David Edwards is a scientist and writer, and the founder of Le Laboratoire in Paris, France and the Cloud Foundation in Boston, Massachusetts. With a primary home in Paris, he retains a faculty position at Harvard University where he teaches idea development in the arts and sciences. David’s scientific work focuses on new ways to deliver drugs and vaccines to patients by aerosols, especially for the treatment of infectious diseases in the developing world. His international nonprofit, Medicine in Need (MEND) applies David’s work and the work of other international scientists to the study of tuberculosis, AIDS, and Malaria. With bases in Pretoria, South Africa, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, MEND also has a communication base in Paris where it collaborates with Le Laboratoire. David Edwards is the author of the three founding works of Le Laboratoire: Artscience: Creativity in the Post-Google Generation (Harvard University Press, 2008) describes the emergence of creativity at the border of what is conventionally perceived as art or science; the novel Niche (Beaux-arts de Paris les éditions, 2007) is a first novel of the “Séguier Series,” written in collaboration with the American novelist Jay Cantor. Niche explores the artscience process underlying Le Laboratoire’s first experiments. A philosophical tale in the spirit of Voltaire’s Candide, this novel is the first of a series of three novels that accompany the opening of Le Laboratoire. The novel Whiff (Beaux-arts de Paris les éditions, 2009) is David Edwards’ second Séguier novel and accompanies the opening of Le Laboratoire’s FoodLab with Thierry Marx.
In 2008, David Edwards was made Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. In the same year he was elected to the French National Academy of Engineering. He is currently also a member of the United States National Academy of Engineering.
David's creative work in science, art, and design is described at davidideas.com.
