He began his career at the age of 16 as the youngest researcher at the National Research Council of Canada, where he spent three years studying the biochemistry of cancer, specifically the role of cell adhesion in metastasis. Out of the lab, without completing a university education, he founded Seed – tag-lined "Science is Culture™" – and served as its Editor-in-Chief. "The best comparison for Seed," wrote a media critic at the time of the magazine's launch in 2001, "is the early years of Rolling Stone, when music was less a subject than a lens for viewing culture." Under his leadership, the magazine earned critical acclaim for modernizing scientific publishing and for bridging long-standing divides between science and society – from art and design to politics and religion. Together with Paola Antonelli he co-founded a monthly gathering of scientists, architects, and designers that laid the foundation for , an exhibition about science and design at The Museum of Modern Art. He is the editor of Science is Culture: Conversations at the New Intersection of Science + Society and the creator of the data visualization platform Visualizing.org. He has lectured around the world on the future of science and its role in society, including at the World Economic Forum, the National Academies of Science, the Royal Society, the National Institutes of Health, the State Department, NASA, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, The Museum of Modern Art, and The Academy of Sciences for the Developing World, before the National Science Board and the U.S. House of Representatives, and at universities including Harvard, MIT, and Beijing. He has served on the nominating committees and juries of the Buckminster Fuller Challenge, the Earth Award, and the TED Prize, and sits on the Science Advisory Committee of the World Economic Forum, the External Advisory Board of the University of Michigan's Risk Science Center, the American Committee of the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Communications Advisory Board of the National Academy of Sciences, and as an advisor to OECD's Global Project on Measuring the Progress of Societies. He was named Vice Chair of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Design Innovation and Partner to the Executive Coordination Office for the Rio+20United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. His achievements were highlighted by then-Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, "for showing people the scope and power of science not just as an object of study but as a key to understanding the world around us."
