Co-sponsored by Radius, MIT OpenDocLab presents a conversation between Moderna co-founder Noubar Afeyan and storyteller Sona Tatoyan about their shared mission to heal the world through science and art.
Join MIT OpenDocLab for a conversation between Syrian-Armenian-American storyteller and Hakawati founder Sona Tatoyan and Lebanese-Armenian-Canadian-American Entrepreneur and Moderna Co-Founder Noubar Afeyan, two visionary Armenian diaspora leaders bound by heritage and a shared mission to heal the world: one through art and the other through science. Hear how they turned their genocidal legacies and experience with oppressive regimes into triumphant acts of resilience, creativity, and healing. Learn how they innovate and iterate to create groundbreaking work in the arts and sciences. How does storytelling heal societal wounds? Can scientific leaps mirror artistic epiphanies and vice versa? How do their legacies inform their work and mission? What advice do they have for scientists and artists working in today’s climate? They will discuss these questions and more.
Moderated by Professor Lerna Ekmekcioglu.
About the Speakers
Dr. Noubar Afeyan is an entrepreneur, inventor, and founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, a company that creates bioplatform companies to transform human health and sustainability. He is co-founder and chairman of the board of Moderna, the pioneering messenger RNA company.
Afeyan, who fled Lebanon’s civil war as a teen before pioneering biotech breakthroughs like Moderna’s COVID vaccine that revolutionized global health, embodies resilient innovation. Co-founder of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative, he’s dedicated to empowering survivors worldwide through philanthropy and venture creation. An entrepreneur and biochemical engineer, Dr. Afeyan holds more than 100 patents and has co-founded more than 70 life science and technology startups during his 36-year career. He completed his doctoral work in biochemical engineering at MIT in 1987. He was a senior lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management from 2000 to 2016, a lecturer at Harvard Business School until 2020, and he currently serves as a member of the MIT Corporation. He teaches and speaks around the world on topics ranging from entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic development to biological engineering, new medicines, and renewable energy. In 2022, Noubar was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
Sona Tatoyan, a Syrian-Armenian-American actor, writer, producer, and founder of Hakawati, —an NGO bridging the U.S. and Armenia through transformative narratives — creates transformative storytelling to heal trauma. Co-created with two time Obie-winning director Jared Mezzocchi and produced by Bill Pullman and Afeyan, her acclaimed multimedia play AZAD (the rabbit and the wolf), which she wrote and stars in, draws on meditation and psychedelic insights, Karagöz puppets, and ancient tales like One Thousand and One Nights to shatter cycles of trauma.
Prior stage credits include world premieres at Yale Repertory Theatre, The Goodman Theatre, and American Conservatory Theatre. She starred in The Journey, the first American indie film shot in Armenia (Audience Award, Milan Film Festival, 2002). Her screenplay The First Full Moon was selected for Sundance/RAWI fellowship (2011) and Dubai Film Connection (2012). Tatoyan co-created the 1001 Nights Experience with Isaac Sabu, an iterative peace-building project celebrating Middle Eastern storytelling and culture.
A 2024-26 Georgetown Global Politics and Performance Lab Fellow, she has spoken at Harvard, University of Michigan, and Berlin’s Pergamon Museum on trauma, liberation and reconciliation and has served as the Rudolf Arnheim Guest Artist Professor at Humboldt University in Berlin.
Lerna Ekmekcioglu is a historian of the modern Middle East with a focus on the late Ottoman Empire, post-genocide Turkey, and minority politics. Her research explores how Armenians—particularly women—navigated survival and belonging after empire and mass violence. She is the author of Recovering Armenia: The Limits of Belonging in Post-Genocide Turkey and co-author of Feminism in Armenian, a historical archive of Armenian feminist thought from the 1860s to 1960s. Her teaching includes courses on genocide and its aftermath, women and gender in the Middle East, and the global history of abortion. Prof. Ekmekcioglu is the winner of the 2016 Levitan Teaching Award in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) and organizes the Bi-annual McMillan-Stewart Lecture Series on women in the developing world.
