Bio

Jay Ingram Canadian Author

Science broadcaster and writer Jay Ingram was co-host of Discovery Channel's science show, Daily Planet for 16 years. It was television’s only daily hour-long prime-time science and nature news magazine. Jay joined Discovery in 1994 and was instrumental in helping shape the program format.

From 1979 to 1992, Ingram hosted CBC Radio's Quirks and Quarks and earned two ACTRA Awards, one for Best Host. In 1992 and 1993, Ingram hosted two CBC Radio series: Cranial Pursuits, a series “by, for and about the brain”, and The Talk Show, a series about language that won a Science in Society Journalism Award.

For 10 years, Jay wrote articles for popular children's publication Owl Magazine and also had a . weekly science column for the Toronto Star for 12 years.

From 2005 to 2015 he was Chair of the Science Communications Program at the Banff Centre (now part of Beakerhead), a unique undertaking to promote creative science writing, broadcasting and social media. He is also co-founder of Beakerhead, an arts and engineering happening which began in 2013 in Calgary, Alberta.

In 1984, Jay was awarded the Sandford Fleming Medal from the Royal Canadian Institute for his efforts to popularize science, and he also earned the Royal Society of Canada’s McNeil Medal for the Public Awareness of Science in 1997. In 2000, Jay was awarded a Michael Smith Award for Science Promotion by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. He is a Distinguished Alumnus of the University of Alberta, and has received six honorary doctorates. He is a recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal and in 2009 he was named to The Order of Canada.

Jay has written seventeen books, three of which have won Canadian Science Writers' Awards and several have been on the bestseller list. They have been translated into 15 languages. He is the 2015 recipient of the Walter C. Alvarez award for medical writing given by the American Medical Writers Association. Jay is an engaging, provocative speaker who can address complex, scientific issues in non-technical terms, making them interesting, relevant and accessible to a wide range of audiences. (See Presentations)

 

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