World Science Festival begins May 28
The first annual World Science Festival, an unprecedented celebration of scientific discovery sponsored in part by Rockefeller University and featuring more than a dozen Nobel laureates along with researchers, technologists, educators, policy makers, artists and performers, will begin May 28 in New York City. The festival, featuring more than 40 unique events at venues around the city, will shine a spotlight on science and explore the many ways in which scientific discovery and innovation are shaping modern life.
The World Science Festival springs from the vision of its two cofounders, Brian Greene, a Columbia University professor of physics and mathematics and featured on the PBS series The Elegant Universe, and Tracy Day, a four-time National News Emmy Award-winning journalist and producer whose credits include Nightline and This Week with David Brinkley.
Through lectures, panels, debates, film, music, theater and interactive events, the festival will showcase cutting-edge ideas and reveal science’s pivotal role in addressing critical global issues. Participants will guide a large, diverse audience — students to adults, professionals to novices, science enthusiasts to the merely curious — to experience science as never before, making the esoteric understandable and the familiar fascinating.
Among the participants are Paul Nurse, president of Rockefeller University; Harold Varmus, president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; actor Alan Alda; Francis Collins, leader of the Human Genome Project; Tony Award-winning actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith; and neurologist Oliver Sacks.
“New York City is no less a capital of scientific inquiry than it is of finance, publishing, cuisine, fashion or the arts,” says Nurse. “The Rockefeller University is proud to be one of the five academic partners of the World Science Festival, participating in programs which will perform a vital educational mission for our city, the United States, and the world.”
Nurse will participate in three events:
Your Biological Biography: Genes and Identity Saturday, May 31, 1 p.m. New York University Kimmel Center for University Life What It Means to Be Human Beyond Einstein: In Search of the Ultimate Explanation |
For more information or to buy tickets, visit the World Science Festival Web site.