Geoff Haines-Stiles was a Senior Producer and director on Carl Sagan's original COSMOS series (3 Emmys, and the Peabody Award), and Erna Akuginow worked with Carl on the Nucleaus sequel. They partnered to create the first live broadcasts from the South Pole and the Antarctic Peninsula, and then collaborated with the Smithsonian Institution and the Brazilian government and-with the loan of the NASA Advanced Communications Technology Satellite and a team of engineers-produced the first 2-way interactive TV specials from the heart of the Amazon rainforest. Their Creation of the Universe special with an Advisory Board of 6 Nobel Laureates was one of public television's most-loved and most re-run science specials. In 2010-12 they created the 3-part PBS project on climate science and clean energy solutions, "EARTH: The Operators' Manual," which the New York Times called "one of the more interesting documentary series to come along in years."
Geoff and Erna were 2013 winners of AGU's "Robert C. Cowen Award" for sustained contributions to science journalism honoring their "more than 30 years of work with leading Earth and space science researchers, and their role in sharing cutting-edge science with the public through a wide range of innovative communications tools, including broadcast television, spoken word presentations, online media and educational publications." Breakthrough science communication initiatives include "Marsapalooza" and POLAR-PALOOZA, a traveling science road show that visited 25 communities across the USA and also China, Australia, Brazil, Russia, Norway and McMurdo Station, Antarctica.
Their work has been supported by peer-reviewed grants from NASA, NSF, NOAA and other government agencies, and has appeared on PBS, Discovery/Science Channel, CNN, TBS, NASA-TV, and on leading international broadcasters such as the BBC, Channel 4, CCTV, NHK, and Al Jazeera.
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