A few years ago, physicist Damian Pope was talking to a colleague at a party who mentioned that Einstein’s theory of relativity helps maintain the accuracy of GPS, something that took him by surprise. “I felt strongly that the link between relativity and the GPS was a powerful story and that most people didn’t know about it,” Pope said. “I wanted to help spread the word.”

For three years as science adviser at the U.S. State Department and USAID, Nina Fedoroff urged the world research community to collaborate on “truly global problems that do not respect political boundaries or political positions.”