Dan Dubno

Dan Dubno is an Emmy-award winning TV producer, broadcaster, technologist, presenter, inventor, and “connector”. He is founder of Blowing Things Up (BTU) LLC., an international consultancy that brings innovative technology companies together to reach new markets and applications. He is founder and President of The Hourglass Initiative, a non-profit that engages the scientific community in efforts to combat the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. He is a popular speaker at technology, business, and policy conferences around the world.

For seventeen years, Dan Dubno was Producer and Technologist for the CBS Evening News and supervised Special Events coverage of wars, terrorism, natural disasters, and elections. He is a pioneer in the use of powerful graphic technologies, satellite imagery, and visualization tools for news coverage. He introduced the first systematic use of 3D animations in nightly news broadcasts; the use of virtual sets, 3-D visualizations, and touch screens in news; and dozens of other technologies now seen regularly on broadcasts. His over thirty years of experience at CBS News and PBS garnered multiple Emmy Awards and commendations.

While at CBS, Dubno appeared on-camera as Digital Dan and humorously introduced America to important or frivolous new technologies. He continues to write technology columns and reviews for websites and science magazines. His success in "Bringing the Smart and Useless Together" led him to co-found the annual Gadgetoff, a notorious, invitation-only technology celebration in New York City.

At the 2002 and 2003 TED Conference, Dubno debuted the Keyhole software imagery program and introduced this cool earth-viewing technology to his friends at Google. This resulted in Google’s acquisition of Keyhole which led to “Google Earth.” At CBS News, Dubno developed the first system to map real-time news feeds and the latest detailed visualization of live earthquake data over Google Earth.

Dubno is chair of the Radio and Television News Directors Association Task Force on Remote Sensing, advisory committee member of the Department of Interior's National Imagery Archive. He is a consultant to numerous science museums including the Liberty Science Center, the New York Hall of Science, and the American Museum of Natural History. He is on the Board of Governors of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, a member of journalism advisory boards for Rutgers University and Queens College, and was adjunct Professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

Dubno was a member of the scientific party in May 2005 in Wood's Hole Oceanographic Institution's expedition to the geothermal vents in the Galapagos Rift, and explored the "Rosebud" field nearly two-miles below the ocean surface in the Deep Submergence Vehicle Alvin. He is "Ambassador" for the FIRST: For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology which mentors students to pursue careers in science and engineering.