Debbie Cenziper has been a member of The Miami Herald's investigative team for more than four years. Her 2005 investigation, picked up by more than 300 media outlets worldwide, exposed how the federal government's multibillion-dollar weather-tracking system regularly fails hurricane forecasters and endangers lives. The White House and Congress allotted more than $30 million for new forecasting equipment. The series was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for explanatory reporting.

Her 2004 series on Florida's flawed system for restoring civil rights to ex-felons prodded Gov. Jeb Bush to approve historic changes that instantly made an estimated 300,000 Floridians eligible to regain their voting rights.

A year-long series in 2003 on Miami's botched, $6 billion school-construction program prompted the resignation of the district's construction chief and other top officials.

Before joining the Herald in 2002, Cenziper spent seven years at The Charlotte Observer in North Carolina, writing about violent deaths in mental hospitals, high-stakes testing, the state's troubled medical examiner's system and prescription drug abuse.

She is a 1992 graduate of the University of Florida.