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Image from National Academy of Engineering This past week, the USA Science and Engineering Festival lost a dear friend and advisor —and America lost one of its true visionaries in education, engineering and technology.  Dr. Charles M. Vest was a tireless advocate for research and science in roles as President of the National Academy of Engineering and President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  He passed at home of pancreatic cancer at the age of 72. Dr. Vest was best known as the 15th president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,  serving from 1990 to 2004. He led…
Known as "the authority on the future of technology " and the world's oldest technology magazine,Technology Review - published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - is bringing its prestige and expertise back to the Festival as a Media Partner! Technology Review, published by MIT since 1899, continues today to provide unparalleled insights into cutting edge technologies that are changing the world and the way science and engineering do business. In returning as a Media Partner, the magazine joins a growing list of other top science media leaders who are also serving as Festival…
The innovative new opera by Tod Machover, Death and the Powers, opens this Friday for its world premiere in Monte Carlo at Opéra Garnier de Monte-Carlo. Machover gave Festival-goers a sneak peak of this hugely ambitious work earlier this summer at the 2010 World Science Festival, which included a thought-provoking conversation with AI legend Marvin Minsky. The opera—a brainchild of Machover's Opera of the Future Group at the MIT Media Lab in co-production with American Repertory Theatre—explores transhumanist and existential territory, such as mortality and theory of mind, as well as…
I'm auditing a really cool class at MIT this semester called "Documenting Science Through Video and New Media." In the first class, we watched some of the earliest science films ever made, microscopic vaudeville performances by cheese mites and flies, made into a little meta-documentary by New Scientist a couple years ago. The videos are really fun, combining a sense of wonder at the beauty and complexity of the natural world with a sense of the excitement and spectacle of moving pictures. Science and nature documentaries like these became a hugely popular hit, and still are today with series…
Just a quick note to dial up Ira Flatow's Science Friday show on NPR today at 3 pm EDT. Supporting information and the archived show can be found here. Guy-who-I-would-kill-to-be, Tom Levenson, will be on with Ira to speak about his new book, Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist. Here is also a link to other appearances Professor Levenson will be having related to the book. For those of you who don't know Thomas Levenson, he is currently a Professor, Interim Program Head, and Director of the Graduate Program in Science Writing at the…