HAMPTON, Va. -- "Our generation's greatest challenge is sustainable development: living peacefully, prosperously and sustainably on a crowded planet," says Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and special advisor to the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

According to Sachs, NASA will play a vital role in helping the nation and the world to meet this challenge. NASA¹s technologies, for example, play a decisive role in enabling us to monitor the Earth¹s physical processes, such as those linked to human-induced climate change. He will speak on NASA's role involving science and technology in a colloquium lecture called "Why NASA and Earth Science are Vital for Human Wellbeing" on Tuesday, Oct. 21, at 2 p.m. in the Reid Conference Center at NASA Langley. The talk is part of a four-lecture series throughout October celebrating NASA's 50th anniversary.

Media who wish to interview Sachs at a news briefing at 1:15 p.m. Tuesday should contact Emily Outen at 864-7022 or at emily.s.outen@nasa.gov by noon for credentials and entry to NASA Langley.

Sachs will present the same lecture for the general public on Tuesday evening at 7:30 p.m. at the Virginia Air & Space Center on Settlers Landing Road in Hampton. The evening talk is free and no reservations are required.

Named among the 100 most influential leaders in the world by Time Magazine, Sachs is the director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet professor of sustainable development and professor of health policy and management at Columbia University. He is internationally renowned for advising governments in Latin America, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Asia and Africa on economic reforms and for his work with international agencies to promote poverty reduction, disease control and debt reduction of poor countries. Sachs recently was elected into the Institute of Medicine and is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

For more information on NASA Langley¹s Colloquium and Sigma Series lectures, visit:

http://shemesh.larc.nasa.gov/Lectures/colloq/colloqsigma.htm