NYU Today
April 2009 issue

Red Burns Honored with Women in Science Award
from San Francisco’s Exploratorium

By Richard Pierce

Red Burns, arts professor and Tokyo Broadcasting Chair of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at the Tisch School of the Arts, has been awarded a Women in Science: Inspiring Women in the Field award by San Francisco’s Exploratorium.  She and her four fellow honorees will be feted at the 32nd Annual Awards Dinner on May 18, 2009.

The Exploratorium, housed within the walls of San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts, is a collage of hundreds of science, art, and human perception exhibits, and is a leader in the movement to promote museums as informal education centers, among other things.  It has a long tradition honoring leaders in science, technology, and education.

Burns is being paid homage to for having made a tremendous impact on the communications field.   During the 1970’s, as head of NYU’s Alternate Media Center, she designed and directed a series of telecommunications projects including two-way television for and by senior citizens, telecommunications applications to serve the developmentally disabled, and one of the first Teletext field trials in the United States (at WETA in Washington, D.C.). She also produced a CD-ROM on chaos theory.

Her honors include Distinguished Leadership Award for achievement in technology from the New York Hall of Science and the Mayor of New York’s Award for Excellence in Science and Technology.