Gina Bari Kolata (born in Baltimore, Maryland, February 25, 1948) is a science journalist for The New York Times. Her sister was the environmental activist Judi Bari, and her mother was the mathematician Ruth Aaronson Bari.
Kolata studied molecular biology as a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received a master's degree in mathematics from the University of Maryland. She joined Science magazine as a copy editor in 1973, and wrote for the American Association for the Advancement of Science journal from 1974 until she moved to The New York Times in September 1987. She is a "self-proclaimed exercise addict (who thinks nothing of a 100-mile bike ride as a reward)" according to a Times advertisement for itself.
Kolata's book, Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It, was chosen as the book of choice for the inaugural year of Washington State University's Common Reading Program, in 2007-08.