On June 2nd, the 2016 Kavli Prizes in astrophysics, nanoscience, and neuroscience will be announced from the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo. The international biennial Prizes, $1 million (U.S.) cash awards in each field, recognize pioneering advances in our understanding of existence at its biggest, smallest, and most complex scales.

In New York City, the World Science Festival will hold an invitation-only breakfast program, live-streamed for free at http://www.worldsciencefestival.com/programs/kavli-prize-announcement. France Córdova, Director of the National Science Foundation, will deliver the keynote address at the event, which will be hosted by Dr. Richard Besser, ABC News’ Chief Health and Medical Editor, and will include a live satellite transmission of the announcement. The breakfast will conclude with a panel discussion of the Laureates’ Prize-winning work by three preeminent scientists: astrophysicist Nergis Mavalvala, nanoscientist Michal Lipson, and neuroscientist Cori Bargmann.

The World Science Festival’s 2016 Kavli Prizes breakfast will take place Thursday, June 2, 8-10 am EDT, at New York University’s Grand Hall (238 Thompson Street). The live-stream will begin at 8:15 am. Media interested in attending the breakfast should reach out to Blake Zidell at blake@blakezidell.com.

Kavli Laureates are chosen by committees whose members are recommended by six of the world’s most renowned science societies and academies. Winners, who are not notified in advance of the announcement, go on to receive gold medals, presented this year by H.R.H. Crown Prince Haakon, during a ceremony in Oslo. The ceremony is followed by a banquet at Oslo’s famed City Hall, the venue of such historic events as the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. Since its inaugural year, all U.S. laureates have also visited the Oval Office of the White House in recognition of the honor and the laureates’ scientific contributions.

Participants in the World Science Festival’s 2016 Kavli Prizes Breakfast

Richard Besser (host) is ABC News’ Chief Health and Medical Editor. In this role, he provides medical analysis and commentary for all ABC News broadcasts and platforms, including “World News with Diane Sawyer,” “Good Morning America,” and “Nightline.” Besser came to ABC News from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where he served as director of the Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response. He also served as acting director for the CDC. Besser began his career at the CDC in 1991 in the Epidemic Intelligence Service. Following this, he served for five years on the faculty of the University of California, San Diego, as the pediatric residency director. While in San Diego he worked for the county health department on the control of pediatric tuberculosis. He returned to the CDC in 1998, where he served in various capacities, including epidemiology section chief in the Respiratory Diseases Branch. He received a Surgeon General’s Medallion award for his leadership during the H1N1 response. Richard Besser holds a B.A. in economics from Williams College and received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He completed a residency and chief residency in pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.

France A. Córdova (keynote speaker) is an astrophysicist and the 14th director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the only government agency charged with advancing all fields of scientific discovery, technological innovation, and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. NSF is a $7.5-billion independent federal agency, with a mission that is vital to supporting our nation’s economy, security, and ability to remain a global leader. Córdova is president emerita of Purdue University, chancellor emerita of the University of California, Riverside, former vice chancellor for research at the University of California, Santa Barbara, department head at Penn State and deputy group leader at Los Alamos National Lab. She has served as NASA’s chief scientist and is a recipient of NASA’s highest honor, the Distinguished Service Medal. Her scientific contributions are in the areas of observational and experimental astrophysics, multi-spectral research on x-ray and gamma ray sources and space-borne instrumentation.

Cori Bargmann (panelist) is a neuroscientist at The Rockefeller University in New York who studies the biology of the brain, asking how genes, the environment, and experience interact to give rise to flexible behaviors. She recently co-chaired the NIH planning committee for the President’s BRAIN Initiative, a neuroscience program to advance studies of the brain in health and disease. Among other honors, she is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and received the 2012 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience and the 2013 Breakthrough Award in Life Sciences.

Michal Lipson (panelist) joined the Electrical Engineering faculty at Columbia University in July 2015. She completed her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Physics at the Technion in 1998, followed by a Postdoctoral position at MIT in the Materials Science Department. While at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University, she was named Cornell Given Foundation Professor of Engineering. Lipson was one of the main pioneers in the field of silicon photonics and is the inventor of several of the critical building blocks in the field including the GHz silicon modulator. She holds over 20 patents and is the author of over 200 technical papers. Professor Lipson has served as an IEEE Photonics society board of directors member, and co-organized numerous symposia and sessions in OSA conferences. She chaired and served on numerous committees including the Micro and Nanophotonics Subcommittee of CLEO (chair, 2006-2009). She is a co-founder of PicoLuz, a company specializing in nonlinear silicon photonic components. Her honors and awards include the MacArthur Fellow, Blavatnik Award, IBM Faculty Award, and the NSF Early Career Award. She is a fellow of OSA and IEEE. In 2014, she was named by Thomson Reuters as a top 1% highly cited researcher in the field of Physics.

Nergis Mavalvala (panelist) is a physicist whose research links the world of quantum mechanics, usually apparent only at the atomic scale, with some of the most powerful, yet elusive, forces in the cosmos. She has been working on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) since 1991, and was a member of the team that announced LIGO’s first detection of gravitational waves in 2016. She received a B.A. from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was a postdoctoral fellow and research scientist at the California Institute of Technology. Since 2002, she has been on the Physics faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she is now the Marble Professor of Physics and recipient of a 2010 MacArthur “genius” award.

Contact:
Blake Zidell
+1 718.643.9052, cell: +1 917.572.2493
blake@blakezidell.com

The Kavli Prizes recognize seminal scientific achievements in Astrophysics, Nanoscience and Neuroscience.

The Kavli Prize in Astrophysics recognizes outstanding achievement in advancing our knowledge and understanding of the origin, evolution, and properties of the universe, including the fields of cosmology, astrophysics, astronomy, planetary science, solar physics, space science, astrobiology, astronomical and astrophysical instrumentation, and particle astrophysics.

The Kavli Prize in Nanoscience recognizes outstanding achievement in the science and application of the unique physical, chemical, and biological properties of atomic, molecular, macromolecular, and cellular structures and systems that are manifest in the nanometer scale, including molecular self-assembly, nanomaterials, nanoscale instrumentation, nanobiotechnology, macromolecular synthesis, molecular mechanics, and related topics.

The Kavli Prize in Neuroscience recognizes outstanding achievement in advancing our knowledge and understanding of the brain and nervous system, including molecular neuroscience, cellular neuroscience, systems neuroscience, neurogenetics, developmental neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, computational neuroscience, and related facets of the brain and nervous system.

The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters appoints the three prize committees after receiving recommendations from the following international academies and scientific organizations:

The Chinese Academy of Science
The French Academy of Sciences
The Max Planck Society (Germany)
The National Academy of Sciences (U.S.)
The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
The Royal Society (U.K.)

The prize committees review the nominated candidates and submit their recommendations to the board of The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. The President of the Academy announces the prize winners.

First awarded in 2008, the Kavli Prizes have honored 31 scientists from seven countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Norway, Russia, and Sweden. In 2014, Alan H. Guth (U.S.), Andrei D. Linde (U.S.), and Alexei A. Starobinsky (Russia) shared the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics for pioneering the theory of cosmic inflation; Thomas W. Ebbesen (Norway), Stefan W. Hell (Germany), and Sir John B. Pendry (U.K.) won the Kavli Prize in Nanoscience for their transformative contributions to nano-optics; and Brenda Milner (U.K.), John O’Keefe (U.S.), and Marcus E. Raichle (U.S.) received the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience for their discovery of specialized brain networks for memory and cognition. Past awards have honored scientists for research ranging from the discovery of the Kuiper Belt to creating unprecedented methods for controlling matter on the nanoscale, to deepening our understanding of the basic neuronal mechanisms underlying perception and decision.

The Kavli Prize is a partnership between The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, The Kavli Foundation (U.S.), and The Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research. It is named after Fred Kavli, a Norwegian-born U.S. philanthropist and founder of The Kavli Foundation.

The World Science Festival (http://www.worldsciencefestival.com) gathers great minds in science and the arts to produce live and digital content that allows a broad general audience to engage with scientific discoveries. Through discussions, debates, theatrical works, interactive explorations, musical performances, intimate salons, and major outdoor experiences, the Festival takes science out of the laboratory and into the streets, parks, museums, galleries and premier performing arts venues of New York City and beyond.

Hailed a “new cultural institution” by The New York Times, the Festival has featured Alan Alda, Joshua Bell, Chuck Close, Glenn Close, Sylvia Earle, Philip Glass, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Stephen Hawking, John Hockenberry, Bill T. Jones, Charlie Kaufman, Mary-Claire King, Eric Lander, Richard Leakey, John Lithgow, Yo-Yo Ma, Bobby McFerrin, Oliver Sacks, Liev Schreiber, Anna Deavere Smith, Julie Taymor, E.O. Wilson, and Nobel Laureates David Baltimore, Steven Chu, David Gross, Eric Kandel, Dudley R. Herschbach, Roald Hoffmann, Leon Lederman, Paul Nurse, John C. Mather, Saul Perlmutter, William Phillips, Adam Riess, F. Sherwood Rowland, Horst Störmer, Jack W. Szostak, Gerard ‘t Hooft, Harold Varmus, James Watson, Steven Weinberg, Carl Wieman, and Frank Wilczek, among many others luminaries in science and the arts.

The annual live, weeklong New York Festivals, which launched in 2008, have collectively drawn more than a million and a half visitors, with millions more viewing the programs online. The World Science Festival’s original musical and theatrical works tour nationally and internationally, and March 2016 marked the launch of World Science Festival Brisbane. World Science U is the World Science Foundation’s online education arm where students and lifelong learners can dive more deeply through artfully produced digital education content presented by world-renowned scientists.

The World Science Festival is a production of the World Science Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization headquartered in New York City.