A professional magician, Arthur Benjamin can multiply large numbers faster than a calculator, figure out the weekday of any date in history, and has memorized the decimal numbers of Pi out to 100 digits.

Benjamin West brings improved cook stoves to less developed countries, working under the philosophy that appropriate technology and entrepreneurship can bring large-scale social, environmental and economic development to the world.

Anthony LaPaglia is the Tony, Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actor currently starring as FBI Missing Persons investigator Jack Malone in CBS’s popular television crime drama, Without a Trace. LaPaglia has appeared in a number of films, including Summer of Sam, Sweet and Lowdown, The House of Mirth, and Lantana.

Daniel Sullivan is one of New York’s most prolific directors. He most recently directed the Broadway revival of The Homecoming. He has been nominated for six Tony Awards for Direction of a Play and won for David Auburn’s Proof in 2001.

In 1953, while at Cambridge University, James D. Watson and Francis Crick successfully proposed the double helical structure for DNA.

Steven Weinberg was a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin. His honors included the Nobel Prize in Physics and National Medal of Science, election to numerous academies, and 16 honorary doctoral degrees.

Allison Janney was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the 2011 Independent Spirit Awards for her role in Todd Solondz’s film Life During Wartime. In addition, she has completed production on the independent feature The Oranges alongside Catherine Keener and Hugh Laurie.

John Rennie is a deputy editor at Quanta Magazine, overseeing its coverage of biology topics. Previously, he was the editor in chief of Scientific American for 15 years and the editorial director of McGraw-Hill’s AccessScience.

From Broadway and regional theatre to television and films, James Naughton has won critical acclaim in dramas, comedies, and musicals. Naughton has appeared on-screen in The Devil Wears Prada, Childless, Factory Girl, and Suburban Girl.

Ethan Brown is a 12-year-old “Mathemagician.” After watching an online video of Arthur Benjamin’s performance at TED, Ethan was inspired to learn the art and science of performing Mental Mathematics on stage. He began with a 5th-grade talent show in May 2010 and only 1 month later joined Benjamin onstage at The World Science Festival in NYC.

Peter Staley has been a long-term AIDS and gay rights activist, first as a member of ACT UP New York, then as the founding director of TAG, the Treatment Action Group. He served on the board of the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) for 13 years.

Joel Benjamin was hailed as a chess prodigy when he became a national master at the age of 13, breaking Bobby Fischer’s record for youngest-ever master. A three-time U.S. junior champion, he became a grandmaster in 1986.

Nell Benjamin is the playwright of The Explorers Club. She co-wrote the score to Legally Blonde: The Musical with composer Laurence O’Keefe, for which they received a Tony Award nomination and a Drama Desk nomination.

Arthur L. Caplan is the Drs. William F and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor and head of the Division of Bioethics at New York University Langone Medical Center in New York City. Prior to coming to NYU, he was the Emmanuel and Robert Hart Professor of Bioethics and director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Francesca Faridany can currently be seen in NBC’s hit series Manifest as Dr. Fiona Clarke and she also appears in the movie Black Panther. Other credits include Broadway: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, Macbeth, Man and Boy, The 39 Steps, The Homecoming.

Peter Neufeld, a nationally recognized civil-rights lawyer, has spent over thirty-five years trying cases on behalf of victims of police misconduct and wrongful convictions. These trials have led to numerous substantial verdicts and settlements and caused systemic criminal-justice reforms.

Ekow N. Yankah is a Professor of Law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. He holds degrees from the University of Michigan, Columbia University School of Law, and a post-graduate degree from Oxford University, where he was awarded a Lord Crewe Scholarship.

Dan Fagin is a Pulitzer Prize–winning author and an associate professor and director of the Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

Angela Janas is a New York-based actor who has toured nationally with the critically acclaimed Acting Company, playing Ophelia in Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and Lady Macbeth in Macbeth.

S. Matthew Liao is Arthur Zitrin Professor of Bioethics, Director of the Center for Bioethics, and Affiliated Professor in the Department of Philosophy at New York University. He is the author of The Right to Be Loved, Moral Brains: The Neuroscience of Morality, and over 60 articles in philosophy and bioethics.

Benjamin Pearcy joined 59 Productions in 2011 with the Broadway production of War Horse and works from 59’s New York studio. Also a projections designer, Pearcy has lit or designed projections for theater, opera, and architectural projects around the world.

Ivan Oransky, MD, is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University’s Arthur Carter Journalism Institute, co-founder of Retraction Watch, and editor at large of MedPage Today. Previously, he was executive editor of Reuters Health and held editorial positions at Scientific American and The Scientist.

Andrea M. Ghez, professor of Physics and Astronomy and Lauren B. Leichtman & Arthur E. Levine chair in Astrophysics, is one of the world’s leading experts in observational astrophysics and …

Michael Benson’s work focuses on the intersection of art and science. A writer, artist, and filmmaker, Benson has staged a series of large-scale shows of reprocessed planetary landscape photography in major museums.

Meredith Broussard is an assistant professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University, an affiliate faculty member at the Moore-Sloan Data Science Environment at the NYU Center for Data Science, and a 2019 fellow at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute.

Benjamin Pope is a Lecturer in Astrophysics & ARC DECRA Fellow at the University of Queensland. He is interested in the direct imaging of exoplanets and is co-investigator on three …

Benjamín Labatut is a Chilean author born in the Netherlands in 1980. He is the author of The Maniac, a fictionalized biography of the polymath John von Neumann which explores …