Doron Weber
Vice President, Programs
Doron Weber runs the programs for the Public Understanding of Science and Technology for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. He also directs the program in Digital Information Technology and the Dissemination of Knowledge, which seeks to study emerging developments in information technology and utilize those developments to make the benefits of human knowledge and human culture accessible to people everywhere. Mr. Weber has primary responsibility for the Foundation's efforts to educate and engage the public through books, radio, public and commercial television and film, theater, the Internet, and new media. He also supports selected scientific events of national concern and targeted public policy initiatives.
In 2004, the Foundation received the National Science Board's Public Service Award, citing Mr. Weber's program "for its innovative use of traditional media--books, radio, public television--and its pioneering efforts in theater and commercial television and films to advance public understanding of science and technology." Mr. Weber’s work at Sloan has been profiled in The Boston Globe, Fortune , and The American Way.
Prior to joining Sloan in 1995, Mr. Weber served as Director of Communications at The Rockefeller University (1991-1995), and Director of Communications for the Society for the Right to Die (1989-91). Earlier, he worked as a senior editor for The Reader's Catalog, a speechwriter for the United Jewish Appeal, and a screenwriter for both television and film. He has also been a teacher, tutor, taxi driver, romance novelist, busboy and boxer.
Mr. Weber has coauthored three nonfiction trade books: Safe Blood: Purifying the Nation's Blood Supply in the Age of AIDS (Free Press, 1990), The Complete Guide to Living Wills (Bantam Books, 1991), and Final Passages: Positive Choices for the Dying and their Loved One (Simon & Schuster, 1992, Fireside, 1993). His articles and reviews have appeared in, among other places, The New York Times, USA Today, Barron's, The Baltimore Sun, The Village Voice Literary Supplement, and the Boston Review. His first novel, The Deserters, was excerpted in the fall 2003 issue of Kinder-Link.
Mr. Weber was educated at Brown University (BA, 1977), the Sorbonne, and Oxford University (MA, 1981), where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He also received a Fulbright. He served for ten years (1995-2005) as secretary of the New York State Committee for the Rhodes Scholarships and currently serves as vice president of The Writers Room. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Mayor’s Committee on Public Understanding of Science, the U.S.A. Triathlon and the Century Club.