Shaping the Agora of the Future
July 28, 2026
Greetings Civic Science Community,
As we mark the 250th anniversary of the United States, I find myself returning to the Agora—the public square where ancient Athenians gathered to debate and shape their democracy. That spirit was alive at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation’s Nostos 2026 gathering in Athens, where I joined an extraordinary group of leaders to explore what it means to keep, in SNF’s words, “humanity at the core” across fields and sectors, from medicine to education to the arts.
Here we saw the ongoing promise of “forging a common life together,” as Hahrie Han of the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University describes democracy, where many different people connect and have “their hands on the levers of change.”
It was inspiring to have science woven into these conversations, recognized as essential to the democracy of the next 250 years. Through a panel curated by The Rockefeller University, we explored opportunities to reimagine science so more people are connected to it, with their hands on this powerful lever for change.
The reasons why this connection is essential for both science and humanity came to life in the story of Rockefeller virologist Charles Rice, who won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the cause of hepatitis C infection.
“Discoveries are unexpected by definition,” Dr. Rice observed. Their ability to unfold through uncertainty over many years requires a remarkable commitment by individual scientists, institutions around the world, and public and private funders. In the case of hepatitis C, the observation of an unknown variant of the hepatitis virus in the mid-1970s led to a 15-year effort to “figure out what this mysterious agent was,” followed by 25 years of basic research and drug discovery.
“Hepatitis C is an incredibly diverse virus,” Dr. Rice said. It has seven genotypes, it cannot easily be replicated in cell culture, and in a single infected person, each day it creates a trillion variants. It is a testament to scientific ingenuity and global collaboration that we now have a class of treatments that can eliminate hepatitis C infection in three months. Yet despite these breakthroughs, hepatitis C has not been eradicated.
“It should be like flipping a switch,” Dr. Rice said. “But that’s not the reality we’re living in today.” In the five years after the new class of antivirals became available, only about 11 percent of people with hepatitis C globally were successfully treated. Today, an estimated 50–60 million people are still infected with the virus.
Access and implementation are bringing a new wave of complexity and challenge. When the new class of treatments were released, a single course cost about $86,000. But solutions are possible: Dr. Rice shared that Egypt has worked with a pharmaceutical company to manufacture the medicine locally and provide it at a manageable cost in the public health system. Today, Egypt has successfully treated more than 95 percent of its infected population.
We are building civic science approaches and networks to ensure that life-changing breakthroughs like Dr. Rice’s continue far into the future, and to accelerate their path to impact. Using examples from Rockefeller, the conversation went on to explore how science can be designed for equitable access, how institutions can create pathways that invite more people into discovery, and how these efforts can connect into robust civic science systems with humanity at the core.
It is moving to see scientists at the pinnacle of their careers recognizing that the journey of discovery doesn’t end in the lab, or even with the Nobel Prize. Scientific breakthroughs achieve their fullest promise only when they are connected to the people whose lives they are meant to improve. In Athens we also saw the next generation is embracing this vision—as we heard when an audience member, a recent graduate training to be a physician–scientist, stood up to ask how she can have an impact with civic science.
We gather so—as we saw at Nostos—the agora of the future includes science. So more scientists, like our colleagues at Rockefeller, step into the public square with curiosity, humility, and a willingness to connect. And so more people are invited to put their hands on the levers of science, advancing its power, promise, and benefits.
Onward, in community,
Elizabeth
Elizabeth Christopherson
President and Chief Executive Officer, Rita Allen Foundation