Steven E. Koonin is founding director of NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress, a consortium of academic, corporate, and government partners that pursues research and education activities to develop and demonstrate informatics technologies for urban problems in the “living laboratory” of New York City.

Previously the U.S. Department of Energy’s undersecretary for science, Koonin also has been a faculty member at the California Institute of Technology, a research fellow at the Niels Bohr Institute, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow, provost of Caltech and chief scientist at BP.

For the first time in history, more than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas; in just a few more decades, the world's population will exceed 9 billion, 70 percent of whom will live in cities. Enabling those cities to deliver services effectively, efficiently, and sustainably while keeping their citizens safe, healthy, prosperous, and well-informed will be among the most important undertakings in this century. Koonin will review how we are establishing a center for urban science and focus on bringing informatics to the study and operation of urban systems. He will touch on the rational, the structure, and the substance of the Center’s work and the ways in which it will enrich NYC and contribute to global issues. Taxis, lights, sewers, phones, and buildings will all enter into the discussion in novel way