Biographie
If it comes from outer space, chances are producer, director, writer and artist Dana Berry already knows about it. Dana's career began in 1987 at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, where he worked in the news and public relations office to create science visualization for NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. In 1994, Dana began a stint at Tufts University, from where he worked with Hubble's cousin, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, managed in Boston by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Since then, Dana has worked on NASA's WMAP and Swift astrophysics missions, the Kepler exoplanet mission, and a variety of astronomy groups, most lately the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Because Dana is both an artist and a writer-he possesses a unique ability to find the drama in science-to visualize the scene, explain the stakes and capture for the audience the thrill of discovery. When it comes to explaining science-visually and verbally-Dana remains the "go to" person for both the documentary world as well as NASA and Academia. In 2005 Dana produced with Ann Druyan a refurbished 25th Anniversary Edition of Carl Sagan's iconic "Cosmos" series, where he took the lead in editing, updating and re-formatting the series for the Discovery Science Channel. Dana re-joined Druyan's team in 2014 for the production "Cosmos: A Space Time Odyssey," hosted by Neil Tyson. His recent show, "Alien Earths," made Dana a prime-time Emmy nominee for "Outstanding Animated Program." Recently, Dana has produced a 13-part series of short-form videos for Curiositystream.com called "Destination: Pluto," and a spin-off, called "Destination: Pluto, the VR Experience. Dana's two books, "The Smithsonian Intimate Guide to the Cosmos" and "Race to Mars" are both critically acclaimed, and his artwork has appeared on the covers of numerous publications, including the front page of the New York Times, USA Today, "Discover", "Astronomy," "Nature," and "Sky and Telescope" magazines. Dana's art has appeared 6 times on the cover of National Geographic Magazine, the most of any artist or photographer in the entire 129-year history of that magazine.
