Joshua Spodek earned such praise as “Best and Brightest” (Esquire Magazine’s Genius Issue), “Astrophysicist turned new media whiz” (NBC), and “Rocket Scientist” (Forbes Magazine and ABC News) with success in such diverse fields as science, invention, entrepreneurship, art, leadership, coaching, and education.

A Professor at NYU and columnist for Inc., he holds five Ivy-League degrees, including a PhD in Astrophysics and an MBA, both from Columbia University, where he studied under a Nobel Laureate. He helped build an X-ray observational satellite orbiting the Earth as part of a multi-billion-dollar decade-plus mission led by the European Space Agency with NASA. He left academia to co-found a venture, Submedia, to bring to market his invention—a technology to show motion-pictures to subway riders moving between stations—starting the field of commercial in-tunnel motion-pictures. Submedia has grown worldwide to install dozens of displays in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia. He holds six patents. He co-founded and helped lead several education ventures, including partnering with New York City Public Schools. He has taught art at Parsons the New School for Design and NYU-Tisch’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP).

He finished six marathons and counting (3:51 best), competed at the World and National level of Ultimate Frisbee (with teams ranked #5 at College Nationals, #8 at Club Nationals, and #11 at Worlds), including captaining his college team as well as playing at the first Ultimate Tournament in Pyongyang, North Korea. He swam across the Hudson River, did over 70,000 burpees, wrote over 2,100 blog posts, took over 100 cold showers, coined the term sidcha, and has jumped out of two airplanes. He has visited 26 countries on six continents, including years in Paris, Ahmedabad (India), and Shanghai. He lives in New York City’s Greenwich Village and blogs daily at www.joshuaspodek.com.