SFI External Professor C. Brandon Ogbunu (Yale University) received a 2024 Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communications from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Ogbunu is a computational biologist who studies complex problems in epidemiology, genetics, and evolution and is interested in how science, society, and culture intersect. Dedicated to public communication about these topics, Ogbunu is a frequent contributor to Undark, WIRED, and Scientific American. His recent SFI Community Lecture, “What is Lyfe?” explored what it would mean to think of biological systems from multiple dimensions including history, context, environment, nonlinearity, and narrative.
Selected from nearly 600 applicants, Ogbunu is one of 24 winners of this year’s awards. Spread across eight categories, the awards recognize science journalists, research scientists, and science communicators whose creative and original work helps connect the general public to issues and advances in science, engineering, and medicine. Recognized in the category “Research Scientist — Late Career,” Ogbunu’s winning articles include “Data Availability is Social Justice,” in Harvard Public Health Magazine, “Nobel Prize Debate Misses the Mark on the Real Culprits Ignoring Scientific Merit,” in Scientific American, and “The New Quest to Control Evolution,” in Quanta.
“This award is an enormous triumph. I've never before had my work at the intersection of science and society formally acknowledged in this manner, and serve as a profound boost to my interest in growing this area of my professional and intellectual identity,” says Ogbunu.