistical workshops in newsrooms and scientific societies, and communications workshops for early career researchers at leading academic institutions across the U.S. In collaboration with the Annals of Internal Medicine and Accurat, SAS USA pioneered new approaches to explaining statistical concepts to clinical researchers. Butterworth has spoken frequently on these issues, including at the National Academy of Sciences Sackler Colloquium, The Broad Institute, and the Trottier Symposium at McGill University.

Butterworth is also a consultant to the American Statistical Association, and the Sovrin Foundation. He is also VP for Research at Cynjatech, focused on digital identity, data privacy, and distributed ledger technology.

Previously, Butterworth has written for the New Yorker online, the Harvard Business Review, The Financial Times, The New York Times Women in the World, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Vox, among other publications. He was a science writer for Newsweek and a weekly columnist for Forbes and The Daily. He was also editor of STATS.org.

He earned his BA and M.Phil from Trinity College Dublin, and an MS from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where he was awarded the Sevellon Brown prize for outstanding knowledge of the history of the American press. He was a graduate exchange scholar at Georgetown University and a visiting fellow at Cornell University.