Faculty and Courses

The caliber of the WSS faculty is unmatched; WSS professors include Nobel laureates, Breakthrough Prize recipients, and other cutting-edge researchers. Through WSS courses, scholars have the opportunity to learn from these professors, ask them questions, and receive feedback on course projects.

Previous course offerings include:

  • Accelerate, Collide, Detect: The Future of Particle Accelerators for Pushing the Limits of Physics with Barry Barish, Linde Professor of Physics, emeritus, California Institute of Technology | 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics recipient.
  • Hacking Biology for Nanotechnology with Rein V. Ulijn, Einstein Professor of Chemistry at Hunter College, Founding Director of the Nanoscience Initiative at Advanced Science Research Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY | 2021 Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship — the U.S. Department of Defense’s most prestigious single-investigator award recipient.
  • Space, Time, and Matter with Brian Greene, Director of Columbia’s Center for Theoretical Physics, Professor of Physics and Mathematics | Award-winning author and pioneer of groundbreaking superstring theory discoveries.
  • Big Brains, Small Brains: The Conundrum of Comparing Brains and Intelligence with Suzana Herculano-Houzel, Vanderbilt University Associate Director for Communications, Vanderbilt Brain Institute and Associate Professor, Biological Sciences and Psychology | Pioneer in counting neurons of human and other animals’ brains.
  • Rewriting the Code of Life with CRISPR: How Studies of Bacteria Revolutionized the Genetic Engineering Toolkit with Samuel Sternberg, Columbia University Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics | NIH Director’s New Innovator Award 2021 recipient.
  • Einstein’s Astrophysical Messengers: The Theory and Discovery of Gravitational Waves with Gabriela González, Boyd Professor of Physics at Louisiana State University, former LIGO Scientific Collaboration Spokesperson | 2017 National Academy of Sciences Award for Scientific Discovery recipient.
 Applications for the 2024 cohort of World Science Scholars are now closed. Please check back in in the fall for information about applying to the 2025 cohort.