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Unlike the pandemic, the impact of climate change has always been a much tougher sell.

Published June 29, 2021

By Nicholas B. Dirks

June 1 marked the official start of hurricane season and already tropical storms Ana, Bill and Claudette have made their respective debuts.

And while summer has only just officially started, early hot dry conditions in Arizona, California, Oregon, Utah and New Mexico are exacerbating enormous wildfires putting a strain on local first responder services. Severe drought conditions in the west is restricting the use of essential water supplies. Its impact on the nation’s food supply has yet to be determined.

In May, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released revised temperature “normals” which show a significant shift towards warmer temperatures. We are far from the state of readiness required to deal with the inevitable outcomes.

Scientists have been sounding the alarm about the human impact upon climate change for well over a century. French mathematician and physicist Joseph Fourier, who is generally credited with the discovery of the greenhouse effect, wrote in an 1827 paper that: “The establishment and progress of human societies, the action of natural forces, can notably change, and in vast regions, the state of the surface, the distribution of water and the great movements of the air.”

But unlike the pandemic, which was a highly visible emergency with nightly news reports showing crowded ER’s and patients on ventilators, the impact of climate change has always been a much tougher sell. In addition, when proposed changes come up against “the pocketbook,” there is pushback.

Recent Research and “Crisis Fatigue”

A recent paper published in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences — The distributional impact of climate change – discusses the various impacts of climate change from both a social and environmental perspective. As with many other global issues, the impacts of climate change will most certainly affect poorer countries even more severely, but that doesn’t let the rich ones like the United States off the hook.

Then there is the risk of “crisis fatigue”—the continual sounding of an alarm about something that is not immediately visible, to the point that the problem is so overwhelming that individual actions won’t help. But as we learned from Covid-19, there is no local crisis of this kind that doesn’t soon become a global crisis.

Science is an incremental process, and scientific knowledge is based on multiple arguments, experiments, and developments. However, the scientific consensus that climate change is not only real, but escalating faster than many scientists had predicted, is based on measurements and models that issue a clear and urgent warning. We need to act now, and fast, to drive effective policy to combat climate change.

Training scientists to be better communicators is a good step, but much more must and can be done to develop a public consensus that might mirror the scientific consensus. Climatologists, meteorologists and environmental scientists play an important role, but we need to enlist all the disciplines of the academy (including social scientists and humanists), all the agencies of government (domestically and internationally), and all the major sectors of the economy to help chart a way forward.

The Impediment of Knowledge Resistance

As Mikael Klintman, in his recent book, “Knowledge Resistance,” has argued, “it becomes crucial to ask what we as individuals and groups can do about knowledge resistance in cases where, in the long run, it is problematic to ourselves and to others – humans, animals, and the environment alike.”

Professionals from healthcare, insurance, business, as well as legal and financial sectors can help scientists and public officials “sell” appropriate actions and solutions. The average person may not pay much mind to the science behind reducing carbon emissions but put in the context of how much taxpayer money is used to treat patients who have respiratory conditions exacerbated by polluted air from auto emissions, and it’s a different conversation.

Policymakers supporting the development of wetlands or sensitive barrier islands might be more inclined to rethink such plans if voters are provided with data on how much it is likely to cost when severe storms hit, in terms of increased taxes to pay for emergency relief, rebuilding, and higher insurance rates. Like the warnings and recommendations about COVID-19, climate change has become a deeply partisan issue, but preparedness for the long-term impacts of climate change is not “hysterics” or “alarmist” as some would argue.

Ignoring the impact of COVID-19 cost millions their lives, and billions of dollars in healthcare costs and lost income. The economic cost of lost jobs and wages, as well as the cost of care of COVID patients, especially those who still have long-term health effects, has still to be tallied.

All the data are showing us what will happen if we are not ready. Science can deliver on the knowledge, but it will take genuine collective action to hone and sell the messages that can tread that fine line between preparation and panic.

The Exciting, Unchartered World of Nanomaterials

Crystalline nanomaterials viewed under a microscope.

Imagine if we could detect health problems before they become life-threatening.

Published June 04, 2021

By Benjamin Schroeder, PhD

Imagine if we could charge our cell phones by plugging them into our backpack, or if we could build a biocompatible probe that could interface with our cells and detect health problems before they become life-threatening.

Working at nanoscale, scientists are now capable of assembling molecules and atoms into structures that have exactly the desired properties they want a new material to possess. The prefix “nano” is used in the metric system to describe 10^-9 parts of a whole, or 0.000000001—an exceedingly small number. But the term is also used to define an entire field of new and exciting research at a very, very, tiny scale.

We recently interviewed Jess Wade, PhD, a Research Fellow at Imperial College London, about all things nano. Her research is focused on new materials for optoelectronic devices, with a particular emphasis on chiral organic semiconductors. She has also recently written a children’s book entitled Nano: The Spectacular Science of the Very (Very) Small, illustrated by Melissa Castrillon and published by Candlewick.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Many researchers in your field of materials science are drawing inspiration from nature to design new nanomaterials with novel shapes and functions. Why is that such an important consideration?

Because nature has been nailing this for a really long time. We look around and see naturally occurring structures that are super-strong, super-efficient, and in some cases capable of generating clean energy from the sun. I think we—as physicists, chemists, and materials scientists—can learn a lot from looking at natural, biological forms and trying to recreate their desirable properties in our labs.

Nature has evolved to be as efficient and streamlined as it can be, and we’re learning from that and applying it in areas like renewable energy and electronic display research. It is important for us to study those systems because nature has been getting it right for much longer than we have!

Crystalline nanomaterials viewed under a microscope. Photo Credit: Dr. Jess Wade

If nature has perfected processes like photosynthesis and cellular respiration, is it really possible to improve on nature’s design when creating new nanomaterials?

Molecules like proteins and peptides and similar compounds are essential in biological processes, but often have very strict operating requirements: they don’t behave normally when they get too hot or when they get very, very cold or when we put them in electromagnetic fields. So we can look at biological systems, examine what gives rise to their important properties, and ask, for example, “how can we design more resilient materials for technological purposes?”

I think even though nature has really perfected certain materials and processes, it has only really done so for a specific function. We can still improve these natural materials by tailoring them to what we want.

In terms of discoveries that will potentially have a major influence on our daily lives, what are some of the breakthroughs in nano that you anticipate seeing in the next 15-20 years?

In 15-20 years more of us will have solar technologies that result from manipulation of the nanoscale properties of materials. For example, take materials like perovskites: hybrid organic/inorganic crystals that are incredibly efficient at generating electricity when they absorb light from the sun. Once scientists have optimized their nanostructures and fabrication protocols, perovskites will allow us to have flexible, integrated power supplies that can be incorporated into our clothing, our backpacks, and any surface that might be beneficial. I think there will also be a more concerted effort for scientists to work closely with designers to create wearable devices and other technologies that combine aesthetics with cutting-edge science.

You’ve just published a beautifully-illustrated children’s book entitled, Nano: The Spectacular Science of the Very (Very) Small. What was your inspiration to write such a book, and can we expect to see additional children’s books from you covering different topics in science?

I find the science that you’re covering in the upcoming webinar “Finding Inspiration for Functional Nanomaterials from Nature,” and the nanoscience that I get to do in my day job extraordinarily exciting. Parents, students, and teachers don’t get quite as excited about it as they could because it’s not on their radar, and they get intimidated by jargon and buzzwords they do not really understand.

I wanted to write a book that young people read and then think, “chemistry is really cool! materials science is awesome! we can solve the global challenges by thinking from the atom up!,” but also a book that their parents read and think, “hey, maybe I was wrong to hate that so much when I was in school.”

I would absolutely love to create additional children’s books. There are a lot more areas of science that could have kid’s books. Dinosaurs are covered, space is covered, but there could be more and better coverage in physics and other areas, and I am excited about the possibilities.

Lessons Learned: The Aftermath of a Pandemic

Academy President and CEO Nicholas Dirks smiles for the camera.

“… we can use those learnings to prepare a playbook for the next pandemic.”

Published June 1, 2021

By Nicholas B. Dirks

When I was first in discussions in early 2020 to take over the leadership of The New York Academy of Sciences from the retiring Ellis Rubinstein, we could still go out to dinner, attend meetings in person, and enjoy concerts and the theater in closed and crowded spaces. Masks were for surgeons in operating theaters and researchers working in labs. We could still enjoy networking at well attended conferences, traveling through crowded airports and train stations, and planning vacations and holiday family gatherings. Although for years I had always mentioned a pandemic as a primary example of a global challenge that would know no borders and require global cooperation, I also knew that the last such pandemic had happened 100 years ago. I confess I had assumed I was being largely rhetorical.

What a difference a year makes.

Now, more than a year after the lockdowns began across the world and in the U.S., we are at last seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. It will still require a leap of faith to predict when life will return to the way it was in 2019, but significant progress has been made during the past several months.

As with most life-altering events, much can be learned when we can take a hard, practical look at what we did wrong, what we did right, and how, with better planning, we might have changed the course of history. And if we’re smart about it, we can use those learnings to prepare a playbook for the next pandemic.

Accept that pandemics and other global catastrophes are here to stay and plan for them.

Much of the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S. can be traced to the lack of a cohesive national response. Poor communications also did not help. Mixed messages from public officials and health experts created confusion, and worse, disbelief that COVID-19 should be taken seriously. “It’s no worse than the flu” was one such frequent comment, along with “something that only old people get,” and the “cure or shutdowns cannot be worse than the problem.” Then there are the “hoax” believers, and the bizarre “treatments”—all fueled by misinformation and conspiracy theories running rampant on social media. We can’t predict what new crises are on the horizon, but it is incumbent upon all government officials to have emergency response plans ready for quick implementation. Aside from the obvious—i.e., having the necessary medical equipment and public health protocols already in place—understanding that social behavior needs to be addressed is just as important as medical intervention in meeting the crisis.

Look at challenges as opportunities for new ideas to blossom.

Like many other organizations whose core business is based on live in-person events, The New York Academy of Sciences had to quickly pivot to virtual forums when we could no longer host actual gatherings. But we have found that our online webinars and virtual conferences have broad appeal to our members—especially those who do not live within easy access of our physical conference location in downtown New York. At some point the in-person meetings will resume, but we will continue to offer the virtual options that will open up our programs to all our members and others across the globe.

Shutdowns have had some benefits.

The past year has been disastrous for many of us, with death and disease rampant both in the U.S. and globally, and with devastating economic effects on certain sectors and populations. At the same time, we learned what we can do with the technological tools on our laptops and in our phones, seen clear skies in polluted cities from Delhi to Beijing, as well as nature venturing out into the deserted streets. The YouTube video of a kangaroo hopping down an empty street in Adelaide was especially poignant. Of course, we cannot keep things shut down forever—we not only miss our social life, we depend on it. But as we consider not just the effects of a pandemic but the escalating threat of climate change, the past 12 months have provided a clear view of how our natural environment can quickly improve if we give it room to do so. We don’t all agree on everything, but we do all live on the same planet — and as the late Carl Sagan pointed out — “Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.” It will serve humanity well in the future if we could use the lessons of the last year to develop much bolder plans to take on the significant global and planetary challenges before us.

As we look forward to life returning to normal, it is worth remembering that despite all our scientific and technological progress, we were blindsided by a microscopic virus that was exacerbated by polarized politics, and a lack of public understanding and trust in science. It is also clear that the massive disparities of our society and our economy have been magnified by this public health crisis. Scientists must work not only with each other but with social scientists, humanists, and many others, as we seek to find more effective ways to translate our knowledge into enlightened public policy that takes on the full complexity of the human condition.

Fortunately, for the past 200-plus years, The New York Academy of Sciences has been committed to working to bring the best and brightest minds together to develop solutions for our global challenges. It’s a mission I’m proud to embrace as the Academy’s president and CEO.

Nicholas B. Dirks

A New Approach to Sustainable Plastics and Polymers

Sunset over petrochemical plants in Lake Charles, Louisiana

Adrienne Hollis, PhD, JD, the Senior Climate Justice and Health Scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, explains the role scientists must play in mitigating the harm caused by plastic waste and pollution from polymer production.

Published March 4, 2021

By Stephen D. Albright, PhD

Sunset over petrochemical plants in Lake Charles, Louisiana. (David Wilson from Oak Park, Illinois, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

New scientific discoveries often have profound impacts beyond what researchers can initially imagine. Polymers, and plastics derived from them, are an instructive example: the plastics that were once heralded as cheap, durable, and functional have also created an environmental crisis. Plastic waste and pollution from polymer production are significant hazards for communities around the world.

Adrienne Hollis, PhD, JD, the Senior Climate Justice and Health Scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), recently answered some questions about the impact of plastics and the role scientists have in mitigating their harms. Before joining UCS, Dr. Hollis served as a section chief at the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, an agency within United States Department of Health and Human Services, and as an Associate Professor at the Florida A&M University Institute of Public Health.

How would you define environmental justice and why should basic science researchers care about it?

Hollis: To me, basic science research focuses on gaining a fundamental understanding of the natural environment and how natural resources are transformed. Environmental justice talks about the adverse effects on communities from exposure to the unnatural transformation of the natural environment, through actions like air or water pollution. A specific focus of environmental justice is the disproportionate impact of exposure on disadvantaged areas and communities of color. But I would defer to communities and community organizations for their definition. That is what matters.

Outside of moral and ethical considerations of fairness, researchers are urged to follow the Precautionary Principle, based on the concept of “Do No Harm” in the medical profession. It states that if anything has a suspected risk of harm, to either the public or the environment, scientists should immediately engage in actions to prevent harm, even in the absence of complete scientific data identifying risk. These actions are at the core of environmental justice, and should apply across all areas of basic science research.

One of the most striking examples of communities of color and/or low socioeconomic status being disproportionally affected by environmental hazards is a stretch of Louisiana along the Mississippi River. Called by many “Cancer Alley,” it is home to a high density of oil refineries and petrochemical plants, key steps of polymer and plastic production. What have been some of the hazards and illnesses documented in this region?

Hollis: I would first state that community members would be the best source of information on health effects because of their historic knowledge and community data on this issue. What I can say is that high rates of many health conditions—miscarriages, cancer, heart problems, respiratory problems like asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and others—are present and well-documented in this region.

A perfect example of a hazard is the 2020 fire at a Lake Charles, Louisiana chlorine plant after Hurricane Laura. During and after the fire, residents were ordered to shelter in place, close all windows, and not operate air conditioners to prevent chlorine exposure. Amidst a pandemic and summer heat, the situation could have been so much more devastating—widespread COVID-19, heat stroke, or chlorine poisoning were all real possibilities. And yet, facilities keep coming!

Researchers in polymer chemistry are working towards developing polymers and plastics that can be more sustainably produced and disposed of. What kinds of changes to a polymer’s life cycle would be most impactful for communities hit hardest by industrial pollution?

Hollis: People living in places like Cancer Alley deal with facilities that release traditional air pollution as well as greenhouse gases while making plastics. Changes that would be impactful include ceasing the extraction of fossil fuels for polymer production and changing the plastic production processes that generate pollutants like ethylene oxide, styrene, and benzene. Processes that exclude the use of these chemicals would be optimal.

But the most impactful step would be to get rid of those facilities. Hopefully, as new processes are developed to improve plastic recycling and reuse, there will be decreased demand for facilities that produce virgin plastics. In the meantime, research and development of alternatives to biopolymers and petroleum-based products—both of which lead to adverse health effects—would also be a great intermediate step.

What actions could scientists and engineers take during the research process to mitigate and prevent adverse impacts when their research translates into products? What should research practices that incorporate environmental justice look like?

Hollis: In my opinion, it is not really about making production better and safer. It is about the Precautionary Principle, which all scientists should adhere to: do no harm. This means taking preventive action when you suspect harm could occur and most importantly, increasing public participation in decision making. Scientists and engineers must, at the outset, identify the communities that may be impacted, work with those communities early and often to identify concerns, and move forward together. Scientists and engineers must ask themselves if they would want to live in a place that produces these products, and whether the processes they are developing to mitigate and prevent harm are good enough for them or their families.

Also read: Avoiding Bias and Conflict of Interest in Science

Strong Vaccine Science Advances COVID-19 Research

A shot of a syringe and dose of COVID vaccine.

Anthony Fauci says vaccine developers can build on many years of research to stay ahead of SARS-CoV-2 variants

Published February 02, 2021

By Alan Dove, PhD

Coronavirus Covid-19 Protection and Vaccine. Doctor drawing up solution from vaccine bottle and filling syringe injection for patient vaccination in medical clinic, Coronavirus in background

Anthony Fauci, MD
Dir., National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

As concerns swirl around the emergence of novel variants of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, points to reassuring results from both clinical and laboratory tests, and underscored the ability of scientists to adapt rapidly to the evolving pandemic.

The new variants, one first isolated in the UK and one in South Africa, carry mutations in the gene encoding the spike protein that all of the currently approved and candidate vaccines target. Preliminary experiments have shown that some of the antibodies patients raise in their bodies against the spike protein don’t bind as well to the variant forms.

Speaking at a New York Academy of Sciences symposium, The Quest for COVID-19 Vaccines, Fauci explained that “the diminution [in binding] is about five or six fold,” but remains within the range expected to be protective. He added that real-world clinical trial data backs that up, with the latest results from Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine showing 85% efficacy in preventing severe disease even in a South African cohort where most of the cases involved one of the feared variants.

Building Upon Decades of Previous Research

At the same time, decades of prior work have positioned vaccinologists well to respond quickly if the virus does evolve to circumvent vaccine-mediated immunity. Indeed, the COVID-19 vaccine development effort to date has already illustrated how fast that response can happen. Less than a year after the first genome sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus was published, millions of people around the world were receiving highly effective vaccines, a result Fauci calls an “extraordinary historic accomplishment.”

Putting this astonishing achievement in perspective, Fauci compared it to previous vaccine efforts. “Even as we developed more technologies, measles, for example, took ten years, hepatitis B took sixteen years, but…COVID-19 took 11 months,” said Fauci. The new pandemic vaccines were in fact decades in the making, building on a scientific legacy that is also helping researchers prepare to address new viral variants.

Tracing the history of the current crop of COVID-19 vaccines back to work on HIV vaccines in the 1990s, Fauci described the basic and applied science that built a system spring-loaded to respond to a pandemic. “Then along came SARS-CoV-2, and again, [through] that same work that dates back years, the marriage between vaccinology and structure-based vaccine design” quickly revealed the most promising antigen target for COVID-19 vaccines.

Structure-Based Design

In structure-based design, scientists begin with the atomic structure of an antigen, and predict how modifications to it could enhance its potency. For SARS-CoV-2, that process identified a specially modified version of the virus’s spike protein as the best antigen; that antigen is now the basis for nearly all currently approved and candidate COVID-19 vaccines. A parallel body of work had shown the capabilities of modern vaccine platforms such as messenger RNA, recombinant proteins, and genetically engineered viral vectors.

As the new vaccines finished preclinical trials early in 2020, their developers already had access to an established network of clinical trial sites.

“The extraordinary investments that were made decades ago in putting together the HIV clinical trial network was immediately adapted, by using many of these sites [as] part of the COVID-19 Prevention Network,” said Fauci, adding that the first phase 1 clinical trial began just over 60 days after the release of the SARS-CoV-2 genome sequence, a head-snapping speed for clinical development.

Effectively Combatting New Variants

Turning to the new variants originally seen in the UK and South Africa, now known as B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 respectively, Fauci added that the nature of the new vaccines’ underlying technologies will also make them relatively straightforward to update if necessary.

“Multiple companies…are now doing an upgraded version of their vaccines, which would likely serve as a boost,” said Fauci.

Regulatory authorities are already pondering how to handle such booster vaccines, but they may be able to accept an abbreviated approval process similar to the one used for seasonal flu shots. In that approach, the new boosts “would be considered by the FDA as literally a strain change,” subject to only two phases of safety and immunogenicity tests instead of full-scale phase 3 trials, said Fauci.

Efficacy versus Effectiveness

The vaccine effort also now faces obstacles that are harder to address through science and technology. Fauci contrasted the ideas of efficacy and effectiveness of a vaccine. While the former can be calculated from clinical trial data, the latter stems from how widely a community adopts the vaccine; a highly efficacious vaccine that few people get will fail to curb the virus’s spread.

“One of the challenges that we are facing [is apparent] if you look at the intent to get COVID-19 vaccines,” said Fauci, pointing to surveys that show that significant numbers of Americans remain hesitant about vaccination. “We need to respect that, but we need to try and convince them of the importance, for their own safety and the safety of their family and the American public, to get vaccinated,” he added.

Though he has made a preliminary estimate that “herd immunity,” or overall protection of the population, could require vaccination of 70-85% of the population, Fauci cautioned that those figures are just an educated guess; only long-term monitoring of infection rates will reveal when the country is effectively protected.

Also read: The COVID-19 Pandemic at Year Four: The Imperative for Global Health Solidarity

Krainer Recognized for Pioneering Work in Anti-Sense Therapy

Dr. Krainer’s research examines anti-sense therapy and its application to spinal muscular atrophy.

Published December 15, 2020

By Melanie Brickman Borchard, PhD, MSc

Adrian R. Krainer, Ph.D.,
St. Giles Foundation Professor
at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Photo credit: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Adrian R. Krainer, PhD, St. Giles Foundation Professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, was awarded the 2020 Ross Prize in Molecular Medicine by the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research and Molecular Medicine for his pioneering work in introducing anti-sense therapy into clinical use and for its successful application to spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), an illness that has been the leading genetic cause of infant death.

“I was surprised to win the Ross Prize and really appreciate it,” remarked Krainer. “I view it as recognition of not just what I have done but of my whole team, which is the people currently in the lab and the ones that preceded them, plus our collaborators. It’s been a collective effort.”

Krainer emigrated from his native Uruguay to the United States in the late 1970s. He studied biochemistry and genetics at Columbia University. Later, during his graduate studies at Harvard, he became excited by a cutting-edge area of research—RNA splicing, a process that removes introns from precursor messenger RNA and joins the exons to enable translation of mRNA into a protein.

After working on the biochemistry of human RNA splicing, he was recruited to the Cold Spring Harbor Fellows Program upon graduation, where he focused on addressing basic mechanisms and regulation of splicing, what he referred to as, “curiosity-driven research, where we were just trying to learn something about how this process works and its natural regulation.”

Advancing Research on Spinal Muscular Atrophy

After spending fifteen years leading studies on the basic mechanisms and regulation of RNA splicing, in 1999 Krainer attended an invitation-only NIH symposium focused on SMA. This symposium was the catalyst for a revolutionary shift in the direction of his work. There, Krainer saw an opportunity to further elucidate the mechanisms he was already working on. He wanted to use this knowledge to find a potential therapy for SMA patients.

“Meetings are hugely important. Because of that meeting a little light bulb went off [related to the intersection of my work and SMA]. Not that I knew how we would solve the problem, but there was a realization that this problem fits really well with things we have been doing and is very worthwhile,” said Krainer.

A year later Krainer made a commitment to study SMA and by 2004 he entered into a partnership with Ionis Pharmaceuticals to focus on the development of Spinraza (generic name Nusinersen), the first FDA-approved drug to treat SMA associated with mutations in the SMN1 gene (approved in 2016). Since then, more than 11,000 people have been treated with this groundbreaking therapy.

“This is the best one can hope for as a researcher. It is really a dream come true that the basic research is translated into an actual drug that saves lives and is changing the quality of life for so many patients and families.”

Krainer added that the success of Spinraza has the potential to spiral outwards.

“It transcends this one disease, because it’s an example of what can be done with the antisense platform, now it can be used again and again for other neurological diseases and beyond.”

Reflecting on His Work

Today, Krainer continues to pursue the basic science aspects of splicing in his lab. Additionally, he seeks to refine the understanding of the complex machinery used for this process. Among other activities, his lab also focuses on antisense technology to develop therapies for other diseases caused by splicing defects and on understanding how splicing factors and dysregulated alternative splicing promote cancer progression.

Krainer sees being a scientist as a “privilege” and very much a collaborative effort wherein “everyone is doing something that they love.” Even so, he recognizes there are many bumps in the road for scientific discovery.

“One has to be very persistent,” he said. “I think that failure along the way comes with the territory. There’s a lot of troubleshooting and persistence required. If something doesn’t work, you try again or try in a different way. So, it’s a constant challenge and that’s part of the fun of the whole thing.”

The Ross Prize in Molecular Medicine was established in conjunction with the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research and the Springer Nature journal Molecular Medicine.

Read more about the Ross Prize and past awardees:

Empowering Girls in STEM, Improving Futures for All

An engineering from Google gives a presentation.

The New York Academy of Sciences empowers young women to pursue STEM-related careers.

Published November 10, 2020

By Roger Torda

The New York Academy of Sciences and its Global STEM Alliance partners want to grow the STEM pipeline, and engage and retain more young women in STEM-related careers. Our programs connect motivated, enthusiastic female mentors with smart, STEM-focused high school girls from around the world to help them develop essential 21st century skills.

In this video meet some of the amazing girls in the 1000 Girls, 1000 Futures program committed to a future in STEM.

Building Bridges in the Humanities and Sciences

To understand how Nicholas B. Dirks is leading The New York Academy of Sciences, it may be helpful to learn more about three of his passions: the liberal arts, interdisciplinary studies, and southern India.

Published May 28, 2020

By Roger Torda

Nicholas Dirks is a historian, anthropologist and accomplished university administrator. To understand the arc of his career—and how he will lead The New York Academy of Sciences—it may be helpful to understand three of his passions: the liberal arts, interdisciplinary studies, and southern India. The southern India story begins when Dirks was quite young.

A Magical Year

Dirks’ father, then a professor at the Yale Divinity School, took his family to South India in 1963, when Nicholas was a young boy. J. Edward Dirks had received a Fulbright grant to teach at a college in Chennai, then known as Madras, and the experience came at an impressionable time for his young son.

“I read a lot as a kid,” Dirks recalled in a recent interview. “And here all of a sudden, it was almost as if a book opened up, and the pages that I was reading felt alive and real in a way that nothing really had quite done before.”

This is the way Dirks put it in an introduction to a collection of his essays:

“I had no way of knowing I was going to miss out on the emergence of the Beatles, though I had the usual concerns about leaving my junior high school friends and the eighth grade. But I was excited by the prospect of adventure… and, as it turned out, the year was magical. The college campus did have acres of jungle, and there were peacocks, cobras, and leopard cats, much to my mother’s horror. I attended school in a khaki uniform; studied the south Indian drum, the mridangam… and learned how to negotiate the extremely efficient bus system of the city of Madras.”

Dirks would go back to India many times throughout his life, and he anchored much of his scholarship there.

Wesleyan University

Back in the U.S. with his family after a year, Dirks was influenced by visiting speakers at church services at Yale, and by the University’s chaplain, William Sloan Coffin, a prominent supporter of the Civil Rights movement and critic of the war in Vietnam. In high school, Dirks devoured books on philosophy and the social sciences assigned by an influential teacher, who also recommended that Dirks apply to Wesleyan University. Wesleyan famously was open to diverse interests and liberal studies, and Dirks was sold when he discovered Wesleyan had a group of South Indian musicians and a program in ethnomusicology; he could study mridangam —the south Indian drum—there.

Dirks arrived at Wesleyan’s campus in Middletown, CT in the fall of 1968. He could not help but be influenced by all the unrest around the war in Vietnam, which was at its peak:

“Initially I thought I was going to major in philosophy, because I was interested in ideas. I think a combination of my experience in India and the war in Vietnam led me increasingly, however, to think that I needed to study Asia…. It was important to me personally, and it was also important to all of us politically. And I felt I needed to understand not so much Asia’s philosophy and religion, but instead, its history and politics and economics.”

Dirks majored in Asian and African Studies. For a senior thesis, he traveled back to the state of Tamil Nadu, and learned to speak Tamil in the city of Madurai. It was a difficult six months, amid crowds and poverty, but Dirks was writing about Gandhi and the anti-caste movement in southern India, and became very interested in connections between all this and the Civil Rights movement back home. Dirks decided to study the history of southern India in graduate school, and he applied to the University of Chicago.

The University of Chicago

When Dirks arrived in Chicago in 1972, he came to a university that had built a major South Asian studies program, with faculty from across the full range of the humanities and social sciences. Dirks took good advantage of the opportunity: “You could do just about anything in this kind of area studies program. You could study ideas, literature, social change, economics, or the role of science in society. Area studies drew on multiple disciplines and tapped into some of the most central concerns of top thinkers at the university.”

The University of Chicago was also an important center for cultural anthropology, and Dirks found anthropology helped him in “trying to come to grips with how to study India from the point of view of an American by birth and upbringing.” Dirks was also drawn to the types of questions anthropologists were asking, especially about cultural relativism:

“It seemed to me that anthropology was taking on some of the big questions of the time…. What is the nature of cultural difference? Are fundamental beliefs—in terms of judgement, in terms of fundamental common sense and orientation toward the world—determined by culture? Or are they determined by biology? Are there universal laws that allow you to understand “difference” in all of its complexity? These were not issues at the time that historians were thinking about a great deal. But it was very much part of the milieu of the anthropology group there.”

Dirks continued: “The interdisciplinary mix of these first years of professional scholarship not only built on the interdisciplinary base of my undergraduate days but also launched a lifelong conversation in my own work, teaching, and thought about the relationships among history, anthropology, and critical theory.”

For his dissertation topic, Dirks turned to the social, political, and economic relationships within the “little kingdoms” of southern India, regions of varying size ruled by local chiefs dating back to the thirteenth century. Dirks used historical approaches, with archival research in London, New Delhi, and in the small city of Pudukkottai. Dirks then spent a year in Pudukkottai, the former capital of one of the “little kingdoms,” doing the kind of field study that is at the heart of cultural anthropology.

As he was writing his dissertation, Dirks gained teaching experience at a small, nearby college, and then, at 27, headed west to Pasadena when he was offered his first fulltime job.

California Institute of Technology

In 1978, Dirks began what would be eight years at Caltech. He taught Introduction to Asian Civilization, a distribution course. He made another trip to India to research his first book, The Hollow Crown, a study of Pudukkottai using approaches from both ethnography and history. And Dirks also got to know accomplished scholars in the hard sciences.

“They had this wonderful, storied, faculty club called The Athenaeum,” Dirks recalled. “And they had these round tables that facilitated random seating. The idea was that you would go and meet faculty outside of your department or division. And it turned out that a number of the senior scientists were the ones most interested in talking to a young faculty member who had just arrived to teach courses in humanities and the social sciences.”

To Dirks, these seemed like Renaissance figures, interested in everything. The group included Max Delbrück, a Nobel Laureate who was a pioneer in the study of molecular genetics. He got to know Richard Feynman, the colorful Nobel Laureate in theoretical physics. “And I got to know Murray Gell-Mann, the inventor of the quark, because he had a great interest in Indian philosophy,” Dirks recalled. “And you know, it was world opening, eye opening in every way, to be there with somebody who invented the quark who wanted to ask you about some esoteric eleventh century Indian philosopher.”

Dirks said he started seeing connections between the hard sciences and his own fields of study. “You know, until I went to Caltech, I thought that in academia, one went into science and engineering, or you went into humanities and social science,” Dirks said. “And so for me, being at Caltech was, in effect, an opportunity to live across the two cultures.”

The conversations at the round tables, Dirks said, mirrored in some ways what he experienced in India. The hard sciences were strange and familiar at the same time. Strange because they were built on foundations of knowledge he never studied. “But they were also familiar because some of the core questions that people were asking were things I was interested in as well,” Dirks continued, adding:

“And anthropology was an interesting point of connection, because you began with discussions, for example, concerning the debate between nature and culture, of relevance to science as well as social science. But you were also attuned to debates about different world views. And it was an easy move from there to ask questions about the meaning of the universe, and then, say, to cosmology. Astrophysicists were naturally drawn to questions that bridged science and philosophy. And, as we talked about a wide range of subjects, we all realized that even the ways we use metaphors to understand the world are similar, whether you’re thinking in terms of history or whether you’re thinking in terms of natural laws.”

The University of Michigan

From Caltech, Dirks moved to the University of Michigan, where he would have graduate students for the first time. He assumed a joint appointment in the history and anthropology departments and, with a colleague, built an interdepartmental PhD program in both disciplines. It was a good time to start a program formalizing a relationship between the two fields.

Many historians at the time were de-emphasizing politics and intellectual history, focusing instead on social and cultural phenomena, perspectives that aligned with touchpoints in cultural anthropology. And scholars in anthropology were placing more emphasis on political and economic forces, the traditional frameworks of historical research.

Columbia University

The historical turn in anthropology, in addition to Dirks’ work in founding the interdepartmental PhD program at Michigan, led to an offer in 1997 to chair the oldest department of anthropology in the country, at Columbia University.

Dirks broadened the department, recruiting new faculty from Asia and Africa, and supported research in colonial and postcolonial studies, increasingly popular areas of focus at the time. And in 2001, Dirks published his second book, Castes of Mind, in which he demonstrated the extent to which the caste system had changed under British colonial rule, and was changing still as it became the social base of many postcolonial political movements. The book won several major awards and is still widely taught in graduate curricula in the U.S. and India.

Earlier, at the University of Michigan, Dirks started honing administrative skills, having discovered that bridging the anthropology and history departments would require that he drive institutional change. In 2004, at Columbia, Dirks stepped into administration full time, giving him opportunities to promote interdisciplinary study across all of the liberal arts and sciences. He became Vice President (later, Executive Vice President) of the Arts and Sciences and Dean of the Faculty.

In his new roles at Columbia, Dirks oversaw 6 schools, 29 departments, and a number of special programs and labs. Dirks channeled his learnings from Caltech and made special efforts to reach out to the chairs of the science departments. He committed to renovating science buildings and laboratories, and commenced planning for a new science building. Even there, Dirks says he “built on his interdisciplinary interests” by creating a building plan that located the laboratories of scientists from different disciplines adjacent to each other “so that they would have to interact.”

Of his new role at Columbia, Dirks said: “That’s where I really began to understand not just the intellectual interests of scientists, but, also the needs that they have, what it takes to allow great research to take place in the natural and physical sciences.”

Dirks also stepped up fundraising at Columbia, and in 2008, he helped the university establish a Global Center in Mumbai.

University of California, Berkeley

In 2013, Dirks moved back to California, to become the tenth chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley. As with Columbia, he would have responsibilities across all the arts and sciences, including engineering, law, and business, but now at a public research university with a $2.4 billion budget.

At his inauguration ceremony, Dirks, in charge of a world-renowned university dependent on public funding, said he wanted to “re-assert the value of research and higher education for the public good.” And reflecting his long interest in interdisciplinary approaches to the humanities and sciences, he promised leadership to build bridges—rather than barriers—in academia:

“I resist the stark divide between teaching and research, between general and professional education, between basic and applied research, between the arts and the sciences, between private interests and public good, between our local obligations and our global ambitions, between disciplinary specialization and multidisciplinary collaboration, between our commitment to diversity and to academic excellence, between the goals of a college and the aspirations of a university.”

Dirks’ accomplishments as chancellor include significant improvements in undergraduate facilities and programs, such as a new initiative in data science and data analytics that serves students across all majors.

Dirks also strengthened alumni relations and reorganized the fundraising system. This led to large increases in donations—almost $500 million in 2016 alone—which helped offset ongoing reductions in public funding.

Dirks built connections to institutions around the world, establishing partnerships with Cambridge University and the National University of Singapore. Dirks also helped develop a joint research and educational partnership with Tsinghua University in the Chinese city of Shenzhen. And, with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Dirks partnered with Tsinghua University in Beijing on a joint research center focusing on energy and climate change.

In the US, Dirks invested in research collaborations in neuroscience and genomics, and strengthened ties with the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) medical school. Dirks also guided Berkeley’s participation in the $600 million Chan Zuckerberg BioHub, a partnership with Stanford and UCSF, to develop technologies to improve healthcare.

The New York Academy of Sciences

Dirks’ most recent scholarship has been on the history and future of the American university. After being recruited to lead The New York Academy of Sciences, Dirks noted that, “As I see it, The New York Academy of Sciences is a very fitting culmination to all the things that I’ve been doing in my career…. it promotes scientific research, it aims to connect scientific expertise with policy discussions more broadly, and it is committed to science education. I intend to build on its long and venerable history of connecting science with the core issues and challenges of our time.”

Dirks returned to New York with plans to marshal the resources of the Academy, which he describes as a “learned society open to everybody,” to help address the most pressing questions and problems facing the world: Instead, he accepted the position just before the pandemic, which brought the entire world’s attention to the role of science in combating disease. In his first few months at the helm, he launched a series of webinars to address scientific questions having to do with the nature of the virus, the development of vaccines and other therapies, and the broader impact of the pandemic, including the rise of skepticism about science itself. And yet, as he wrote at the time:

“Almost every major issue we’re confronting today is of central concern to the Academy: whether it’s climate change, the pandemic or infectious disease more broadly, the relationship of inequality to health outcomes, or the whole set of questions that arise with technology— for example, machine learning, artificial intelligence and robotics as they promise new kinds of scientific solutions while at the same time threatening our traditional understandings of the difference between machines and humans. In my view, the Academy can and should play a critical role in enabling our city, our nation, and the globe to take on these issues with the requisite commitment to scientific knowledge, perspective, education, and advocacy.”

The world has changed a great deal since Dirks was a junior high school student in Madras. “When I first went to India I was fascinated by cultural difference,” Dirks said. “But gradually I became more struck by our human commonality — and by the forces of modernity that link us all closer and closer together.” That deep understanding of commonality, coupled with his long history of building bridges not just across cultures but across the disciplines of the arts and the sciences, will help Nicholas Dirks effectively lead The New York Academy of Sciences as it enters its third century.

Nicholas Dirks lives in New York City and Berkeley, with his wife, Janaki Bakhle, a Professor of History at UC Berkeley and author of Savarkar: The Making of Hindutva. Dirks himself has recently published the quasi autobiographical book, City of Intellect: The Uses and Abuses of the University.

Photos by: Keegan Houser

Teaming Up to Advance Brain Research

An illustrated graphic of two brains working together.

The New York Academy of Sciences and Aspen Brain Institute celebrate a decade of collaboration.

Published May 1, 2020

By Melanie Brickman Borchard, PhD, MSc

***Glenda Greenwald*** *President and Founder, Aspen Brain Institute*

Bringing together some of the world’s greatest thinkers is no small accomplishment. But a decade ago, a seemingly chance meeting in Aspen led to a partnership that would bring some of the world’s leading figures from science, politics and entertainment to landmark events in the field of neuroscience, early childhood development and STEM education.

Such innovators as Edward Boyden (MIT), George Church (Harvard), Christof Koch (Allen Institute for Brain Science), Philip Low (NeuroVigil), Helen Mayberg (Emory University), Andrew Schwartz (University of Pittsburgh), Nora Volkow (NIH) as well as former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, former Congressman Patrick Kennedy, First Lady of New York City Chirlane McCray, and iconic film star Goldie Hawn, Founder, The Goldie Hawn Foundation, have all been guest speakers at programs developed by the New York Academy of Sciences and the Aspen Brain Institute.

Teaming Up to Advance Brain Research

The partnership began when President Emeritus of the New York Academy of Sciences, Mr. Ellis Rubinstein, attended a dinner hosted by Aspen Brain Institute Founder and President, Glenda Greenwald at her Aspen home in the spring of 2009. They quickly discovered their mutual passion for bringing scientific knowledge to the wider community, so when Mrs. Greenwald asked President Rubinstein if he would like to partner on a global brain research conference, he promptly said yes and a partnership was born.

Since that meeting the New York Academy of Sciences and Aspen Brain Institute have brought together the most innovative, important and inspiring individuals together to discuss topics on the cutting edge of science.

“The seeds were planted between the Aspen Brain Institute (ABI) and the New York Academy of Sciences at that dinner,” said Glenda Greenwald, “and the partnership is still very much blossoming and bearing fruit.”

The Most Important Advancements in Science

In the years that followed, the two organizations developed scores of scientific symposia, public programs, podcasts, and e-Briefing multimedia reports that highlighted the most important advancements in science.

“Thanks to Glenda Greenwald’s personal participation as well as the generous support of the Aspen Brain Institute, we jointly convened a number of significant conferences that engaged some of the greatest innovators in science today,” said Ellis Rubinstein.

These joint symposia have focused on such notable topics as:

Cracking the Neural Code: Exploring how the activity of individual neurons and neuronal circuits gives rise to higher order cognition and behavior, with talks on areas like mapping neural networks;
Accelerating Translational Neurotechnology: Exploring innovative scientific, clinical, and organizational models for advancing the translation of neuroscience research into technologies for neurological and psychiatric disease;
Shaping the Developing Brain: Exploring the latest discoveries from cognitive neuroscience and experimental psychology regarding typical and atypical development of human learning and memory, emotion, and social behavior in early life; and
The Enhanced Human — Risks and Opportunities: Exploring existing and emerging enhancement technologies, with a focus on gene editing and artificial intelligence as examples of technologies with broad capabilities and ethical concerns.

“These conferences and public programs were not only scientifically outstanding, but also often awe-inspiring,” Rubinstein commented. “For me, the most moving moment was in the Bionic Skeletons and Beyond program. Watching Amanda Boxtel — a long-time paraplegic — walk across the stage thanks to a wearable bionic exoskeleton, was truly remarkable.”

Part of the Academy’s Global STEM Alliance

In 2017 the ABI began supporting the Academy’s Global STEM Alliance (GSA), a coalition of more than 250 organizations united in their commitment to increase the number and diversity of students in the STEM pipeline. For two years, the ABI sponsored a Social Impact Challenge for young, high-achieving STEM students from around the world.

“I fell in love with the GSA concept of a global, online peer network of high school students collaborating on solving world problems,” said Greenwald. “The global aspect, the STEM aspect, and the brilliant innovation of the kids were all phenomenal.”

“In working with The New York Academy of Sciences, I have appreciated their wide open vision — the ability of the organization to stay topical and timely so that we could highlight the most current and exciting research, as well as bring in the highest level scientists at our conferences,” said Greenwald.

Both organizations anticipate that their decade-long partnership will extend well into the future, with many more years of progressive and collaborative programs to come.

Good Teachers Yield Promising Returns for Confident Students

A teacher and students inside a high school science lab.

Developing a strong future workforce starts with training teachers to be confident in their instruction of computer science, starting in students’ early school years.

Published May 1, 2020

By Ravi Kumar S.

Ravi Kumar S
President, Infosys Ltd. and Chairperson Infosys Foundation USA

Over the past few years, there has been growing acknowledgment that it is important to make computer science a core component of K-12 education. And how could there not be? With 500,000 jobs currently available in the computing sector and projections that these jobs will grow at twice the rate of others, there is no ignoring that computer science is not just the future of work, but very much the present.

K-12 education should be setting our children up for postsecondary success, but multiple studies show that if students are not meaningfully exposed to STEM subjects by middle school, especially girls, they will never take an interest in them later on. How do we ensure that our children study these subjects early and continue them into their careers?

The answer is training teachers. Too often we bypass these critical members of our workforce, but that is a mistake. The average teacher will reach thousands of students throughout their career so their potential for impact in the classroom is huge. Developing a strong future workforce starts with learning computer science at a young age, and that means training and retaining confident teachers.

Here are five ways to make computer science professional development effective for teachers:

1. Offer multi-day trainings through multiple channels

Computer science can be challenging and intimidating. In order to get teachers more comfortable and familiar with the material, professional development should be sustained for multiple days rather than a one-day meeting or a single intervention seminar so they gain the confidence and competence to stand in front of their classes and teach the subject. Additionally, in-person trainings should be supplemented by online resources and coursework so teachers can continue to develop their skills and increase their facility with these concepts. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) outlines specific requirements for professional development and underscores the importance of sustained Professional Development (PD).

2. Create a community

Creating a community is key when it comes to teaching computer science, especially for teachers who are new to the subject. Successful PD should foster peer networks through online forums that encourage teachers to connect with one another, ask questions and share best practices so that success is shared across schools and states, and pain points can be worked through collaboratively.

3. Keep it collaborative and hands-on

Computer science is collaborative, so learning how to teach it should be as well. Beyond the hard-technical skills that are gained from the subject, students and teachers alike will benefit from a wide array of soft-skills — creativity, critical thinking, problem solving and collaboration. And these skills are necessary for all disciplines, so the applications are much wider than just the computing space. Furthermore, group learning helps to strengthen the community that teachers will walk away with once the PD is over.

4. Offer variety

Just like math, science or history, computer science covers a multitude of skills and subject areas, so there is no one-size-fits-all course when it comes to PD. In order to successfully integrate computer science principles across grade-levels and skill-levels, there needs to be a diverse offering so every teacher can find something that is relevant to their grade, ability and comfort-level.

5. Make it classroom relevant and contextual

PD should go beyond abstract theories and concepts, and the content should be relevant for the context in which it will be used. This means teachers should receive tools, such as lesson plans, teaching guides and other resources to support classroom instruction, and the materials should be adaptable to real-life scenarios and common core subjects so all students can take interest in what they are learning.

Underinvesting in the PD of teachers hinders the growth of our students. But if we ensure that teachers have the confidence and tools they need to bring the principles of computer science into the classroom, it will reverberate through to their students and help to light a spark in all students and build a healthy pipeline of tech talent for the future.

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