Ellis Rubinstein

Rubinstein grew up in New York City, earned a B.A. in English literature, with Great Distinction at the University of California, Berkeley spent one year in that university's doctoral program and then taught high school English for three years before entering the world of publishing. In 2006, Rubinstein received an honorary doctorate from Hallym University in South Korea and from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

It was at IEEE Spectrum that Rubinstein's work won a National Magazine Award for his definitive journalistic account of the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island (TMI) and the special issue on TMI which he edited. Under the mentorship of Spectrum Editor-in-Chief, Donald Christiansen, Rubinstein organized and edited a second National Magazine Award-winning issue on the role of science and technology in war and peace. In addition, three other special issues developed and edited by Mr. Rubinstein for Spectrum were named National Magazine Award finalists.

From Spectrum, Rubinstein went to Science 85, an innovative magazine translating the advances of science for a highly educated lay audience. Within months of his arrival as Managing Editor, Rubinstein brought the magazine yet another National Magazine Award for a four-part series "Technology for Peace."

In 1987, Mr. Rubinstein joined Newsweek as one of two Senior Editors overseeing general news coverage. This turned out to be one of the most intense periods in recent US history for newsweeklies. Mr. Rubinstein edited investigative articles for many cover stories: on the Iran-Contra controversies besetting President Ronald Reagan, on the sinking of the Stark, and much more. During the second half of 1987, Rubinstein took over a section of the magazine devoted to feature articles in science, medicine, religion, and education. His signal achievement was a cover package entitled "The Search for Adam and Eve." This was the first description for the general public of the then novel DNA-tracing of the origins of modern humans in Africa. With the exception of editions featuring the Iran-Contra news, this issue became the highest selling edition of Newsweek over a two-year period.

In 1988, Mr. Rubinstein was hired to take over what was then a novel tabloid format newspaper for scientists called The Scientist. Only 2 years old, it was experiencing difficulty attracting readers and advertisers. Under Mr. Rubinstein's leadership, it became so highly read within a year that it became regarded by the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Science, as unwelcome competition. Consequently, he recruited Rubinstein to join Science as News Editor.

From 1993-2002 Rubinstein was Editor of Science magazine. During his tenure there, he conducted the first one-on-one interview with Chinese President Jiang Zemin granted to a Western magazine editor, and President Bill Clinton's first interview with a science magazine. In addition, Rubinstein authored an investigative account of the cell line in which researcher Robert Gallo grew the AIDS virus. This article prompted an inquiry by the National Institutes of Health and was the basis for a chapter in a government report.

Other landmarks of Rubinstein's tenure at Science included the launch of innovative online services such as a daily news service, ScienceNow, and a unique, global Web site for graduate students and post-docs, Science's Next Wave. In addition, Rubinstein initiated a novel Web-based service called SAGE KE (Science of Aging Knowledge Environment), creating a community of investigators pursuing the science of aging. And he negotiated the first national license to be paid for by the Chinese government for access to Western content. The service later came to be used by hundreds of thousands of Chinese investigators.

After joining the then 185-year-old New York Academy of Sciences in November 2002 and before retiring on December 31, 2019 to become President Emeritus, Mr. Rubinstein quadrupled the Academy's revenues by developing a series of novel initiatives that address many of the planet's grand challenges. Most recently, the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations, Amina Mohammed, encourage Mr. Rubinstein to organize an alliance between the Academy and both the World Bank and UNICEF to catalyze the formation of an innovative artificial-intelligence-based global skilling initiative designed to address the challenges of Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Education for All) and 5 (Gender Equity). A proof-of-concept was successfully completed in New York City during the spring of 2020. It addressed a critical need of the healthcare systems besieged by the Covid-19 pandemic: nurses trained to handle critical care in ICUs. An AI skilling platform trained hundreds of nurses in the Mt. Sinai Health System in a matter of 16 hours over a week rather than what would traditionally have taken 8-10 weeks.

Before the arrival of Antonio Guterres as Secretary General of the United Nations, former Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon asked Mr. Rubinstein to utilize the Academy's extraordinary private sector network of experts to catalyze innovative partnerships that would advance the Global Goals effort endorsed by every nation on the planet. The result has been an initiative engaging academic, industry and government leaders who have been prioritizing high potential paths to address the challenges of improving Early Childhood Development, addressing urbanization and the special needs of people in crisis and improving sustainable production and consumption.

Other such Academy-led public-private partnerships have included the initially named Sackler Institute for Nutrition Science, now the New York Academy of Sciences Institute for Nutrition Science. This has, over more than a decade, been a global effort to devise and catalyze interventions that can help the 2 billion people on the planet suffering from under- and over-nutrition and landmark initiatives in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's Disease, in smart and sustainable cities, and in innovation policy.

Surely one of the most inspiring of all new initiatives of the Academy under Mr. Rubinstein has been the Global STEM Alliance. Beginning with a novel New York-based pilot program in STEM education involving thousands of children and science teachers in the city's most under-served areas, this effort was first recognized by a multi-million dollar National Science Foundation to enable the Academy and the State University of New York to replicate the New York City pilot in 6 cities. This has spread to other American cities and even to Barcelona, Spain, Malaysia and Ecuador. But with the ever-increasing interest in the Academy's STEM initiatives clear, a transformative approach to inspiring children in science, math and technology was then undertaken through the scalable power of Internet-based social networking. Thus, Mr. Rubinstein today oversees the "Global STEM Alliance," a partnership of over 300 institutions in more than 100 countries who are committed to playing a part in the Academy's unprecedented pair of social networks: the "Junior Academy" for the world's most gifted children ages 13–19 and "1000 Girls, 1000 Futures", designed to provide soft skills to high school girls who like science and math but have no female role models in their families or communities and are likely to be lost to the future work force in technology-based fields from science to fashion to music and finance.

The range of these innovative activities have attracted an extraordinary network of supporters to the Academy, which has partnered with—literally—a thousand institutions in the academic, industrial, government and non-government sectors. The President's Council created by Mr. Rubinstein had 36 Nobel Laureates on it when he retired to become President Emeritus in the year 2000. It also boasted a score of CEOs and government leaders from across the globe. The Academy's Board included several philanthropists, the Presidents of 4 universities and academic medical centers, and the heads of research of IBM, Pfizer Inc, Johnson & Johnson, and PepsiCo.

Among the 21,000 Academy Members in 100 countries, experts are engaged in projects that are directly helping heads of state and ministers in countries such as Mexico and Malaysia, Spain and Russia, Qatar and Rwanda. And Academy programs have also been endorsed by the President of the United States, his Science Office and the US Department of State, National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health. Moreover, not only the Secretary General of the United Nations, but also the Deputy Secretary General and the heads of the UN agencies including the International Telecommunications Union, UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Health Organization have all endorsed Academy initiatives.

Finally, under Mr. Rubinstein's leadership, the Academy partnered with an increasingly well-known philanthropist in the sciences and arts, Mr. Len Blavatnik, to develop the world's most prestigious awards for young scientists and engineers. The Academy administers annual prizes for the most promising young innovators in the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel. The nominees come from essentially every research university, academic medical center, national research agency and independent research laboratory in those nations and the finalists and winners are becoming one of the world's most extraordinary networks.

Combining the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists with the Global STEM Alliance ... and adding further novel approaches to attracting and empowering the world's most innovative scientists and engineers—for example, the Innovators in Science Award supported by Takeda Pharmaceuticals to honor exceptional work in neuroscience, oncology, regenerative medicine and gastroenterology and the Interstellar Initiative funded by Japan's Agency for Medical Research and Development which is catalyzing novel global partnerships of young researchers in areas from neuroscience to oncology to artificial intelligence—and the Academy is rapidly assembling in its Third Century the "World's Smartest Network."

But the goal set by Mr. Rubinstein was not to simply build a prestigious list of names but to engage these innovators in collective action to improve the planet through science and technology. This was his mission and, he hopes, his legacy.

Even the home of the Academy is unusual for an organization that is two centuries old. Mr. Rubinstein oversaw the Academy's move to 7 World Trade Center, where it was the pioneer tenant in the first building to be rebuilt after 9/11/2001 on the former World Trade Center site.

Mr. Rubinstein is a Fellow of the AAAS and a member of the IEEE and the National Association of Science Writers. He is also a Foreign Member of the Royal Academy of Engineering Sciences of Sweden. For 6 years, Mr. Rubinstein was a member of the World Economic Forum, moderating panels in Davos, Switzerland. Today, he participates on the Council of Japan's prestigious Science and Technology in Society (STS) Forum, among other external activities.

• New York Academy of Sciences’ Official Website

1. "Ellis Rubinstein, President, NY Academy of Sciences: Catalyst for Excitement About Science in Schools.” Education Update, August 2005.

2. "China's Leader Commits to Basic Research, Global Science." Science. June 16, 2000: Vol. 288. no. 5473, pp. 1950–1953.

3. "Setting up a global laboratory". Marie Curie Actions

4. "New York Academy of Sciences Signs Lease At 7 WTC: Preeminent Scientific Institution to Take 40,000 SF on 40th Floor."