World Science Festival: A Universe of Science in New York City, May 28 - June 1, 2008

Business Wire, April 2, 2008

NEW YORK -- The first annual World Science Festival, an unprecedented celebration of scientific discovery, was announced today by physicist Brian Greene, six-time Emmy award winning actor Alan Alda, President Lee Bollinger of Columbia University, President John Sexton of New York University, Chancellor Matthew Goldstein of the City University of New York, President George Campbell, Jr. of Cooper Union, and Chancellor Joel Klein of the New York City Department of Education.

The Festival will take place from May 28th through June 1st, 2008 at 15 venues throughout New York City, many in the Washington Square Area of Greenwich Village. It will bring together over a dozen Nobel Laureates, leading researchers, top-level technologists, dedicated educators, and high-level policy makers with creative artists, filmmakers, and performers to create more than 40 unique events that 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 co-founders, Brian Greene and Tracy Day. Brian Greene is a Columbia University professor of physics and mathematics and the host of the PBS series The Elegant Universe, based on his Pulitzer Prize finalist bestselling book. Tracy Day is a four-time National News Emmy Award winning journalist and producer whose credits include Nightline and This Week with David Brinkley.

"In an era in which scientific discovery so directly impacts economics, education, politics, and culture, Tracy Day and I realized that there was a great need for a major science festival in the United States," said Brian Greene, co-founder of the World Science Festival. "The World Science Festival will allow science enthusiasts to engage many topics in modern science, while also encouraging those who may be on the periphery of science - artists, students, children, families, policy-makers, and educators - to think about the many ways scientific inquiry impacts their lives. Our goal is to help shift the public's perception of science so that more and more people--kids to adults--see science as wondrous, exciting, accessible, and even inspirational."

More than a dozen Nobel Prize winners including Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center President Harold Varmus, Rockefeller University President Paul Nurse, and Director Emeritus of Fermilab Leon Lederman, will participate along with a diverse array of other presenters including six-time Emmy Award-winning actor Alan Alda, Human Genome Project leader Francis Collins, Tony Award-winning actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith, and neurologist and author Oliver Sacks.

"When I was in high school, I thought that if you were interested in the arts you weren't supposed to be interested in science," said actor Alan Alda. "This was hard because I was intoxicated by both. Now, after 15 years of interviewing some of the most inventive scientists around the world, I realize that the creativity, rigor and sheer fun of science is very similar to what keeps the heart beating for those of us in the arts. It makes me deliriously happy to see the World Science Festival bring art and science together again: two lovers who once lost touch with each other and have longed ever since to be reunited."

University Partners have contributed to the World Science Festival by hosting programs, through their outreach to students and alumni, and through direct support. Many of our renowned program participants are faculty at our University Partners, which include Columbia University, New York University, the City University of New York, The Cooper Union, and Rockefeller University.

"New York City is no less a capital of scientific inquiry than it is of finance, publishing, cuisine, fashion, or the arts," said Sir Paul Nurse, Nobel Laureate in Medicine and President of the Rockefeller University. "The Rockefeller University is proud to be one of the five Academic Partners of the World Science Festival, hosting and participating in programs which will perform a vital educational mission for our city, the United States, and the world."

World Science Festival Program Partners enrich the diverse spectrum of World Science Festival programming. Program Partners include: The American Museum of Natural History; Works & Process at the Guggenheim Museum; The Liberty Science Center; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Moth; The Museum of Modern Art; The New Victory Theater; The New York Academy of Sciences; New York Botanical Garden; New York Hall of Science; New York Public Library; New-York Historical Society; The 92nd Street Y; NOVA; The Paley Center for Media; The Rubin Museum of Art; and Walt Disney Imagineering.

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.