The EJL Team

Bernice Yeung is a co-founder of the Lab and was, until recently, the managing editor of Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program. She is currently a managing editor for ProPublica, heading up their new California desk.  Previously, she reported for ProPublica on flaws in the U.S. food safety system, the impact of COVID-19 on meatpacking workers, and the failures of the criminal justice system in handling sexual assault cases. 

​Her first book, In a Day’s Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers (The New Press, 2018), which was honored with the PEN America/John Galbraith Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize.

Her work has appeared in media outlets ranging from The New Yorker to The New York Times to PBS Frontline. The collaborative reporting she’s done as part of various investigative teams has been a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize, and has received honors such as a National Press Club Award, a George Polk Award, an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. In 2015-2016, she was a Knight-Wallace Fellow who studied how social science survey methods could be applied to journalism.

Michael is a co-founder and director of the Lab.  He has a background in audio journalism, media studies, and is an expert in place-based storytelling. He has a M.S. degree in Comparative Media Studies from M.I.T. where he specialized in developing multi-platform documentary films. In 2006, Michael founded Walking Cinema. The company has developed cross-platform apps for The Smithsonian, PBS, the Venice Biennale, Audible and many museum and broadcast clients. Epstein is also an Adjunct Professor at California College of the Arts, teaching studio courses in landscape history and interactive media production. In 2019, Michael was selected as a Reynolds Journalism Institute fellow at the University of Missouri. Michael has served as a Peer Reviewer and Principal Investigator on several National Endowment for the Humanities programs.  Michael's work has won numerous awards including Webby Awards for AR storytelling and educational media, multiple Gold Muse Awards, and honors from the Best in Heritage  Association. He is currently the managing editor of the online magazine The Immersive Impact Review, which he founded with Prof. Amy Carleton of MIT's Comparative Media Studies Department.