Paula Apsell

For 33 years, Paula Apsell was the senior executive producer of the PBS NOVA science series. Prior to that, she produced and directed a dozen NOVA episodes, and was a Fellow in the Public Understanding of Science at MIT. During her long tenure at NOVA, Paula was responsible for supervising more than 600 documentaries on a wide variety of subjects in the sciences, and one, The Bible’s Buried Secrets, an exploration of the archeology of the Hebrew Bible, with partial funding provided by the Righteous Persons Foundation. She also co-directed and executive produced one of the most watched NOVA episodes, Holocaust Escape Tunnel. During her tenure, NOVA won every major broadcasting award, including the Emmy, the Peabody, the duPont-Columbia University Gold and Silver Batons, and an Academy Award nomination for Special Effects. In 2018 she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Emmy of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.