Allison Hydzik

Allison Hydzik is a Senior Director of Public Relations at UPMC, where she develops communications strategies and messages for the organization’s “bench to bedside” clinical and translational science innovations. She supervises media relations staff covering key clinical areas and research discovery at the University of Pittsburgh’s Schools of the Health Sciences.

Allison joined UPMC in March 2012 as a manager in media relations, after a decade-long career as a science, health, environment and general assignment journalist at news publications including The Los Angeles Times, Ann Arbor News and Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. She’s reported on everything from monkeypox and freshwater mussels to the coloring of NASA images and Pluto’s demotion to dwarf planet status. An investigative story she wrote on a deadly stretch of highway in Michigan led to a National Traffic and Safety Board inquiry and action.

Allison is a graduate of The Ohio State University, where she earned her bachelor’s of science degree in scientific writing and research. She became a journalist thanks to an American Association for the Advancement of Sciences fellowship after a quarter-life crisis led her to ditch her initial career path in astrophysics. She’s currently working on a Master of Science degree at Robert Morris University.