A Harvard Financier, Jeffrey Epstein, Helps Bring Brain Science to the Public

NEW YORK, Nov. 11, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- One of the hottest areas on the Internet is not gaming or sports, but academic content, especially in the sciences. In fact, subscribers to educational YouTube channels tripled in 2013, with popular science topics leading the pack. Producers like AsapScience, or TED can get millions of viewers over months. Missing on TV and online however, is in-depth academic content, especially in the sciences, despite booming viewership for the small number of brainiac programs.

Now an unusual Harvard investor and private financier, called Jeffrey Epstein, has helped fund NeuroTV, the largest online network devoted to academic interviews on everything neuroscience. NeuroTV's guest speakers are not run of the mill professors: two recent guests, May-Britt and Edvard Moser, directors of the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, were awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of grid cells. Other guests include: Hank Greely, Director of the Center for Law and the Biosciences and Professor of Genetics, at the Stanford School of Medicine and Sebastian Seung Professor of Computational Neuroscience at MIT.

"NeuroTV provides in-depth interview models, that delves deeply into science topics," Jeffrey Epstein asserted whose foundation, the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation, established the graduate Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard University in 2003 with a $30 million dollar gift. "The episodes don't tone down academic language, but provide video content that can be used in classrooms around the world, as well as a platform to educate and inspire."

In addition to establishing the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, which studies the mathematics of evolution with a focus on diseases, Epstein was a former board member of Harvard's Mind, Brain and Behavior Committee and has funded numerous brain research initiatives at the university. Epstein's affinity for promoting public access to academic science however, probably stems from his own self-taught background and the belief that higher education should be widely available.

To date, NeuroTV has launched 13 episodes with another 13 planned for Season 2. Viewership is rapidly growing with episodes typically gathering thousands of viewers within the first six months.

SOURCE www.jeffreyepstein.org

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