Participants
Three-time Peabody Award winner, four-time Emmy Award winner, and Dateline NBC correspondent John Hockenberry has broad experience as a journalist and commentator for more than two decades. Hockenberry is the anchor of the public radio show The Takeaway on WNYC and PRI.
Read MoreMichio Kaku is one of the founders of string field theory, a field of research within string theory. He’s also the host of Sci Fi Science, the top-rated new series on the Science Channel, which is based on his New York Times best-selling book Physics of the Impossible.
Read MoreNobel Laureate
Nobel Laureate John Mather’s research in cosmology as part of the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) team has been recognized as some of the most important work of the 20th century.
Read MoreRobert Krulwich is co-host of Radiolab, WNYC Radio’s Peabody Award-winning program about ‘big ideas’, now one of public radio’s most popular shows. It is carried on more than 500 radio stations and its podcasts are downloaded over 5 million times each month.
Read MoreMarcela Carena is an internationally renowned expert on revolutionary ideas in particle physics, ideas about to be tested at the Large Hadron Collider. She has worked closely with experimental physicists at the Fermilab and CERN laboratories developing strategies for discovery at the world’s highest-energy particle colliders.
Read MorePaul Davies is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist, and best-selling author. He is Regents’ Professor at Arizona State University, where he is Director of Beyond: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science.
Read MoreJad Abumrad is the host and creator of WNYC/NPR’s award-winning radio series Radio Lab, which reaches nearly 4 million people per month and describes itself as believing “your ears are a portal to another world. Where sound illuminates ideas, and the boundaries blur between science, philosophy, and human experience.”
Read MoreThe many-faceted career of cellist Yo-Yo Ma is testament to his continual search for new ways to communicate with audiences, and to his personal desire for artistic growth and renewal. In 1998 Mr. Ma established the Silk Road Project to promote the study of the cultural, artistic and intellectual traditions along the ancient Silk Road trade route that stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Pacific Ocean.
Read MoreStephen W. Hawking is one of the world’s foremost theoretical physicists. His dramatic breakthroughs into the origin of the universe and the properties of black holes are among the most revolutionary insights into the nature of the cosmos since the work of Albert Einstein.
Read MoreAndy Borowitz is a comedian, actor and writer whose work appears regularly in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and at Newsweek.com. He is the first winner of the National Press Club’s humor award and has won seven Dot-Comedy Awards for his website, borowitzreport.com.
Read MoreEmmy, Golden Globe and Tony Award-winning actress Glenn Close is best known for her riveting performances of complex women. The star of Damages for FX, Close’s portrayal of the high-stakes litigator Patty Hewes won her both an Emmy Award as “Best Actress in a Drama Series” and a Golden Globe for “Best Actress in a TV Drama.”
Read MoreOne of the great nature photographers of our time, Frans Lanting’s images of nature and wildlife have been published in National Geographic, Audubon and Time as well as exhibitions around the world. His most recent work, LIFE: A Journey Through Time, is a multimedia event that combines the music of Philip Glass with incredible photographs that document the history of the big bang to life on present day Earth.
Read MoreHod Lipson is a roboticist who works in the areas of artificial intelligence and digital manufacturing. An award-winning researcher, teacher, and communicator, Lipson enjoys sharing the beauty of robotics though his books, essays, public lectures, and radio and television appearances.
Read MoreAlfred Mele is the William H. and Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. He is the author of 10 books, including Free Will and Luck, Effective Intentions, A Dialogue on Free Will and Science, and Free: Why Science Hasn’t Disproved Free Will.
Read MoreIra Flatow is the host of Science Friday on PRI, Public Radio International. He anchors the show each Friday, bringing radio and Internet listeners worldwide a lively, informative discussion on science, technology, health, space and the environment. Flatow is president of ScienceFriday, Inc. and founder and president of Science Friday Initiative.
Read MoreMarilyn Maye is an award-winning, renowned jazz singer who has been named an Official Jazz Legend by the American Jazz Museum. She has been onstage with many of the greatest jazz performers, including Count Basie, Charlie “Bird” Parker, and Big Joe Turner.
Read MorePhysicist Lyman Page measures the cosmic microwave background radiation left over from the Big Bang to better understand the very early universe and how it has since evolved. He is the Henry DeWolf Smyth Professor of Physics at Princeton University.
Read MoreDirac Medalist
Paul J. Steinhardt is the Albert Einstein Professor in Science and Director of the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science at Princeton University, where he is also on the faculty of …
Read MoreTheoretical astrophysicist Michael S. Turner is a recognized figure in pioneering the interdisciplinary field of particle astrophysics and cosmology, for which he shared the 2010 Dannie Heineman Prize. In collaboration with Edward Kolb, he initiated the Fermilab astrophysics program.
Read MoreDaniel L. Schacter is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. Many of Schacter’s studies and ideas are summarized in his 1996 book, Searching for Memory, and his 2001 contribution, The Seven Sins of Memory.
Read MoreKatherine Freese is the George E. Uhlenbeck Professor of Physics at the University of Michigan and Visiting Professor of Physics at Stockholm University. She works on a wide range of topics in theoretical cosmology and astroparticle physics. She has been working to identify the dark matter and dark energy that permeate the universe, as well as to build a successful model for the early universe immediately after the Big Bang.
Read MoreSimon Singh’s documentary about Fermat’s Last Theorem was the winner of a BAFTA in the UK and was nominated for an EMMY. His publication on the same subject, Fermat’s Enigma, is the first book about mathematics to become a number one bestseller in the UK and has since been translated into 30 languages.
Read MoreRichard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and author, who is known for his popularization of Darwinian ideas as well as for original thinking on evolutionary theory. The Selfish Gene is both the title of his groundbreaking first best seller and his most popular thesis.
Read MoreAmerican-born stage and screen actor Bill Camp is best known for his extensive theatre work both on and off Broadway. The recipient of several awards and honors, including Obie, Eliot Norton, and Boston Critics Association awards, he has performed in Tony Kushner’s play Homebody/Kabul, The Misanthrope, Olly’s Prison, Coram Boy, Heartbreak House, The Seagull, St.Joan and Jackie: An American Life to name a few.
Read MoreMark Kurlansky is a former commercial fisherman and New York Times bestselling author of Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, Salt: A World History, The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell, and 16 other books.
Read MoreTony-nominated Mireille Enos is currently starring in the critically acclaimed AMC drama series, The Killing. Enos will star opposite Brad Pitt in the Marc Forster-directed zombie extravaganza World War Z, which is based on the novel by Max Brooks and goes into production this summer. For the past three seasons, Enos starred in the HBO drama Big Love.
Read MoreAmber Miller aims to understand the origin and evolution of the universe by studying the cosmic microwave background, the faint glow of light left over from the Big Bang.
Read MoreDavid Spergel studies the big questions in cosmology and astrophysics: How large is the universe and what is its shape? Is it finite? What are the dark matter and dark energy that comprise most of the universe’s mass?
Read MoreJoseph Formaggio explores the properties of neutrinos, one of nature’s most elusive particles, and their deep connections to particle physics and cosmology.
Read MoreTomás Saraceno’s work defies traditional notions of space, time, gravity, consciousness and perception through architectural, social and communitarian means that are utopian and participatory. His installations blend the boundary between sky and the earth, creating the sensation of flight.
Read MoreLaurie Garrett is currently the senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Garrett is the only writer ever to have been awarded all three of the Big “Ps” of journalism: The Peabody, The Polk and The Pulitzer.
Read MoreSuzanne Staggs is an experimental physicist who uses cutting-edge detectors and optical technology to measure the cosmic microwave background, the low-level radiation left over from the very first moments of the universe. A physics professor at Princeton University, Staggs is now in charge of the detectors for the Atacama Cosmology Telescope project.
Read MoreLeVar Burton has been capturing the admiring attention of both audiences and his industry peers for three decades and continues to enjoy longevity truly rare within the industry. His deftness in avoiding stereotype continues to be a hallmark of an incredibly diverse career.
Read MoreTelevision personality, filmmaker and philosopher, Jason Silva was recently described as “part Timothy Leary, part Ray Kurzweil, and part Neo from The Matrix.”
Read MoreDrew Gehling was an original cast member of the revival of the classic musical On A Clear Day You Can See Forever where he played the role of Warren to critical acclaim alongside the incomparable Harry Connick, Jr.
Read MoreJohn Carlstrom studies the origin and evolution of the universe from the very bottom of the Earth. Carlstrom is the Subramanyan Chandrasekhar Professor of Astronomy, Astrophysics, and Physics at the University of Chicago, and deputy director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics.
Read MoreElizabeth Stark is a visiting fellow at the Yale Information Society Project and a Lecturer in Computer Science at Yale University. She is an influential open internet advocate who was deeply involved in stopping SOPA and fostering online engagement in support of internet freedom.
Read MoreCaitlin Trainor is the artistic director of Trainor Dance and a lecturer at Barnard College/Columbia University. Originally from Rhode Island, Trainor has taught, choreographed, and performed on both sides of the Atlantic.
Read MoreApoorv Agarwal is a fourth year doctoral student in the Computer Science department at Columbia University, New York City. His areas of interest and specialization are Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning.
Read MoreBritt Reichborn-Kjennerud is an experimental astrophysicist who uses measurements of the cosmic microwave background, the afterglow of the big bang, to understand the origin, composition, and evolution of the universe.
Read MoreJohn Kovac is an associate professor in the Astronomy and Physics Departments at Harvard University. His cosmology research focuses on observations of the cosmic microwave background to reveal signatures of the physics that drove the birth of the universe.
Read MoreAnn Harada is best known for originating the role of Christmas Eve in Avenue Q on Broadway and in London. She is currently playing Charlotte, a stepsister, in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella.
Read MoreMost recently, Lewis Grosso created the role of Les in the Tony award-winning, Disney’s Newsies, and previously made his Broadway debut starring as Michael Banks in Mary Poppins. In his Carnegie Hall debut, he had the honor of performing the role of JoJo, in the New York Pops 29th Birthday.
Read MorePeter Benson is a Broadway performer, with roles in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Harvey, Promises, Promises, To Be or Not To Be, Boeing-Boeing, The Pajama Game, Wonderful Town, Cabaret, Little Me, American Daughter, and State Fair.
Read MoreBrynn O’Malley has appeared on Broadway in Wicked, Sunday in the Park with George, Hairspray, and Beauty and the Beast. Other stage work includes Avenue Q, Boeing-Boeing, Oklahoma!, Meet Me In St. Louis, She Loves Me, Arsenic and Old Lace, Into the Woods, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Jekyll & Hyde. TV credits include The Big C, Royal Pains, and A Gifted Man.
Read MoreOmid Farokhzad is among the Nano50 winners by NASA Nanotech Briefs, which awards the most innovative people and design ideas that will revolutionize nanotechnology. He was one of 12 people to be recognized among the top innovators in Massachusetts by the Boston Globe.
Read MorePeter 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.
Read MoreMichael Laiskonis was named creative director of New York City’s Institute of Culinary Education in 2012. Previously executive pastry chef at Le Bernardin for eight years, his pastry philosophy manifested itself in a style of desserts that balanced art and science, and contemporary ideas with classic.
Read MoreJoel and Ethan Coen direct, produce and write their films and are among today’s most honored and respected filmmakers.
Read MoreBecca Peixotto is an archaeologist and Ph.D. student in the Department of Anthropology at American University in Washington, D.C. Her areas of specialization and interest are historic landscapes, material culture, ideas of wilderness and public engagement with the past.
Read MoreDr. Sarah Kapnick is a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Program at Princeton University and the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.
Read MoreAmber Straughn is an astrophysicist at NASA and a member of the James Webb Space Telescope Project Science Team. Straughn grew up in the small farming town of Bee Branch, Arkansas where her fascination with astronomy began under beautifully dark, rural skies.
Read MoreCatherine Price’s written and multimedia work has appeared in publications including The Best American Science Writing, The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post Magazine, Slate, Salon, Men’s Journal, Mother Jones, the Oprah Magazine, and Parade, among others.
Read MoreNancy Giles has been a contributor to CBS Sunday Morning since 2003, voicing her opinions on everything from politics and race to pop culture and the conspiracy of high heels. As an actress, she was in the ensemble cast of ABC-TV’s Emmy Award-winning series China Beach.
Read More59 Productions is a multi-award-winning design studio and production company based in London and New York. Whether creating stage productions, museum installations, live music shows, large-scale events, or films, 59’s team generates creative and technical ideas to help realize ambitious artistic projects.
Read MoreEric Jordan has been sought by opera companies for his trademark “big bass and presence to match” (Opera News). His voice is described as possessing “a resonant, ringing tone that was well produced throughout its range” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch), and The New York Times stated that his “powerful, nuanced singing and thoughtful acting amounted to a wholly remarkable portrayal.”
Read MoreChristine Ebersole has captivated audiences throughout her performing career, from the Broadway stage to television series and specials, films, concert appearances, and recordings.
Read MoreCathy O’Neil earned a Ph.D. in math from Harvard, was a postdoc at the MIT math department, and a professor at Barnard College where she published a number of research papers in arithmetic algebraic geometry.
Read MoreClaudia Perlich leads the machine learning efforts that power Dstillery’s digital intelligence for marketers and media companies. With more than 50 published scientific articles, she is a widely acclaimed expert on big data and machine learning applications, and an active speaker at data science and marketing conferences around the world.
Read MoreNeal Weiner received his undergraduate degree in Physics and Mathematics from Carleton College and a PhD in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley. After completing his postdoctoral training at the University of Washington, Dr. Weiner joined the faculty of the Department of Physics at NYU in 2004.
Read MoreAgustín Fuentes, trained in Zoology and Anthropology, is a Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. His research delves into the how and why of being human.
Read MoreMark Van Raamsdonk is a professor of physics at the University of British Columbia, where he also received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics. He completed a Ph.D. in physics at Princeton University followed by postdoctoral research at Stanford University.
Read MoreBenjamin 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.
Read MoreEarly Morning Opera (EMO) is a genre-bending performance and art lab whose works explore emerging technologies, live audiences, and unclassifiable experience, while reflecting artistic director Lars Jan’s background in progressive activism.
Read MoreShana Corey has a flair for finding the story in history and making it fun. She was named a Publishers Weekly Flying Start for her first picture book, You Forgot Your Skirt, Amelia Bloomer!, which went on to inspire the American Library Association’s Amelia Bloomer Project.
Read MoreVasant Dhar is a Professor at the NYU Stern School of Business and the Center for Data Science, and Editor-in-Chief of the Big Data journal. He is also the founder of SCT Capital Management, a machine learning based investment entity in New York City that implements a systematic process of knowledge discovery to make trading decisions autonomously.
Read MoreMatias Zaldarriaga is a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He has a PhD from MIT and is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the Gribov Medal from the European Physical Society, and the Helen B. Warner Prize from the American Astronomical Society.
Read MoreA four-time Emmy Award-winning writer for Bill Nye the Science Guy, Lynn Brunelle has over 25 years experience writing for people of all ages, across all manner of media. Brunelle has created, developed and written projects for National Geographic, Scholastic, Random House, Penguin, A&E, The Discovery Channel, Disney, ABC TV, NBC, NPR, World Almanac, Cranium, and PBS.
Read MoreMayim Bialik is best known for her award-winning role on the hit CBS comedy, The Big Bang Theory as ‘Amy Farrah Fowler’ and her role as ‘Blossom Russo’ on the hit 90’s sitcom Blossom. After starring as the lead in her own TV show, she left acting to attend UCLA, where she earned a Ph.D. in Neuroscience.
Read MoreSusan Schneider is the 2019 Distinguished Scholar at the Library of Congress and the Director of the AI, Mind and Society (AIMS) Group at the University of Connecticut. She writes about the fundamental nature of the self and mind.
Read MoreMike Ressler has combined his passion for sports with his computer science education and accidentally stumbled across his favorite line of work, Sports Technology. Hooked on sports tech, Ressler joined local Pittsburgh startup Diamond Kinetics as director of engineering.
Read MoreAdam Alter is an associate professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business with an affiliated appointment at the NYU Psychology Department where he studies human judgment and decision-making.
Read MoreJonathan Haidt is a Social Psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Haidt’s research examines the intuitive foundations of morality, and how morality varies across cultural and political divides.
Read MoreKathryn Denning is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at York University in Toronto. Her research includes projects on the social impacts of astrobiology and SETI, the evolution of intelligence, and contemporary ideas concerning the colonization of space.
Read MoreDavid Kipping is a Professor of Astronomy at Columbia University where he leads the Cool Worlds Lab – a research team primarily focussed on discovering new planets and moons. He was recently named as a Sloan fellow.
Read MoreLindley Winslow’s work focuses on answering big questions about the universe by developing novel particle detectors. She received her BA in physics and astronomy in 2001 and her PhD in physics in 2008, both from the University of California at Berkeley.
Read MoreFlorian Pinel is a Senior Technical Staff Member and Master Inventor in the Watson Content and IoT group at IBM. He is the co-inventor of IBM Chef Watson, an application that uses machine learning and natural language processing to demonstrate computational creativity and suggest original recipe ideas.
Read MoreTamara Tunie is a versatile actress who consistently garners praise and recognition for her work on the big and small screens, in theater, and in her community. She currently stars in the upcoming AMC dark comedy Dietland as Julia with Joy Nash and Julianna Margulies.
Read MoreOlivier Elemento, PhD is the Director of the Weill Cornell Medicine Englander Institute for Precision Medicine, an institute that focuses on using genomics and informatics to make medicine more individualized.
Read MoreMichael Dine is a professor of physics at University of California Santa Cruz. He is noted for work on cosmology where he has proposed one of the leading candidates for the dark matter and several ideas for how the asymmetry might arise between matter and antimatter for work in particle physics.
Read MoreMariangela Lisanti is an associate professor of physics at Princeton University whose research focuses on the nature of dark matter. She has tested ideas about dark matter using data from a wide range of experimental and observational probes.
Read MoreRuth Spiro is the author of the Baby Loves Science board book series, published by Charlesbridge. Titles include Baby Loves Aerospace Engineering, Baby Loves Coding, and Baby Loves Green Energy. She hopes her books inspire kids to observe the world, ask questions, and when it comes to their futures, dream big!
Read MoreGeorgia Frances King is an editor and facilitator born in Melbourne Australia and based in New York. Currently the Ideas Editor at Quartz and formerly the Editor of Kinfolk magazine, she has fused her background in lifestyle journalism with her passion for emerging technology.
Read MoreLoren Grush is a senior science reporter for The Verge, the technology and culture brand from Vox Media, where she specializes in all things space—from distant stars and planets to human spaceflight and the commercial space race.
Read MoreKarl Glazebrook is a Distinguished Professor of Astronomy at the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne. Karl is an observational astronomer whose research interests …
Read MoreLise Meitner Award
Anna Ijjas is a theoretical and computational physicist, working in gravitation and cosmology, whose research is aimed at the most fundamental questions about the universe: what is the mechanism that …
Read MoreJames Peebles is the Albert Einstein Professor of Science (Emeritus) at Princeton University and is regarded as one of the greatest theoretical cosmologists of the last 50 years. His work …
Read MoreStephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha and the Wolfram Language; the originator of the Wolfram Physics Project; and the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research. Over the course …
Read More