Giulio Tononi is an award-winning psychiatrist and neuroscientist whose main focus has been the scientific understanding of consciousness. His integrated information theory is a comprehensive theory of what consciousness is, how it can be measured, and how it is realized in the brain.

Pamela Schaller is the primary biologist for a charismatic colony of African penguins and designed and implemented the first-ever penguin wetsuit, which helped a balding bird re-grow his feathers and stay warm.

Michael Rose began his work on the evolution of aging at the University of Sussex in 1976, where he created fruit fly stocks with postponed aging. His 1991 book Evolutionary Biology of Aging offered a view of aging that was a complete departure from the views that had dominated the aging field since 1960.

John Cooley grew up fascinated by the natural world in general and cicadas in particular. He spent a number of years studying flies in high alpine meadows of Colorado and exploring the mountains of the Front Range.

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.

Paul Shaw received his Ph.D. working with Allan Rechtschaffen at the University of Chicago investigating the effects of chronic total sleep deprivation in the rat. He subsequently joined the Neurosciences Institute as a postdoctoral fellow with Giulio Tononi where they began using the fruit fly as a model system to identify molecules that play critical roles in regulating sleep homeostasis.

Dr. Jennifer Rosati is a forensic entomologist and assistant professor in the Department of Sciences at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. As a forensic entomologist, she uses insect development and behavior to help with post-mortem interval estimations or time since death.