David Ewing Duncan is an Americanjournalist, author, researcher and convener with a special emphasis on new discoveries and their implications in the life sciences; he also writes about robots and artificial intelligence. He is the best-selling author of ten books, published in 21 languages. His next book is . He also wrote the bestsellers and . He lives in San Francisco, California and in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is the co-founder and Curator of , which holds events around the world for leaders and thinkers on the “fusion” of health, IT, and biomedicine, and on the future of humans. Since 2014, Arc Fusion has held over 25 events in 9 cities in Europe and North America on issues ranging from AI and Health and the Future of Humans to the Cost of Healthcare and the Opioid Epidemic. He recently was a Health Strategist-in-Residence for IDEO. Duncan is a member of the , a workspace co-operative that also includes Po Bronson, Caroline Paul and Tom Barbash, among others.
Early life
Duncan was born in 1958 in Kansas City, Missouri, and grew up in Lake Quivira, Kansas. His father, Herbert Ewing Duncan, Jr., is an award-winning architect. His mother is the artist, photographer and environmental activist Patricia DuBose Duncan. He graduated from Vassar College. From 1981-83 he led The World Bike for Hope, a 14,000-mile, 23-nation bicycle trek around the world that raised money for Project Hope. In 1986-87 he bicycled from Cape Town to Cairo in Africa.
In media
Duncan writes for Wired, Vanity Fair, The New York Times, and Technology Review. He recently wrote a regular column for the Daily Beast. He is a former Contributing Editor to Wired, Discover, Condé Nast Portfolio and Technology Review; he also has written for The Atlantic, National Geographic, Fortune, Newsweek, Life, Outside, and Harper's, among many others. Duncan was a longtime commentator for NPR’s Morning Edition and was Chief Correspondent on public radio's "Biotech Nation,” part of "Tech Nation,” broadcast weekly out of KQED in San Francisco and heard in 133 countries. His most recent book is '. Other books include and . He also wrote the international bestseller ', a bestseller in 14 countries. In television, he was a special producer and correspondent for ABC Nightline, and a special producer for ABC’s 20/20. He was a correspondent for NOVA’s Science Now, and a documentary co-producer for the Discovery Channel. Duncan is a frequent speaker, and appears often in the media, including on the Today Show and NPR's All Things Considered and Morning Edition.
Nonprofit and academia
Duncan was the founding director of the Center for Life Science Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the founder and former director of The BioAgenda Institute for Life Science Policy, a San Francisco-based nonprofit think-tank that held summits, panels and discussions, and sponsored white papers on important issues in the life sciences between 2003 and 2007. In 2011, he launched The Personalized Health Project, sponsored by The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. He has served on a special communications committee at the National Academies of Science and regularly lectures at Singularity University.
