Chuck Close is a visual artist noted for his highly inventive techniques used to paint the human face, and is best known for his large-scale, photo-based portrait paintings. He has also participated in nearly 800 group exhibitions. In 1988, Close was paralyzed following a rare spinal artery collapse; he continues to paint using a brush-holding device strapped to his wrist and forearm.

David Henry Hwang is a playwright, librettist and screenwriter. He is best known as the author of M. Butterfly, which won the 1988 Tony, Drama Desk, John Gassner, and Outer Critics Circle Awards, and was also a finalist for the 1989 Pulitzer Prize.

Dominic Johnson received a D.Phil. in evolutionary biology from Oxford University and a Ph.D. in political science from Geneva University.

Robert Anderson has a message that resonates with audiences as he talks of building the smallest team to ascend Everest’s largest face, without oxygen.

Bill T. Jones, a Tony Award-winning choreographer and dancer, has changed the face of American dance. He has infused issues of identity, form and social commentary into hundreds of award-winning shows worldwide. Jones is the artistic director and co-founder of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in New York City.

A neurologist, scientist, and author in the UK, Jonathan Cole’s writing explores the experience of impairment of the body from the first person perspective. Pride and a Daily Marathon detailed living without movement sense or touch. It became a BBC TV documentary and was one vignette in Peter Brook’s play, The Man Who.

Stuart Firestein is the chair of Columbia University’s department of biological sciences where, along with his colleagues, he studies the vertebrate olfactory system, possibly the best chemical detector on the face of the planet.

Lesley Stahl is one of America’s most honored and experienced broadcast journalists, her five-decade career marked by political scoops, surprising features and award-winning foreign reporting. She was CBS’ first female White House correspondent and moderator of Face The Nation.

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.

Lawrence Rosenblum is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside and author of See What I’m Saying: The Extraordinary Powers of Our Five Senses. He is an award winning teacher of perceptual, cognitive, and introductory psychology.

Cara Santa Maria has dedicated her life to improving science literacy by communicating scientific principles across media platforms. Prior to moving to the west coast, Santa Maria taught biology and psychology courses to university undergraduates and high school students in Texas and New York.

Sheila Nirenberg develops neuroprosthetics that interact directly with the brain, but she also works on building new kinds of robots. Her honors include a Beckman Young Investigator Award, a Klingenstein Fellowship, a Frontiers of Science award, and a Stein Oppenheimer award.

Jay Neitz is a vision researcher and professor of ophthalmology at the University of Washington in Seattle. At the Neitz Lab, he explores color vision in primates to better understand the visual system and develop gene therapies for human vision problems.

Frederick E. Lepore is Professor of Neurology and Ophthalmology at Rutgers University/Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. He was formerly Chief of the Neurology Service at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and Acting Chairman of the medical school’s Department of Neurology.

Jennifer Newell is curator of Pacific Ethnography. Her particular interests are in material culture and the relationship between Pacific Islanders and their environments. Dr. Newell’s major research project explores climate change and cultural change in the Pacific.

Seth Fletcher is chief features editor at Scientific American. His first book, Bottled Lightning, on the lithium-ion battery and the rebirth of the electric car, was published in 2011 by Hill & Wang/FSG. His next book, currently in progress, is about a group of astronomers and their quest to take the first picture of a black hole.

E.J. Chichilnisky is the John R. Adler Professor of Neurosurgery, and Professor of Ophthalmology, at Stanford University, where he has worked since 2013 after 15 years at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

Eduardo Kohn is associate professor of Anthropology at McGill University. He studies the intimate relationships that the indigenous peoples of Ecuador’s Upper Amazon have with one of Earth’s most complex ecosystems.