Our story
In 2019, Professors Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher finally discovered the pattern: in every scientific project, there inevitably comes a crisis, where the way forward requires a new idea. This hadn’t been obvious when they started out.
Fifteen years earlier, they had hit a wall in a joint project, completely stuck and unsure how to proceed. Lacking the right mindset and tools, they had abandoned the project – convinced they had failed as scientists.
Now Itai and Martin realized how unconsciously, they had each developed a set of thinking tools to navigate such inevitable crises, just as most experienced scientists do. That realization led to a bigger question: why aren’t these essential thinking tools acknowledged and taught to scientists from the start?
Itai Yanai is a Professor at New York University’s School of Medicine, where he leads a successful research program on gene expressions in cancer and development.
Martin Lercher is a Professor in Heinrich Heine University in Dusseldorf Germany, where he leads a successful research program in computational cell biology, studying bacteria and plants.
As respected scientists, they have become leaders in communicating the creative scientific process.
Listen to the founders discuss their journey into Night Science on the Inside Cancer Careers podcast:
Night Science Institute Board
Itai Yanai, PhD
Founder and Board Chair
Itai is a Professor at NYU’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology and Directs the Institute of Computational Medicine.
Martin Lercher, PhD
Founder and Board Secretary
Martin is Professor in Computational Cell Biology at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany.
Gretchen Vaughan, BBA
Board Member
Gretchen is President & CEO of the Kidney Cancer Association, and brings extensive experience in fund raising strategy and non-profit management to the board.
Oliver Bogler, PhD
CEO
Oliver draws on his past experiences in cancer research and academic leadership in academia and government to lead the Night Science Institute.
Advisory Board
Victor Ambros, PhD
Advisory Board Member
Dr. Ambros is the Silverman Professor of Natural Sciences in the Program in Molecular Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School. His work focuses on microRNAs and their role in post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression. He was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the co-discovery of microRNAs.
Sean B. Carroll, PhD
Advisory Board Member
Dr. Carroll is a scientist and Oscar-nominated storyteller who has made over 30 films for HHMI Tangled Bank Studios and written several books. He is Distinguished University Professor of Biology at the University of Maryland and an HHMI Investigator and focuses his academic work on evo-devo, the intersection of evolution and development.
Jennifer Oyler-Yaniv, PhD
Advisory Board Member
Dr. Oyler-Yaniv studies the immune system with a focus on understanding the signaling dynamics that protect the host from pathogens and tumors. She also teaches a graduate-level course on creativity at Harvard Medical School, where she holds the rank of Assistant Professor..
Tina Seelig, PhD
Advisory Board Member
Dr. Seelig is Executive Director of Knight-Hennessy Scholars and is Director Emeritus of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. She teaches at the d.school, focusing on creativity and innovation. With a PhD in Neuroscience, Seelig is a former consultant, entrepreneur, and author of 17 books, including inGenius and Creativity Rules. Awards include the Gordon Prize and Silicon Valley Visionary Award.
Why Night Science?
The term was coined by Nobel Laureate François Jacob, who distinguished between two complementary modes of scientific inquiry. Day science is the structured, hypothesis-testing process that characterizes modern science, based on rigorous analysis of empirical data and reported in scientific journals. But where do hypotheses come from in the first place? This is the realm of Night Science. It is the creative ‘workshop of the possible’, where new ideas take shape and where we push at the edges of the unknown.
Over the last years, Itai and Martin developed Jacob’s dichotomy into a practical framework for understanding the interplay between execution and creativity in science. Periods of experimentation alternate with periods of confusion following unexpected results. The scientific process is not a straight path but a continuous oscillation between these two realms – the known and the yet-to-be discovered.
Itai and Martin realized that day science and Night Science demanded fundamentally different mindsets. Day science requires a critical, rigorous, and focused attitude, while Night Science is free and exploratory, thriving on improvisation and analogies.
Over the past six years, the two have developed a curriculum to teach the creative thinking tools of Night Science in a workshop. To advance this exploration of the creative scientific process, they wrote influential editorials, and they interviewed leading scientists on their acclaimed Night Science podcast, uncovering the diverse strategies that drive innovation in research.
The overwhelmingly positive response from workshops and courses around the world made it clear: young scientists have a deep thirst for these lessons. In hands-on exercises, participants embraced the joy of the creative process, discovering new ways to navigate the challenges of research. While the fundamental difficulties of research remain, mastering the tools of Night Science turns obstacles into stepping stones and setbacks into the exhilarating journey at the heart of groundbreaking science.
