As the calendar year closes, we’ve reached out to several leaders in journalism, academia, philanthropy and social entrepreneurship to listen more deeply to what’s on their minds as they foster civic engagement in the current environment. We’ve heard several themes resonate: The importance of listening broadly and responding effectively to…
The National Academies gathered experts to examine science communication in an age of skepticism…
This July, members of an outstanding group of biomedical scientists came together for the first time to learn about one another’s work and discuss broader issues affecting the future of scientific discovery. Since 1976, scientists at the early stages of their careers have been selected as Rita Allen Foundation Scholars,…
Hilary Coller caught the biomedical research bug early—as a junior high school student she took part in research that resulted in a first-author scientific publication. Coauthored with her father Barry Coller, a blood and vascular biologist at The Rockefeller University, the paper…
In 1990, Senthil Muthuswamy was a young graduate student in biology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He had just moved to Canada from his native India after completing a bachelor’s degree in agricultural sciences at the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University and a master’s degree in genetics at…
Tom Maniatis launched his scientific career by experimenting with early ultraviolet lasers to scrutinize the development of chicken embryos. This undergraduate research experience, at the University of Colorado, Boulder, “taught me the importance of bringing technological developments to important biological problems,” Maniatis recalls. Tom Maniatis…
Early in his research career, Jeffrey Macklis set out to unite two seemingly disparate fields of neuroscience: neural development and brain repair. At the time, this was an unorthodox idea, and “being a brain repair guy was a little shady,” he says. Still, he thought, “if we figured…
The founders of Democracy Works on the importance of trust and a shared vision in nonprofit startups …
Information has the power to build understanding, change points of view, and help individuals and groups reach smarter decisions. Making sense of ever-expanding mounds of facts and figures often requires bringing together disparate areas of knowledge—science and journalism, computation and politics, or data science and public safety. Creative leaders from…
How Public Lab is evaluating its pioneering model of community science…