Alan Alda, a seven-time Emmy® Award winner, played Hawkeye Pierce and wrote many of the episodes on the classic TV series M*A*S*H. He has starred in, written, and directed many films, and was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in The Aviator.

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.

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.

Charlie Kaufman wrote the screenplays for Being John Malkovich, Human Nature, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, for which he won an Academy Award for best screenplay.

Lawrence Krauss is an internationally known theoretical physicist and best-selling author. His research focuses on the intersection of cosmology and elementary particle physics. Krauss’s work addresses questions about the origin of matter in the universe.

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.

Brian Greene is a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University, and is recognized for a number of groundbreaking discoveries in his field of superstring theory. His books, The Elegant Universe, The Fabric of the Cosmos, and The Hidden Reality, have collectively spent 65 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list.

Tracy Day is the co-founder of the World Science Festival. She serves as CEO, overseeing the creative and programmatic offerings of the Festival and producing original theatrical, musical and multimedia works at the intersection of science and art.

David Charbonneau has been called a “celestial detective” for his systematic search for planets orbiting nearby sun-like stars. Uncovering the secrets of these exoplanets, as they’re called, could conceivably lead to the first direct evidence of life beyond Earth.

Steven W. Squyres is a veteran of several of NASA’s planetary exploration missions, including the Voyager mission to Jupiter and Saturn, the Magellan mission to Venus, and the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission.

Kip Thorne is the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus, at Caltech. He was the co-founder (with Rai Weiss and Ron Drever) of the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) Project and he chaired the steering committee that led LIGO in its earliest years.

Called the “Renaissance Man of Evolutionary Biology” by The New York Times, Francisco J. Ayala has made significant and wide-ranging experimental and theoretical contributions to evolution theory.

Gregory Chaitin is a mathematician and computer scientist who began making lasting contributions to his field while still a student at the Bronx High School of Science. His approach to mathematics views the field as much as an art form as science and inextricably linked with philosophical questions.

Jill Tarter has devoted her career to hunting for signs of sentient beings elsewhere through a systematic search for radio signals from Earth’s galactic neighbors. She has received wide recognition in the scientific community, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from Women in Aerospace, two Public Service Medals from NASA and a 2009 TEDPrize.

Luciano Floridi is one of Italy’s most influential thinkers in the area of philosophy science, technology, and ethics, and is best known as the founder of two major areas of research, Information Ethics and the Philosophy of Information. Dr. Floridi is the first philosopher elected Gauss Professor by the Göttingen Academy of Sciences.

Dennis Hong, a TED alumnus, is an associate professor and the founding director of RoMeLa (Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory) of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Virginia Tech.

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s Orthodox Jewish background and advanced studies in philosophy came together in an original writing style for which she has been widely recognized.

Linda Dalrymple Henderson is the acknowledged expert on the history of modern artists’ engagement with a possible fourth dimension of space, a widespread cultural preoccupation in the early 20th century before the popularization of the temporal fourth dimension of Einstein’s Relativity Theory.

Thupten Jinpa has been the principal English translator to the Dalai Lama for more than 25 years and has translated and edited many of his books, including Ethics for the New Millennium; Transforming the Mind; The Universe in a Single Atom: Convergence of Science and Spirituality.

Brian Hare is an expert in chimpanzee and bonobo behavior in African sanctuaries, and founded the Hominoid Psychology Research Group, which compares the psychology of hominoids (human and non-human ape).

Michio 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.

Andrea Lommen has been a pioneer in detecting gravitational waves with pulsars. Dr. Lommen’s research, and that of the team she leads, has taken theoretical concepts and transformed them into experimental practice.

Brad Lubman, conductor/composer, is founding co-Artistic Director and Music Director of Ensemble Signal, hailed by The New York Times as “one of the most vital groups of its kind.” He has gained widespread recognition during the past two decades for his versatility, commanding technique, and insightful interpretations.

Sandra H. “Sandy” Magnus is the executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the world’s largest aerospace professional society. Magnus attended the Missouri University of Science and Technology, graduating with a degree in physics and a master’s degree in electrical engineering.

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.

A former wide receiver for the Detroit Lions, Leland Melvin is an engineer and NASA astronaut. He served on the space shuttle Atlantis as a mission specialist and was named the NASA Associate Administrator for Education in October 2010.

Margaret S. Livingstone is best known for her work on visual processing, which has led to a deeper understanding of how we see color, motion, and depth, and how these processes are involved in generating percepts of objects as distinct from their background.

Dr. Mario Livio is an astrophysicist, a best-selling author, and a popular speaker. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has published more than 400 scientific papers on topics ranging from Dark Energy and cosmology to black holes and extrasolar planets.

Robert 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.

George Church is professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and director of PersonalGenomes.org, providing the world’s only open-access information on human Genomic, Environmental, and Trait data (GET). His 1984 Harvard Ph.D. included the first methods for direct genome sequencing, molecular multiplexing, and barcoding.

Antonio Damasio is one of the world’s leading neurologists and neuroscientists and has made seminal contributions to the understanding of how the brain processes emotion, decision, and consciousness.

André Fenton is a recognized neuroscientist, biomedical engineer, and entrepreneur. Dr. Fenton is a Professor at the Center for Neural Science at New York University.

Francis Collins is known for his landmark discoveries of disease genes and leadership of the Human Genome Project, an international project that culminated in 2003 with the completion of a finished sequence of the human DNA instruction book.

Laura Danly is a spectroscopist specializing in ultraviolet observations from space satellites. Her research focuses on the large-scale distribution and dynamics of the interstellar medium and its relationship to galaxy evolution.

Robbert Dijkgraaf is director and Leon Levy Professor of the Institute for Advanced Study, one of the world’s leading centers for curiosity-driven research in the sciences and humanities.

Pamela Ronald is Professor at the University of California, Davis, where she studies the role that genes play in a plant’s response to its environment. Her laboratory has genetically engineered rice for resistance to diseases and flooding, which are serious problems of rice crops in Asia and Africa.

Christopher Shera has done extensive research in solving fundamental problems in the mechanics and physiology of the peripheral auditory system. His work focuses on how the ear amplifies, analyzes, and emits sound.

Rai Weiss is known for his pioneering measurements of the spectrum of the cosmic microwave background radiation and his seminal leadership in the conception, design and operation of the laser interferometer gravitational wave detector; remarkable scientific achievements recognized by his roles as a co-founder and an intellectual leader of both the COBE Project and LIGO.

Mark Whittle uses large optical and radio telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope, to study processes occurring within 1,000 light years of the central supermassive black hole in Active Galaxies.

John Schaefer is the host and producer of WNYC’s long-running new music show New Sounds, which Billboard magazine has called “the #1 radio show for the Global Village,” founded in 1982, and its innovative Soundcheck podcast, which features live performances and interviews with a variety of guests.

Winston “Wole” Soboyejo’s research focuses on experimental studies of biomaterials, the mechanical behavior of materials and the development of alternative science and technology-driven methods for addressing global development needs in the areas of health, energy and water purification.

Gary Small is the co-inventor of the first brain-scanning technology to detect the physical evidence of Alzheimer’s disease in living people. He also led the team of neuroscientists that was the first to reveal that Internet searching may result in rapid and significant alterations in brain neural circuitry.

Robert C. Green is a medical geneticist who directs the G2P Research Program (genomes2people.org) in translational genomics and health outcomes at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He has been continuously funded by NIH for over 26 years and has published over 300 scientific articles.

Elaine Pagels changed the historical landscape of the Christian religion by exploding the myth of the early Church as a unified movement. Her findings were published in the bestselling book, The Gnostic Gospels, an analysis of 52 early Christian manuscripts that were unearthed in Egypt.

Karole Armitage is a dancer and choreographer widely known for combining disparate styles and themes with the discipline and techniques of classical ballet. Armitage danced with the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, Switzerland, and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, before forming her own New York-based company in the 1980s.

Jamshed Bharucha conducts research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, focusing on the cognitive and neural basis of the perception of music. He is a past editor of the interdisciplinary journal Music Perception. Dr. Bharucha is the twelfth president of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.

Marcela 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.

Paul 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.

Professor John Donoghue was the founding chairman of the Department of Neuroscience at Brown, a position he held for thirteen years. He is currently the director of the Brown Institute for Brain Science, which unites more than one hundred Brown faculty members to support interdisciplinary research on the nervous system.

Monica Dunford is an experimental high-energy particle physicist who helped bring the ATLAS detector at CERN into operation for the first Large Hadron Collider beam and collisions.

National Geographic Society Explorer-in-Residence Dr. Sylvia A. Earle is an oceanographer, explorer, author, and lecturer who has been called a “Living Legend” by the Library of Congress and “Hero for the Planet” by TIME magazine.

In 2008, Richard Garriott, a leading expert on private and commercial space travel, realized a lifelong dream to travel to space when he launched aboard the Russian Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft to the International Space Station and became the sixth private citizen to fly in Earth’s orbit.

Leonard Mlodinow is a theoretical physicist. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and taught at the California Institute of Technology. He is a popular international speaker and the author of numerous academic papers in physics and eight popular science books, including four best sellers.

Dr. Kristin Baldwin is an assistant professor in the Department of Cell Biology at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. Baldwin’s research harnesses cutting-edge stem cell technology and cloning.

Bevil Conway, originally from Zimbabwe, is an artist and neuroscientist who researches the neural basis for visual behavior, with a focus on color vision, and investigates the relationship between visual processing and visual art.

Jad 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.”

Elizabeth Alexander is a poet, essayist, playwright, and teacher, who composed and delivered “Praise Song for the Day” for the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Among her many awards was the first Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellowship for work that “contributes to improving race relations in American society and furthers the broad social goals of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954.”

The Escher String Quartet has received acclaim for its individual sound and unique cohesiveness. The quartet takes its name from Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher; the members were inspired by Escher’s method of interplay between individual components working together to form a whole.

Mostafa A. El-Sayed is an internationally renowned nanoscience researcher whose work in the synthesis and study of the properties of nanomaterials of different shape may have applications in the treatment of cancer.

Debra Fischer is a planet hunter who has discovered hundreds of worlds orbiting other stars, most of them gas giants, like Jupiter or Saturn. She is currently working to detect lower mass, Earth-like planets.

John M. Grunsfeld was named Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. in 2012. He previously served as the Deputy Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

David E. Guggenheim, also known as the “Ocean Doctor,” is a marine scientist, conservation policy specialist, submarine pilot and ocean explorer.

Heidi Hammel is a noted planetary scientist. Currently, she is senior research scientist and codirector of research at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

Eric Horvitz serves as Microsoft’s Chief Scientific Officer. He is known for his contributions to AI theory and practice, with a focus on principles and applications of AI amidst the …

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.

John Lithgow’s many Broadway appearances include The Changing Room, My Fat Friend, Trelawney of the Wells, Comedians, Anna Christie, Once in a Lifetime, Spokesong, Bedroom Farce, Beyond Therapy, Requiem for a Heavyweight, The Front Page, M. Butterfly, and Sweet Smell of Success.

The 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.

Marvin Minsky is one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence and had made numerous contributions to the fields of AI, cognitive science, mathematics and robotics. His current work focuses on trying to imbue machines with a capacity for common sense.

Amy Chase Gulden is a visual artist interested in art-making processes that are collaborative, not fully under her control, and bring her into direct contact with the living world. She has been collaborating with molecular biologist Kristin Baldwin, using the microorganism, E. coli bacteria, to generate living, growing paintings that can be replicated indefinitely or immortalized by printing onto paper.

Andrew Hamilton is an astrophysicist known for his scientifically accurate general relativistic visualizations of black holes, which have appeared on a number of TV documentary programs, including Nova and National Geographic, in a show at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and on the web, including on YouTube.

A native of Bolivar, New York, soprano Joélle Harvey is quickly becoming recognized as one of the most promising young talents of her generation. She is the recent recipient of a 2009 Sara Tucker Study Grant from the Richard Tucker Foundation.

Stephen 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.

Walter Isaacson is president and CEO of the Aspen Institute. He has been chairman and CEO of CNN and editor of TIME magazine. Isaacson’s most recent book is The Innovators; he authored Steve Jobs and several other best-selling biographies.

Monty Jones is co-winner of the prestigious 2004 World Food Prize, awarded for his discovery of the genetic process to create the New Rice for Africa (NERICA) which gives higher yields, shorter growth cycles and more protein content than its Asian and African parents.

Tod Machover, called “America’s Most Wired Composer” by the Los Angeles Times, is celebrated for creating music that breaks traditional artistic and cultural boundaries.

Steve Mirsky has written the humorous Anti Gravity column for Scientific American since 1995 and is a member of the magazine’s board of editors. Since 2006 his primary responsibilities have been overseeing the magazine’s weekly podcast Science Talk and the daily podcast, 60-Second Science.

Paul Nurse is a geneticist and cell biologist who has worked on how the eukaryotic cell cycle is controlled and how cell shape and cell dimensions are determined. His major work has been on the cyclin dependent protein kinases and how they regulate cell reproduction.

Nobel Prize-winning physicist William Phillips is a professor at the University of Maryland and leads the Laser Cooling and Trapping Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Faith Salie is a three-time Emmy-winning contributor to CBS Sunday Morning and a regular on NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! She’s hosted five seasons of PBS’s Science Goes to the Movies and is a storyteller for The Moth. She hosts the new podcast “One Plus One,” from Wondery.

Liev Schreiber is considered one of the finest actors of his generation with a repertoire of resonant, humanistic and often-times gritty portrayals that have garnered him with praise in film, theater, and television. He most recently appeared in the contemporary action thriller Salt with Angelina Jolie from director Phillip Noyce.

Emmy Award-winning journalist Elizabeth Vargas has traveled the world covering breaking news stories, reporting in-depth investigations, and conducting newsmaker interviews. She is the host of A&E Investigates.

Harold Varmus, M.D., co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for studies of the genetic basis of cancer, joined the Meyer Cancer Center of Weill Cornell Medicine as the Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine on April 1, 2015.

Professor Frank Wilczek is considered one of the world’s eminent theoretical physicists. He received the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction—key to several major problems in particle physics and beyond. 

Damian Woetzel is a former Principal Dancer with the New York City Ballet who has moved into directing and producing. He also works with Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Road Connect Program in the New York City Public Schools.

Miles O’Brien is a veteran award-winning journalist who focuses on science technology and aerospace. He is the science correspondent for the PBS NewsHour, a producer and director for the PBS science documentary series NOVA, and a correspondent for the PBS documentary series Frontline and the National Science Foundation Science Nation series.

Tiler Peck has danced leading roles in ballets by George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, in addition to a wide variety of choreographers, including Peter Martins, Susan Stroman and Christopher Wheeldon. She has also had numerous works created for her, most recently by Wheeldon and Wayne McGregor for the 2010 New York City Ballet Spring season.

Rosalind W. Picard is an international leader in envisioning and inventing innovative technology. Her award-winning book Affective Computing was instrumental in starting the new field by that name.

Seth Shostak is an astronomer, lecturer and the author and editor of several books, including the 2009 Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (National Geographic). For much of his career, he conducted radio astronomy research on galaxies.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. He is the author of several books and hosts the NOVA ScienceNow program on PBS. Tyson is best known as an ardent popularizer of astronomy and astrophysics.

Josh Zepps is a correspondent for Bloomberg TV’s Energy Now, reporting on the future of energy and the environment. His show on Discovery Science Channel, Brink, took an irreverent look at the latest breakthroughs on the brink of changing our lives.

Carl Zimmer is an award-winning columnist for the New York Times and the author of 13 books about science. His reporting has earned awards from the National Academies of Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, and the Online Journalism Association.

Lawrence Parsons is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom. His early research on action, spatial reasoning and object recognition was followed by his current work in reasoning, language, emotion and the improvisation of music and dancing.

Daniel J. Levitin is the James McGill Professor of Psychology and Neurosciences at McGill University, where he holds associate appointments in the Department of Neurology & Neurosurgery, the Faculty of Education, School of Computer Science, and in the Schulich School of Music.

Iain Couzin is assistant professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. He studies the actions and interactions that give rise to collective behavior—from marching ants and swarming locusts to flocking birds and crowds of people—and what we might learn from successful swarming.

Mitchell Joachim is on the faculty at Columbia University and Parsons School of Design. He is a partner in Terrefuge, a New York-based organization for philanthropic architecture and ecological design.

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

Dickson Despommier is a trailblazer, devising solutions to problems in agriculture and public health that likely will be magnified by climate change. A microbiologist, he is a Professor of Public Health at Columbia University’s Mailman School, where he developed the idea of growing food in urban farm skyscrapers.

Maurizio Seracini is a pioneer in the use of multispectral imaging to examine works of art. Using diagnostic and analytical technologies, he has studied over 2,500 works of art and historic buildings, including major works by Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Raphael, Caravaggio.

Majora Carter is a green economic consultant who combines social, economic development, and region wide infrastructure needs into positive feedback systems. She has been a driving force behind some of NYC’s most progressive environmental legislation, as well as cultural acceptance of sustainable practices.

Since 2001 AL Holmes and AL Taylor have created an award winning body of films commissioned by Animate, Arts Council England, BFI, Channel 4 television, Cornerhouse Cinema, FACT gallery, Film London, MuHKA, Southbank Centre and the World Science Festival, exhibiting internationally in galleries, site specific installations, film festivals, television and concert halls.

Claire Evans is a freelance science writer, science fiction critic, polymath, and musician. Her work explores the synchronies between culture, technology, and science. She has been writing the art/science blog Universe for over five years and still doesn’t know how to describe it.

Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid is a composer, multimedia artist and writer. His written work has appeared in The Village Voice, The Source, Artforum, and Rapgun among other publications.

Andrei Linde is a professor of physics at Stanford University, one of the authors of the inflationary theory and the theory of inflationary multiverse. He invented the theory of chaotic inflation, which is the most general version of inflationary cosmology. Linde also helped to develop the theory of eternal chaotic inflation, and the mechanism of vacuum stabilization in string theory.

E.O. Wilson is a life-long explorer of the natural world whose pioneering studies of ants have led to revolutionary insights across a wide range of fields, from evolution to animal and human behavior.

The Inspirational Voices of Abyssinian Baptist Church is the resident choir of one of the most prominent African-American institutions in America. Under the leadership of the Rev. Dr. Calvin O. Butts, III, the Abyssinian Baptist Church has followed the African-American church tradition of actively building communities.

Marin Alsop made history with her appointment in 2007 as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the first woman to head a major American orchestra. This mirrored her ongoing success in the United Kingdom where she was Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony from 2002- 2008 and is now Conductor Emeritus.

Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete is a Roman Catholic priest, theologian, physicist and author. A frequent contributor to The New York Times, he is one of the leaders in the United States for the international Catholic movement Communion and Liberation and is on the Board of Advisors of the Crossroads Cultural Center.

Shreya Amin, a senior at Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics, has a knack for discovering and learning more about the world through science.

Hazel A. Barton has explored caves on five continents, studying microorganisms to research cures for antibiotic-resistant diseases. She coordinates an active undergraduate research laboratory, including a National Institutes of Health funded study examining microbial responses to starvation and a National Science Foundation funded project examining the energetic interactions of bacteria in cave environments.

David Battisti is The Tamaki Chair of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington. His research is focused on understanding the natural variability in climate that stems from the interaction between the ocean, atmosphere, land and sea ice. He is also studying the impacts of natural climate variability and climate change on global food security.

George Ellis is Professor Emeritus of Applied Mathematics at the University of Capetown and investigates cosmology, the nature of time, and the emergence of complexity. He is the co-author with Stephen Hawking of The Large Scale Structure of Space Time.

Harold Evans is an editor and author of two critically acclaimed best-selling histories of America: The American Century and, most recently, They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine: Two Centuries of Innovators.

Jesse Flores, a senior at Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics, first developed a love for science when he picked up The Anatomy of the Human Body. He’s since worked with lasers and with the bacteria staphylococcus, and is currently researching weather tracking systems. He can often be found playing handball or embarking on culinary and scenic adventures around town.

Over the course of his career, Harrison Ford has become one of the most popularly acclaimed actors of our time. His body of work includes 41 feature films, eleven of which have exceeded $100 million each at the box office.

Sylvester James (Jim) Gates, Jr. is currently the John S. Toll Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland-College Park. In spring of 2009 he was appointed to serve on President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and the Maryland State Board of Education.

Evalyn Gates is the Assistant Director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago and a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics. Her research focuses on theoretical cosmology and particle astrophysics.

Aneela Gillani, a junior at Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics, is passionate about biology and is working towards a career in medicine. Her extracurricular activities include Model United Nations and the National Honors Society, and she’s also enrolled in the Advanced Science Research program.

With a career spanning more than 30 years as a soloist, chamber musician, recording artist, and conductor, Joshua Bell is one of the most celebrated violinists of his era. An exclusive Sony Classical artist, Bell has recorded more than 40 CDs garnering Grammy, Mercury, Gramophone and Echo Klassik awards and is the recipient of the Avery Fisher Prize.

Sean Carroll is the Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Johns Hopkins University, and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Prior to that he was a research …

Yoon Chang joined Argonne National Laboratory in 1974 and has been responsible for leadership of advanced reactor design and fuel cycle technology development activities in positions of increasing responsibility.

Emmy, 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.”

Brother Guy Consolmagno, SJ, earned undergraduate and masters’ degrees from MIT, and a Ph. D. in Planetary Science from the University of Arizona. He was a researcher at Harvard and MIT, served in the US Peace Corps (Kenya), and taught university physics at Lafayette College, Pennsylvania, before entering the Jesuits in 1989.

Dr. Robert W. Corell, Vice President of Programs & Policy for The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment is also a Council Member for the Global Energy Assessment and a Senior Policy Fellow at the Policy Program of the American Meteorological Society.

Dr. James Hansen is director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. An active researcher in planetary atmospheres and climate science for nearly 40 years, Hansen is best known for his Congressional testimonies on climate change that widely elevated the awareness of global warming.

Lucy Hawking is a journalist, and the author of several novels. With her father, the physicist Stephen Hawking, she has written George’s Secret Key to the Universe, a children’s adventure featuring the mysteries of physics, science and the Universe.

Gradjola Hazizaj came to the U.S. from Albania in 2005, and is now a junior at the Brooklyn International High School. She has long dreamed of working in medicine, and believes that through science she can help people and make their lives easier.

Hugh Herr is Associate Professor at MIT and Director of the Biomechatronics group at the MIT Media Lab. His research seeks to advance technologies merging body and machine, and encompasses a diverse set of disciplines.

Paul Hoffman is the author of a memoir called King’s Gambit and two biographies, The Man Who Loved Only Numbers and Wings of Madness. Formerly the publisher of Encyclopaedia Britannica and the long-time editor in chief of Discover magazine, Paul has performed mathematical paper-folding tricks on David Letterman and strapped Oprah into a virtual hang-glider while she accused him of ogling her butt.

Radley Horton conducts regional climate change scenario assessments for stakeholders around the globe, projecting impacts on agriculture, water resources, ecosystems, and infrastructure.

Described by Time Magazine as “perhaps the ultimate role model for women in science,” the Honorable Shirley Ann Jackson, Ph.D., has served as the 18th president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute since 1999.

At Duke University, neurobiologist Erich Jarvis leads a team that studies the abilities of songbirds, parrots and hummingbirds to learn new sounds and pass along a vocal repertoire in to the next generation.

Dean Kamen is an inventor, entrepreneur and tireless advocate for science and technology. He holds more than 440 U.S. and foreign patents, many for innovative medical devices that have expanded the frontiers of healthcare worldwide.

One 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.

Leon Lederman is the Director Emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, and Pritzker Professor of Science at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago; for his contributions to neutrino physics, he shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Thomas Lovejoy holds the Biodiversity Chair at the Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment based in Washington, DC, and is a recipient of the prestigious Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement and the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award.

Jonathan Rosen has written about the ivory-billed woodpecker, a bird long thought to be extinct. His most recent books are The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature and The Talmud and the Internet. His writings have also appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker magazine, the American Scholar and numerous anthologies.

Musician and philosopher, David Rothenberg, is the author of Survival of the Beautiful: Art, Science, and Evolution, Bug Music, and a CD of the same name featuring music made out of encounters with the entomological world.

By examining historical maps and archeological records in combination with geographic computer modeling and scientific sleuthing, Eric Sanderson has reimagined the old growth forests, wetlands and meadows that Henry Hudson saw when he first arrived on the shores of Manhattan in 1609.

Ben Schwegler is Walt Disney Imagineering R&D’s chief scientist, and is particularly interested in the development of sustainable engineering techniques. He was instrumental in the creation of the most energy efficient theme park ever built as well as a new generation of environmentally friendly fireworks.

Interested in the links between art, science, and technology through the ages, New York artist Devorah Sperber’s work addresses the way the brain processes visual information versus the way we think we see.

Nibh, a junior at Brooklyn International High School, arrived in New York from Bangladesh in 2007. He’s a member of the National Honor Society, he writes for the school newspaper, does extensive community service and recently completed an internship at the medical clinic of New York Methodist Hospital. Nibh loves the sense of discovery that comes with doing experiments, and is certain he will pursue a career in science.

John Waldman is professor of biology at Queens College, City University of New York. Prior to this appointment in 2004, he was employed for 20 years by the Hudson River Foundation for Science and Environmental Research.

Jane Lubchenco, University Distinguished Professor at Oregon State University, is a marine ecologist with expertise in the ocean, climate change, and interactions between the environment and human well-being.

Alan McDonald is Head, Programme Coordination Group, Department of Nuclear Energy, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The Department of Nuclear Energy supports interested Member States in improving the performance of nuclear power plants and the nuclear fuel cycle.

Warren Meck is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. An internationally recognized expert on time perception, Meck’s research explores the neural basis of the “internal clocks” humans and other animals use to time events in seconds, minutes, and hours.

Alfred 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.

Ken Miller is professor of Biology at Brown University. He serves as life science advisor to the NewsHour on PBS and is coauthor, with Joseph S. Levine, of Biology textbooks used by millions of students. In 2005, he served as lead witness in the trial on evolution and intelligent design in Dover, Pennsylvania.

Ken Nakayama received his B.A. in Psychology from the Haverford College in 1962 and his PhD from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1967. For almost twenty years, he was at the Smith Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco.

Irene Pepperberg is Adjunct Associate Professor at Brandeis University and Research Associate and Lecturer at Harvard. She has studied the cognitive and communicative ability of Grey parrots for over two decades.

Andrew Revkin is one of America’s most honored and experienced journalists and authors focused on environmental and human sustainability. He recently joined the staff of the National Geographic Society as strategic adviser for environmental and science journalism.

Paula S. Apsell heads the flagship PBS science series, NOVA, now in its 35th year. Under Apsell’s leadership, NOVA has won every major broadcast award and is the most popular science series on television. In 2005, Apsell introduced NOVA scienceNOW, a critically acclaimed science newsmagazine dedicated to covering the latest developments in science and technology.

After serving as President of Caltech for nine years, David Baltimore was appointed President Emeritus and the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Biology (2006). Baltimore was awarded the Nobel Prize at the age of 37 for research in virology.

Steven Benner is one of the pioneers of synthetic biology, which seeks to create artificial living systems. He is a Distinguished Fellow at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville, Florida and a founder of the Westheimer Institute for Science.

Paul Bloom is Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, and Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University. Paul Bloom studies how children and adults …

Cynthia Breazeal is an associate professor of media arts and sciences and the director of the personal robots group at the Media Lab of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. She is an expert on the interaction between people and sociable robots.

Blaine Brownell is an architect, sustainable building advisor, and a researcher of innovative materials for design and construction. From self-cleaning paint to transparent ceramics and biological plastics, he has described these and hundreds of other revolutionary products in his two-volume book Transmaterial: A Catalogue of Materials that Redefine our Physical Environment.

Tom Crawford has been helping athletes, executives and teams across the U.S. perform at their highest levels for over 20 years — from youth programs to Major League Baseball, the National Football League and the National Basketball association.

Gordon Davidson is a Tony Award-winning theater director. He was artistic director of the renowned Center Theater Group in Los Angeles for more than thirty years. His credits include Broadway productions of Children of a Lesser God and The Shadow Box.

Eric DeCamps is the personification of a magician. Every one of his performances is filled with compelling stories and visual artistry, and at every turn, he performs the seemingly impossible. DeCamps has been a serious student of the art of magic for over 30 years.

Daniel C. Dennett is a University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, as well as Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University.

Peter Diaczuk is a leading authority in forensics and an expert witness on firearms, trace evidence, and crime scene reconstruction. He has performed research on topics as diverse as underwater fingerprints, blood spatter patterns from gunshot wounds, and bullets ricochetting from different surfaces.

Ira 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.

Emily Levine has recently upgraded herself to Emily 3.0. Emily 1.0 was a stand-up comedian, appearing in comedy clubs and on Dave Letterman’s Late Night TV show, among others. Emily 2.0 was a television writer/producer, working on shows such as Designing Women, Love and War, and Dangerous Minds. She has created and produced pilots for ABC, NBC, CBS, and HBO.

Combining elements of computer science, anthropology, visual art and storytelling, Jonathan Harris designs systems to explore and explain the human world. He has made projects about human emotion, human desire, modern mythology, science, news, anonymity, and language.

As director of the CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities, William Solecki’s research focuses on urban environmental change, urban land use, and suburbanization.

Michael Novacek has served since 1982 as a curator at the American Museum of Natural History where he is currently Senior Vice President and Provost of Science and Curator of Paleontology.

A managing partner at the consulting firm, Haseltine Partners, Eric Haseltine is a neuroscientist who has applied new discoveries about the human brain in fields as diverse as aerospace technology, virtual reality, special effects, journalism, entertainment and, most recently, national security and intelligence.

A leading thinker on geoengineering and a prize-winning physicist, David Keith works at the interface between climate science, energy technology and public policy. He is particularly interested in finding viable ways to capture and store CO2 including the direct capture of CO2 from the atmosphere.

Alan Friedman is a consultant in the areas of museum development and science communication. He has consulted for over sixty institutions around the world. From 1984 to 2006, Friedman was the Director and CEO of the New York Hall of Science. He is co-author of the book, Einstein as Myth and Muse.

Peter Galison is the Pellegrino University Professor of the History of Science and of Physics at Harvard University. He is a leading historian of science whose research explores the interaction …

Eugene Thacker is the author of several books and articles that combine philosophy, science, and technology, including Biomedia, The Global Genome, and The Exploit: A Theory of Networks which he co-authored with Alexander Galloway. He has collaborated with art collectives Biotech Hobbyist and the Radical Software Group.

Helge Kragh is a leading science historian whose research focuses on the history of cosmology. He is the author of several books including, Cosmology and Controversy and Conceptions of the Cosmos. Kragh is a professor in the History of Science Department at the University of Aarhus in Denmark.

Alan Lightman is a writer, astrophysicist, and educator. He is professor of the practice of the humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As a theoretical physicist, he has contributed to the understanding of the unusual radiation processes, black holes, and stellar dynamics.

MTV News correspondent SuChin Pak, began her television career as host of the PBS Science program Newton’s Apple. She has hosted the MTV Video Music Awards, the Movie Awards, and the documentary series My Life Translated. She will host The G-Word on Discovery’s forthcoming eco-lifestyle network, Planet Green.

Reijo Pera is a professor and the Director of Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research and Education Center at Stanford University. Her research is aimed at understanding the developmental genetics of human germ cell formation and differentiation.

Matthew Ritchie is a painter, sculptor, and digital artist. His work combines science, architecture, history, and the dynamics of culture to explore the idea of information, and is featured in …

Vera C. Rubin was an observational astronomer who studied the motions of gas and stars in galaxies and motions of galaxies in the universe for 75 percent of her life. …

Laurie Santos is a cognitive psychologist who studies monkeys’ capacity for learning and the evolution of the human mind. She is an Associate Professor of Psychology and director of the Comparative Cognition Laboratory at Yale University and was named one of Popular Science magazine’s “Brilliant 10” for 2007.

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 …

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.

Julia Sweeney is an actress and comedian who has been part of the cast of Saturday Night Live and has appeared in feature films such as Pulp Fiction and Clockstoppers. Most recently, she has come to wider attention with her autobiographical monologue, Letting go of God.

Chris McKay is a research scientist with the NASA Ames Research Center. His current research focuses on the evolution of the solar system and the origin of life. He is also actively involved in planning for future Mars missions including human exploration.

Theoretical 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.

Margaret Turnbull leads the science team of the NASA New Worlds Observer mission looking for Earth-like planets and signs of alien life. She is an astrobiologist at the Global Science Institute in Wisconsin.

After graduation from Oxford in 1964, Michael York joined the National Theatre company, making his film debut in The Taming of the Shrew. His more than 60 other screen credits include Romeo and Juliet, Cabaret, Jesus of Nazareth, The Three Musketeers, Logan’s Run, Murder on the Orient Express, Conduct Unbecoming, The Omega Code and all three Austin Powers movies.

As lead innovator of “One Laptop Per Child”, Mary Lou Jepsen created the world’s most inexpensive, low-power laptop, enabling its distribution to children in developing countries. Her company, Pixel Qi aims to revolutionize the electronics industry with a new generation of screens.

Computer scientist Latanya Sweeney is interested in the intersection between technology and policy. She has had a major impact on the health care industry and on the creation of systems and legislation that insure patients’ privacy rights.

Canadian rap artist, writer, and former tree-planter, Baba Brinkman has personally planted more than one million trees in the Rocky Mountains. After graduating with an M.A. in comparative literature in 2003, he began his career as a rap troubadour.

Biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey’s research interests encompass the characterization of the accumulating and eventually pathogenic molecular and cellular side-effects of metabolism that constitute mammalian aging. His work also involves the design of interventions to repair and/or obviate that damage.

Recognized mathematician and science writer Amir D. Aczel is the author of numerous books that have appeared on various bestseller lists in the United States and abroad, with translations into 22 languages. Present at the Creation: The Story of CERN and the Large Hadron Collider is his most recent literary contribution.

Recognized mathematician and computer scientist Brian Snow’s early work spans from teaching mathematics and laying the groundwork for a computer science department at Ohio University in the 1960’s, to working as a cryptologic designer and architect at the National Security Agency (NSA) in the 1970s.

David Ferrucci is the lead researcher and principal investigator for the Watson/Jeopardy! project. He has been a Research Staff Member at IBM’s T.J. Watson’s Research Center since 1995 where he heads up the Semantic Analysis and Integration department.

Renowned for his groundbreaking contributions to the study of genius, Dean Keith Simonton has provided his expertise to over 400 publications on the topic, including a dozen books entitled Genius, Creativity, and Leadership; Scientific Genius; Greatness; Genius and Creativity; Origins of Genius; and more.

Deborah Blum is a Pulitzer-prize winning science writer and the author of five books, most recently the best-selling tale of murder and forensic detection in 1920s New York, The Poisoner’s Handbook. She writes Poison Pen, a monthly blog on environmental chemistry, for The New York Times, and is a staff science blogger for Wired.

R. Douglas Fields is a developmental neurobiologist and author of The Other Brain, a popular book about the discovery of brain cells (called glia) that communicate without using electricity. He is an authority on neuron-glia interactions, brain development, and the cellular mechanisms of memory.

Eric Lander was one of the principal leaders of the Human Genome Project, which from 1990-2003 mapped the human genetic code. He has pioneered the application of genomics to the understanding human disease. Lander serves as President and Founding Director of the Broad Institute.

Gerd Gigerenzer is director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. He has trained U.S. Federal Judges, physicians, and top managers in decision-making and understanding risks and uncertainties.

Glennys Farrar is a collegiate professor of physics at New York University. She has made seminal contributions to theoretical particle physics, including demonstrating that quarks are not just mathematical constructs but are actually physically present in matter and pioneering the search for supersymmetry.

Heather Knight is an electrical engineer and social roboticist who runs Marilyn Monrobot in New York, where she and her cohort create “charismatic machine performances,” as well as founding the world’s first Robot Film Festival. Knight is currently conducting her doctoral research at the intersection of robotics and entertainment at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute.

Renowned for his influential contributions to string theory and its application in mathematics, particle physics, cosmology, and black hole physics, Herman Verlinde’s research has been widely recognized through many awards and fellowships.

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

Recognized mathematician and noted expert on the number Pi, Jonathan Borwein is the author of several hundred research papers and over a dozen books spanning the topics of optimization, analysis, computation, and experimental mathematics.

Jonathan Weiner’s books have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and many other honors. While working on His Brother’s Keeper, he was writer-in-residence at Rockefeller University. Now he teaches science writing at Columbia University’s graduate school of journalism, where he is a professor.

Josh Tenenbaum is a professor of Computational Cognitive Science in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). He studies learning, reasoning, and perception in humans and machines.

A pioneer in researching the control of cellular senescence and its role in tumor suppression and aging, Judith Campisi has helped make several groundbreaking discoveries that continue to challenge and alter existing paradigms.

Jürgen Schmidhuber has published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers. His lab’s research on artificial neural nets won several handwriting recognition contests and number one rankings in several computer vision competitions and benchmarks.

Known as the “Math Guy” on National Public Radio and author of 30 books and over 80 published research articles, Keith Devlin is a recognized mathematician. In 2003, he was lauded by the California State Assembly for his “innovative work and longtime service in the field of mathematics and its relation to logic and linguistics.”

Committed to advancing discoveries in the science of aging and longevity, Leonard Guarente is recognized for his impactful contribution in identifying sirtuins, a group of related proteins that slow aging in model organisms and mitigate aging and diseases in mammals.

Leslie Vosshall is a molecular neurobiologist who studies how behaviors emerge from the integration of sensory input with internal physiological states. She is the Robin Chemers Neustein Professor, Head of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior, and Director of the Kavli Neural Systems Institute at The Rockefeller University.

Elizabeth A. Phelps is the director of the Phelps Lab at the New York University Center for Neuroeconomics. Her laboratory has earned widespread acclaim for its groundbreaking research on how the human brain processes emotion, particularly as it relates to learning, memory, and decision-making.

Focused on the functions of the hippocampus in memory and spatial cognition, Lynn Nadel’s work has led to significant contributions in the study of stress and memory, sleep and memory, memory reconsolidation, and mental retardation observed in Down syndrome.

Mathematician, researcher, writer and radio presenter Marcus du Sautoy has contributed to the Times, Daily Telegraph, Independent and the Guardian. For several years, he wrote a regular column in the Times called Sexy Science. He is also a frequent commentator on BBC radio and television.

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.

Natalie Angier is a Pulitzer-prize winning science columnist for The New York Times and the author of Woman: An Intimate Geography—a finalist for the National Book Award—and The Canon: A Whirligig Tour through the Beautiful Basics of Science, among other books. She has also written for Smithsonian, The Atlantic, National Geographic, The American Scholar, Wired, Geo, Slate, and many other publications.

An active member of the research community in the fields of cryptanalysis (breaking ciphers), computer security, and privacy, Orr Dunkelman has published numerous papers analyzing the security of ciphers and cryptosystems. He is widely recognized for his work on the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES).

Roald Hoffmann is a professor of chemistry and the Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters Emeritus at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He is a graduate of both Columbia and Harvard Universities.

Recently retired from his position as Panasonic Professor of Robotics at MIT, Rodney Brooks’ latest startup, Heartland Robotics, aims to revitalize American manufacturing by providing workers with new robotic tools. During his employment at MIT, Brooks served as director of the institution’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and its Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory—MIT’s largest lab.

Saul Perlmutter is a professor in Berkeley’s Department of Physics and a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is the leader of the Supernova Cosmology Project, an international collaboration of research teams from seven countries measuring the expansion history of the universe.

Seth Mnookin’s most recent book, The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear, uses a combination of investigative reporting, intellectual and scientific history, and sociological analysis to explore the controversies over vaccines and their rumored connection to developmental disorders. The New York Times said it was “just what the public needs…a tour-de-force.”

Simon 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.

Steven Pinker serves as the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, where he conducts research on language, cognition, and human nature. He is the author of several bestselling books, …

Sissel Tolaas’s work focuses on smell, language, and communication while spanning science, art, and industry. She has identified the smell molecules in worn coats and covered the walls of an MIT gallery with chemically reproduced molecules from the sweat of men who suffer fear attacks.

Manager and research staff member of the Cryptography Research Group at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center, Tal Rabin’s research focuses on the general area of cryptography and, more specifically, on multiparty computations, threshold and proactive security.

A 1978 Harvard graduate, Todd Sacktor completed his M.D. at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and his neurology residency at Columbia University, where he began studying the role of the enzyme protein kinase C (PKC) in the short-term memory of Aplysia (marine snails).

Joseph LeDoux is a professor of neural science at NYU and director of the Emotional Brain Institute involving NYU and the Nathan Kline Institute. LeDoux’s research is focused on the brain mechanisms of emotion and memory. He is the author of The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life.

Niels Rattenborg aims to gain insight into the function of sleep through studying birds, the only taxonomic group to independently evolve sleep patterns like those in mammals, including humans.

Smell scientist, entrepreneur, and author Avery N. Gilbert is a fragrance industry innovator and pioneer in the areas of olfactory mental imagery, multisensory correlates of odor perception, and the psychological factors that bias odor judgments.

Brit Marling is a rising actress, writer, and producer, whose emerging talent made a mark at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival as the first female multi-hyphenate to have two films premiere side by side.

Donald Caspar is a structural biologist, emeritus professor of biological science at the Florida State University Institute of Molecular Biophysics, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Elena Aprile is a professor of physics at Columbia University and is internationally recognized for her experimental work with noble liquid detectors for research in gamma-ray astrophysics and particle astrophysics. She is the founder and spokesperson of the XENON Dark Matter experiment.

Cristina Alberini is a professor of neural science at New York University whose research focuses on the identification and characterization of the biological mechanisms that accompany long-term memory formation, storage …

Mary-Claire King, PhD, is American Cancer Society Professor in the Department of Medicine and the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. She was the first to show that breast cancer is inherited in some families, as the result of mutations in the gene that she named BRCA1.

David Bodanis is known to a wide audience as an author of popular science books such as the highly acclaimed E=mc²: A Biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation and Electric Universe, which won the 2006 Royal Society Aventis Prize for Science Books.

Bill Bryson is a best-selling writer of 17 books (and counting) on travel, science, and the English language, and the current chancellor of Durham University in northern England.

Ralph J. Cicerone work on atmospheric chemistry, climate change, and energy has involved him in shaping science and environmental policy at the highest levels.

Richard 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.

Freeman Dyson, born and raised in England, excelled in all subjects from a very young age, going on to specialize in mathematics and theoretical physics in his studies at the University of Cambridge.

Timothy Ferris is the author of a dozen books (most recently The Science of Liberty), plus 200 articles and essays, and three documentary films—The Creation of the Universe, Life Beyond Earth, and Seeing in the Dark—seen by over 20 million viewers

Paul Greengard is the director of the Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research at Rockefeller University in New York City.

Dudley Herschbach is the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a professor of physics at Texas A&M University in College Station. For his work on the dynamics of chemical reactions, he was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Mae Jemison is a scientist, physician, astronaut, and educator. In 1992, she became the first woman astronaut of color when she flew aboard the space shuttle Endeavour as a science mission specialist.

Eric Kandel is Kavli Professor and University Professor at Columbia University and a senior investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Rob Morrow is an actor, writer, and restaurant owner who is best known for his portrayal of Joel Fleishman in the hit TV series Northern Exposure. In the course of his career, he has been nominated multiple times for Golden Globe and Emmy Awards; he was most recently seen in the Rob Reiner film The Bucket List.

Lisa Randall studies theoretical particle physics and cosmology at Harvard University, where she is Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science. Randall is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Martin Rees is the UK’s Astronomer Royal and a Fellow (and former Master) of Trinity College, Cambridge. After studying at Cambridge, he held post-doctoral positions in the UK and the USA, before becoming a professor at Sussex University.

Olufunmilayo Olopade is a Walter L. Palmer Distinguished Service Professor and Associate Dean for Global Health at The University of Chicago Medical Center. Olopade graduated with distinction from the University of Ibadan College of Medicine in Nigeria.

Jim Pfaus has sex on the brain. An internationally known expert in the neurobiology of sexual behavior, Pfaus has authored over 150 publications and chapters that examine how the brain’s neurochemical and neuroanatomical systems are organized for sexual arousal, desire, pleasure, and inhibition.

Aaron Berkowitz is the author of The Improvising Mind: Cognition and Creativity in the Musical Moment, which explores improvisation from the perspectives of cognitive neuroscience, musicology/ethnomusicology, and music pedagogy.

Marc Breedlove has written over 100 scientific articles investigating the role of hormones in shaping the developing and adult nervous system, publishing in journals including Science, Nature, and Nature Neuroscience, as well as two textbooks, Biological Psychology and Behavioral Endocrinology.

Matt Ridley is an English science communicator. Educated at Oxford University, where he received a doctorate in zoology, he embarked upon a career as a science writer, serving as science editor for The Economist from 1984 to 1987.

Robert Shaye is a businessman, film producer, and director. He is also the founder of New Line Cinema that, following an early success with the classic horror movie A Nightmare on Elm Street, went on to back numerous highly successful films.

Anna Deavere Smith has been hailed by Newsweek as “the most exciting individual in American theater.” She began interviewing people across the country 20 years ago. Without props, sets, or costumes, she translates those encounters into profound performances, each drawing verbatim from the original recorded interview.

Lee Smolin is a theoretical physicist who has made important contributions to the search for quantum gravity. Smolin is a founding faculty member at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. His five books explore philosophical issues raised by contemporary physics and cosmology.

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.

Carl Wieman was a Distinguished Professor of Physics and Presidential Teaching Scholar at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 1984 to 2006 and still retains a part-time appointment at that institution as Director of the Colorado Science Education Initiative.

Meredith Chivers is an assistant professor and Director of the Sexuality & Gender Laboratory in the Psychology Department at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. She received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Northwestern University and completed post-doctoral research training at the University of Toronto’s Centre.

Louie Psihoyos (rhymes with Sequoias) has been widely regarded as one of the top photographers in the world. He was hired directly out of college to shoot for National Geographic and created images for the yellow-bordered magazine for 18 years.

As the director of astrovisualization at the American Museum of Natural History, Carter Emmart directs the museum’s groundbreaking space shows and heads up development of an interactive 3D atlas called The Digital Universe.

Bora Zivkovic is the blog editor at Scientific American magazine. Born in Belgrade, Serbia (then Yugoslavia) he majored in biochemistry and molecular biology in high school, trained horses, and studied veterinary medicine at University of Belgrade. Upon arrival in the United States, Zivkovic did research on circadian rhythms in Japanese quail at North Carolina State University.

Gary Marcus, scientist, bestselling author, and entrepreneur, is Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at NYU and CEO and Co-Founder of the recently-formed Geometric Intelligence, Inc.

Pat Metheny was born in Kansas City into a musical family. Starting on trumpet at the age of 8, Metheny switched to guitar at age 12. By the age of 15, he was working regularly with the best jazz musicians in Kansas City, receiving valuable on-the-bandstand experience at an unusually young age.

David Morse has long been recognized as an actor of great talent and versatility in film, television, and theater. His most recent film credits include Drive Angry opposite Nicholas Cage, Passengers with Anne Hathaway and the Oscar-winning film The Hurt Locker directed by Kathryn Bigelow.

Jean Berko Gleason is one of the world’s leading experts on children’s language and one of the founding mothers of the field of psycholinguistics. She created the famous Wug Test, which reveals how children learn the rules of language, such as how to make singular words plural.

Mark 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.

Robert Naczi is a plant systematist, who specializes in documenting the changing plant life of the Northeast. He is a leading authority on the flora of the eastern United States, the sedge genus Carex (Cyperaceae), and the Western Hemisphere Pitcher Plants (Sarraceniaceae).

Priyamvada Natarajan is the Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor of Astronomy and Physics at Yale. She is an astrophysicist with research interests in cosmology, gravitational lensing, and black …

Charles Sawyers shared the 2009 Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for his role in the development of molecularly-targeted treatments for chronic myeloid leukemia, converting a fatal cancer into a manageable chronic condition.

Emmy Award-winning Juju Chang is a co-anchor for ABC News. During her career at ABC News, she has been news anchor for Good Morning America, contributed to 20/20, reported for World News Tonight, and anchored the early morning newscasts of World News Now and World News This Morning.

George Musser is a contributing editor at Scientific American and Nautilus magazines, a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT for 2014–2015, and the author of Spooky Action at a Distance (2015) and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to String Theory (2008).

“Punk science” meets Japanese innovation in this unique musical instrument, created by Yoshi Akai, that uses your own heart beat as the basis for a tune. Using your body as an electric circuit, the instrument takes your pulse and sonifies it. You can then add sound samples and play along to your own heart.

The Stone Forest Ensemble is an avant-garde hip-hop ensemble whose core consists of strings, beatbox, and hand drumming, with the occasional inclusion of traditional Asian instruments.

As Executive Producer of the PBS science series, NOVA, now in its 38th season, Howard Swartz manages all phases of production, from development through the creative execution of NOVA programs.

This is a collaborative, multi-user audio-visual experience. Sensors in a table and objects combine to create a sonic experience that is different every time a piece is moved.

Maggie Gyllenhaal was most recently seen on stage in Austin Pendleton’s production of Three Sisters at the Classic Stage Company in New York City. Her other stage credits include Uncle Vanya, also at CSC, Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul at BAM and the Mark Taper Forum, and Patrick Marber’s award-winning Closer at the Mark Taper Forum and Berkeley Rep.

Leslie Bernstein delayed her scientific career to raise a family and received her Ph.D. in biostatistics at age 42. She then pursued a career as a cancer epidemiologist and was the first to demonstrate that exercise lowers women’s breast cancer risk.

Pamela Bjorkman is the Max Delbrück Professor of Biology and an HHMI investigator at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California. She received a BA degree in Chemistry from the University of Oregon and a Ph.D. degree in biochemistry from Harvard University.

Gary Stix commissions, writes and edits features, news articles and Web blogs for Scientific American. His area of coverage is neuroscience. He also has frequently been the issue or section editor for special issues or reports on topics ranging from nanotechnology to obesity.

Jocelyn Monroe is an assistant professor of physics in MIT’s Laboratory for Nuclear Science who works on experimental searches for new particles. Her current research focus is on directly detecting dark matter particle interactions with the MiniCLEAN and DMTPC experiments.

Internationally renowned neurobiologist James Fallon has made major scientific breakthroughs in the basic and clinical brain sciences. He was the first to describe a characterized growth factor in the central nervous system and the first to show how to stimulate the mass production and mobilization of adult stem cells in the adult brain.

Esther Conwell is widely known for her theoretical studies of the properties of materials. Her early research, with V. F. Weisskopf, on the effect of impurities on the motion of electrons, was an important step for the understanding of conduction in semiconductors, the materials of which transistors are made.

Award-winning broadcaster and author Lynn Sherr spent more than thirty years with ABC News, covering a wide range of stories—from women’s issues and social change to investigative reports, politics and the space program—at 20/20 and World News.

Charles Liu is a professor of astrophysics at the City University of New York’s College of Staten Island and an associate with the Hayden Planetarium and Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. His research focuses on colliding galaxies, quasars, and the star formation history of the Universe.

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.

Ed Yong is an award-winning British science writer. He writes the blog Not Exactly Rocket Science and his work has also appeared in New Scientist, the Times, WIRED, the Guardian, Nature, the Daily Telegraph, the Economist and more.

Emily Senay is a physician, medical and public health educator, broadcast journalist, and author. She is an assistant professor of Medicine in the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and a clinician in the World Trade Center Health Program in New York City.

Andrew Solomon’s most recent book, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, won the 2001 National Book Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; it has received 14 additional national awards and is published in 24 languages.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is a freelance science journalist and the science editor at BoingBoing.net. Her work has appeared in magazines like Discover and Popular Science, and online at sites like New Scientist and National Geographic News.

Robin Lloyd is responsible for editing and assigning stories for ScientificAmerican.com. She also manages Scientific American’s Twitter feed. Previously, she was a senior editor at LiveScience.com and SPACE.com. She has additional experience in print journalism (Pasadena Star–News); wire journalism (City News Service of Los Angeles); and network online journalism (CNN.com).

Anna Kuchment edits the Advances news section of Scientific American magazine. Before coming to SciAm, Kuchment was a writer and editor at Newsweek International and Newsweek magazines.

Cristine Russell is an award-winning journalist who has written about science, health, and the environment for more than three decades. She is a senior fellow in the Environment and Natural Resources Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

David Kestenbaum is a correspondent for NPR, covering science, energy issues and, most recently, the global economy for NPR’s multimedia project Planet Money. David has been a science correspondent for NPR since 1999. He came to journalism the usual way—by getting a Ph.D. in physics first.

In 1998, Julie Taymor became the first woman to win the Tony® Award for Best Direction of a Musical, and also won a Tony® for Best Costumes, for her landmark production of The Lion King. The musical has won three Molière Awards including Best Musical and Best Costumes, garnered Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Drama League awards for Taymor’s direction.

Hannah Waters writes about science for Nature Medicine and her blog Culturing Science. Before that, she studied the epigenetics of aging in Philadelphia, marine food webs off the coast of Oregon, and coastal conservation in Maine.

Mike Francis portrays Galileo and the Stargazer’s Apprentice using over thirty years of professional acting experience on stage, film, and television.

Before joining the Department of Journalism, Charles Seife was a writer for Science magazine and had been a U.S. correspondent for New Scientist. He holds an A.B. in mathematics from Princeton University, an M.S. in mathematics from Yale University, and an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University.

Kevin Temmer is an independent artist, animator, composer, singer, and songwriter. Along with expressing himself through drawing, he began teaching himself animation, and also enjoys composing and performing his own original songs.

Raja Burrows graduated from Northwestern University. He most recently appeared in the city as Neel in Making Books Sing’s Tea With Chachaji. He’s also participated in several readings with the New York University Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program.

Robert Stickgold is an associate professor of psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School. He received his B.A. from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, both in biochemistry. He has published over 100 scientific publications.

Gillian Small was appointed vice chancellor for research of The City University of New York in 2008 after serving with distinction as dean for research since 2003.

Elaine Fuchs pioneered the field of reverse genetics—studying proteins and learning what they do, and how they do it, in order to identify the genetic disease they cause when they malfunction.

Cynthia Bir studies what happens to the human body after sports injuries, ballistic impacts, and explosive blasts. She is known worldwide for her research into the effects of blunt ballistic impacts from rubber bullets and other less-lethal ammunition.

Peter Lovatt was a professional dancer who performed on the international circuit before switching gears and embarking on an academic career, earning degrees in psychology, computational neuroscience and cognitive psychology.

Michael Osterholm is one of the nation’s foremost experts in public health, infectious disease and biosecurity. He is the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

One of the strongest, most expressive voices to have come out of Ireland belongs to Dublin native Susan McKeown. Her 2010 album Singing in the Dark explores creativity and madness with lyrics from poets such as Anne Sexton and Theodore Roethke, who were writing through the lens of depression, mania, and addiction.

Vinton Cerf, a vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, is widely known as one of the founding fathers of the Internet. In the 1970s, Cerf co-designed the network’s architecture and the protocols it uses to communicate, and he has been instrumental in shaping its direction in the decades since.

Chris Stringer is a distinguished paleoanthropologist and a founder of the “Out of Africa” theory, the most widely accepted model for how modern humans evolved and spread across the globe.

Jonathan Gottschall writes books about the intersection of science and art. He is one of the leading figures in a new movement that is trying to bridge the humanities-sciences divide.

Matthieu Ricard is a Buddhist monk, author, translator, and photographer. He has lived, studied, and worked in the Himalayan region for over forty years.

Amber 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.

Kay Redfield Jamison has been called a “hero of medicine” for turning her own struggle with manic-depression into a lifelong career researching the illness and its treatment.

Francis Halzen has spent over 20 years working on telescopes that detect not light, but neutrinos—tiny, high-energy particles released by violent astronomical events like exploding stars, gamma-ray bursts and crashing black holes.

Fran Norris studies disaster and human resilience as a community-social psychologist and a research professor in Dartmouth Medical School’s Department of Psychiatry.

David Ng is a faculty researcher at the University of British Columbia’s Michael Smith Laboratories, where he heads a science education lab aimed at training researchers, engaging students in the life sciences, and informing the public on the societal, political, economic and ethical nuances of the sciences.

Keith Oatley has spent the last twenty years researching the psychology of reading and writing fiction, as both a scientist and the author of three novels.

David 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 …

Adam Wilson was the first person to communicate over the Internet using only his mind. The biomedical engineer studies neural prosthetic devices that can allow people with severe motor disabilities, such as Lou Gehrig’s disease or “locked-in” syndrome, to communicate with the outside world.

Ed Green has helped pioneer the use of advanced genetic sequencing technology to read ancient DNA extracted from fossilized bones. In 2010, he and large collaboration of other scientists announced that they had used 40,000-year-old bone fragments excavated in a cave in Croatia to map out the genetic code of Neanderthals, humans’ long-dead ancestral cousins.

Dennis Charney is one of the world’s leading experts in the neurobiology and treatment of mood and anxiety disorders.

Lynette Wallworth is an Australian artist whose immersive video installations reflect on the connections between people and the natural world.

John Holdren is the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and President Barack Obama’s senior science and technology advisor.

George Bonanno is a pioneering researcher in the science of bereavement and loss. He is a professor of clinical psychology at the Teacher’s College of Columbia University, and under his direction, the Loss, Trauma and Emotion Lab is investigating how human beings cope with extreme adversity.

Alex Wright is the Director of User Experience at The New York Times and the author of Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages. He is also a member of the graduate faculty at the School of Visual Arts’ MFA program in Interaction Design.

Francesca Casadio directs the Art Institute of Chicago’s state-of-the-art conservation science laboratory. A chemist by training, she is in charge of planning and carrying out research to help preserve and study the museum’s paintings, drawings, textiles and other works of art.

Joseph Formaggio explores the properties of neutrinos, one of nature’s most elusive particles, and their deep connections to particle physics and cosmology.

Thomas Jessell has made fundamental contributions to neuroscience by revealing the basic principles of how our nervous system communicates.

Joris Dik studied art history and classical archaeology at the University of Amsterdam, receiving his M.A. in 1997. He spent a year as a Getty Graduate Intern at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. After returning to the Netherlands he graduated with a PhD in chemistry, focusing on historical pigment technology.

Anya Salih studies the glow-in-the-dark fluorescent proteins that light up coral reefs in a kaleidoscope of colors. She has investigated the diverse biological roles these proteins play, including regulating how much light the corals take in and helping them reduce the stresses associated with climate change, and her work has helped establish the science of fluorescent protein biology as a rapidly growing new discipline.

Angela Belcher is the W. M. Keck Professor of Energy at MIT. She combines chemistry, molecular biology and electrical engineering to understand how living things make molecular-scale materials and incorporate their tricks into new organic-inorganic hybrid technologies.

Nancy Knowlton researches the ecology, evolution, and conservation of coral reef organisms as the Sant Chair in Marine Science at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

Boaz Almog studies superconductors—materials with no electrical resistance—and their applications at Tel-Aviv University in Israel. By using exceptional superconductors, Boaz and his colleague Mishael Azoulay recently succeeded in demonstrating a phenomenon called “quantum levitation”: They trapped a superconductor disc in a powerful magnetic field, causing the disc to float uncannily in midair.

Katherine Isbister has a joint appointment between the NYU-Poly computer science department and the NYU Game Center. Isbister is research director of the Game Innovation Lab at NYU-Poly, and an investigator in the NYU Games for Learning Institute.

Now in its 37th year, Orchestra of St. Luke’s (OSL) is one of America’s foremost and most versatile ensembles. St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble consists of 22 virtuoso artists who form the artistic core of OSL.

Matt Mountain has been the Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute since September 1, 2005. He leads the 400-person organization responsible for the science operations and education and public outreach of the Hubble Space Telescope and of its planned successor, the James Webb Space Telescope.

Natalie Batalha is a UC Presidential Chair, Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and Director of Astrobiology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She will lead the Early Release Science program for transiting exoplanets — a scientific community effort to acquire some of the first observations of exoplanets with the James Webb Space Telescope.

Sara Seager is a planetary scientist and astrophysicist. She has been a pioneer in the vast and unknown world of exoplanets, planets that orbit stars other than the sun.

Laurie 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.

Suzanne 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.

Richard Rhodes is the author or editor of twenty-four books including The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which won a Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction, a National Book Award and a National Book Critics Circle Award; Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, which was shortlisted for a Pulitzer Prize in History; Why They Kill; a personal memoir, A Hole in the World; a biography, John James Audubon; and four novels.

Tim Wu is an author, policy advocate, and professor at Columbia Law School, and director of the Poliak Center for the study of First Amendment Issues at Columbia Journalism School.

Maja Matarić is at the forefront of the growing field of “socially assistive” robotics, building intelligent machines that can interact with humans socially, rather than physically, to help them learn new skills or recover from illness and injury.

Hailed by Time Out New York as “one of New York’s most reliably adventurous performers”, violinist Jennifer Choi has charted a career that breaks through the conventional boundaries of solo violin, chamber music, and the art of creative improvisation.

For the past sixteen years, American composer Tyondai Braxton has been actively involved in music composition and performance. His music has received critical acclaim from an extraordinarily diverse expanse of the music world.

Kathleen Supové is one of America’s most acclaimed and versatile contemporary music pianists. She regularly presents a series of solo concerts entitled The Exploding Piano, in which she has performed and premiered works by the world’s leading composers as well as countless emerging ones.

Gary Nabel is a nationally recognized expert at the forefront of virology, immunology, gene therapy and molecular biology. He is the director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and InfectiousDiseases.

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde, and the New York Times bestsellers The Falls and The Gravedigger’s Daughter.

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.

Tim McHenry, the program producer at New York City’s Rubin Museum of Art, presents theater-going audiences with what the Huffington Post has called “some of the most original and inspired programs on the arts and consciousness in New York City.”

LeVar 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.

The fundamentals of foundational hip-hop pulsate vibrantly through the veins of the multi-dimensional artist, John Robinson. This native New Yorker has sojourned and resided in the underground scenes of New York, New Jersey, Atlanta and Los Angeles.

Robert J. Full is a Chancellor’s and Goldman Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California at Berkeley. Professor Full completed his undergraduate, master and PhD studies at SUNY Buffalo.

Heinrich Frontzek has more than 15 years of experience in corporate communication of innovation, technology, education and knowledge in engineering industrial companies.

David Hibbard most recently was in the 10 time Tony Award winning production of Billy Elliot, both on Broadway and in the second national tour. His mark on ‘the Great White Way’ is completing 2,197 performances in Broadway’s CATS, in the coveted role of the Rum Tum Tugger. Other Broadway credits include Spamalot, Once Upon A Mattress, and A Class Act.

Eryn Murman, born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, is a New York City-based actress, singer, and songwriter. She appeared on Broadway in Spring Awakening where she performed all the female roles and worked under JoAnn Hunter’s guidance as the dance captain for the production.

Paige Faure just completed the run of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying on Broadway, having originated the role of Miss Grabowski/Scrubwoman and eventually taking over the role of office sex-pot Hedy La Rue for a spell.

Todd Ellison is one of the most accomplished music directors on Broadway, having worked on productions of Annie, Spamalot, Cats, and more. His international credits include directing Jerry Hadley, Dawn Upshaw, and the Dublin Film Orchestra.

Alex Pasternack is a journalist, filmmaker, and former Princeton-in-Asia fellow in Beijing, and the current editor of Motherboard, a “cutting edgy” science and technology culture site, where he also acts as supervising producer for their award-winning documentary series. He is passionate about the future of cities, and co-founded Weeels, the taxi-sharing app suite, and Starlab, the social transit research lab.

Eitan Grinspun is associate professor of computer science at Columbia University, and Director of the Columbia Computer Graphics Group. His research seeks to discover connections between geometry, physics, and computation.

Don Ingber is Founding Director of the Wyss Institute and a leader in the emerging field of biologically inspired engineering. He oversees a multifaceted effort to identify the mechanisms that living organisms use to self assemble and to apply these design principles to develop advanced materials and devices.

Jin Kim Montclare is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, who is performing groundbreaking research in engineering proteins to mimic nature and, in some cases, work better than nature.

John 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.

Bruce Cuthbert, Ph.D., was named director of the Division of Adult Translational Research and Treatment Development (DATR) at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in 2010. A major component of this position involves coordinating the new Research Domain Criteria project to develop neuroscience-based criteria for studying mental disorders.

Ted Widmer is a historian who has starred in a rock and roll band, written speeches for an American president, enjoyed a lifelong love affair with cartoons, and now leads one of the most cherished libraries in the land.

Elizabeth 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.

Yann LeCun is VP & Chief AI Scientist at Facebook and Silver Professor at NYU affiliated with the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences & the Center for Data Science. He …

Stephanie Butler Velegol first heard about the ability of the seeds of the Moringa Oleifera tree to clean water while teaching Water and Wastewater Treatment at Penn State University. Since then she has advised over a dozen students on the use of Moringa seeds for sustainable water treatment in the developing world.

Apoorv 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.

Mariette DiChristina is Director of Editorial & Publishing for Nature Research Magazines, overseeing the global editorial teams for Nature magazine, Partnership & Custom Media and Scientific American, for which she also serves as editor in chief.

Oliver Medvedik earned his Ph.D. at Harvard Medical School, in the Biomedical and Biological Sciences program. As part of his doctoral work he has used single-celled budding yeast as a model system to map the genetic pathways that underlie the processes of aging in more complex organisms, such as humans.

Ellen Jorgensen is a molecular biologist and a passionate advocate of citizen science. Her research interests have encompassed such diverse areas as free radicals in disease, DNA fingerprinting, virus protein structure/function relationships, and cancer biomarkers.

Kent Larson directs the Changing Places research group and co-directs the City Science Initiative at the MIT Media Laboratory. His current research is focused on responsive urban housing, new urban vehicles, ubiquitous technologies, and living lab experiments.

Andrew Blum is the author of Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, the first book-length look at the physical heart of the Internet itself. When not immersed in the Internet’s depths, Blum writes about architecture, design, technology, urbanism, art, and travel.

Britt 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.

Carey Hidaka is an IBM Public Sector Business Solutions Professional in IBM Global Business Services, with experience as a consultant in the Smarter Water Management business development team and mobile/wireless services.

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.

Wendy Suzuki is a professor of Neural Science and Psychology at New York University where she studies the effects of physical aerobic exercise on brain function.

John 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.

Rebecca McMackin is the Park Horticulturalist at Brooklyn Bridge Park where she ecologically manages the flora and fauna of 85 acres of parkland habitat consisting of native woodlands, freshwater wetlands, salt marshes, ornamental gardens, and, of course, expansive organic lawns.

James Casey is a Brooklyn-based conservation biologist. Currently, Casey is an Adjunct Laboratory Instructor in the Department of Biology at Barnard College of Columbia University and the Screenings Director for Wicked Delicate Films LLC—a documentary film and advocacy company.

Dr. David Gruber is a marine biologist who uses extended-range SCUBA and Remote Operated Vehicle technologies to explore the deeper portion of the world’s coral reefs. His research focuses on photosynthesis and biofluorescence and his research team has discovered over 30 novel fluorescent proteins from coral reefs, including one that is responsive to phosphorylation.

Mark Skwarek is a new media artist working to bridge the gap between virtual reality and the real world by using augmented reality technology. He is one of the founding members of the artist augmented reality group manifest.AR.

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.

Jeffrey Levinton is Distinguished Professor of Ecology and Evolution at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

The Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre is dedicated to fostering both an appreciation and education of the arts through affordable and high quality comedic performances and classes. The Upright CItizen’s Brigade first brought its award winning sketch comedy show to New York in 1996.

Laura Allen is the editorial producer of the American Museum of Natural History’s Science Bulletins program, which produces video and visualization for exhibition at the museum and other public spaces that highlight cutting-edge scientific research and issues.

A graduate of the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater B.F.A. actor training program, Michael Roush moved to New York City to act with the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. Following that season, he worked to bring We Happy Animals, a new play by Andrew Kramer, to the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival where he originated the role of Ben.

Robert Woodrow Wilson is an astronomer most well known for his role in discovering cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR), for which he and his colleague, Arno Allan Penzias, won the Nobel prize.

Heather Sparks explores art and science at Science Sparks Art and has also contributed to Wired, Popular Science, and BoingBoing. She studied molecular genetics at The Ohio State University, has a graduate degree in science journalism from New York University, and writes advertising for the pharmaceutical industry.

Arla Berman is a Brooklyn-based actress. She is passionate about using the arts as a means of exciting passion for science, and likes to spend her time writing plays about science, interning at the World Science Festival, and teaching science classes to New York City children in an after school program.

Gregory Hildreth has appeared in Broadway shows such as Cinderella, Peter and the Starcatcher, and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. His Off-Broadway credits include roles in Peter and the Starcatcher (New York Theatre Workshop), and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (The Public Theatre).

Michael J. Cirino is the founder, principal, and executive chef of a razor, a shiny knife, a culinary performance art and experience design group. a razor, a shiny knife creates immersive experiences that break the boundaries of theater and restaurant.

Most 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.

C. David Allis received his Ph.D. from Indiana University and performed postdoctoral work with Martin Gorovsky at the University of Rochester. Allis held several academic positions, including ones at the Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Virginia Health System.

Amanda Kinchla is the Food Science Extension Specialist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She leads a new Food Science Extension program at UMass that focuses on applied research and food science education to support the Massachusetts and national food industry.

Kate Stafford is a principal oceanographer in the applied physics laboratory at the University of Washington. Stafford’s research focuses on the use of passive acoustic monitoring to study geographic and seasonal variation of large whale species.

Kristin Laidre is a marine mammal ecologist at the University of Washington, Seattle working at the Polar Science Center and the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. She is a member of the IUCN Species Survival Commission Cetacean Specialist Group and Polar Bear Specialist Group.

Marlene Zuk is a biologist and writer who is interested in sex, evolution, and behavior. She is especially interested in the ways that parasites and disease influence those issues. Her current research focuses on rapid evolution and mating behavior in field crickets that live in Hawaii.

Michelle Khine is an associate professor of biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, and materials science at University of California, Irvine. She was an assistant & founding professor at U.C. Merced from 2006 to 2009.

Mohan K. Wali is Professor Emeritus in the school of environment and natural resources (SENR) at Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus. At OSU since 1990, he served as director both of SENR, and of the OSU’s multi-college environmental science graduate program. He was also a professor in the John Glenn school of public affairs.

Murray Campbell is a research scientist at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY. He was a member of the team that developed Deep Blue, the first computer to defeat the human world chess champion in a match.

Murray Shanahan is a professor of cognitive robotics at Imperial College London. In the 1980s, he studied computer science as an undergraduate at Imperial College, and then obtained his Ph.D. from Cambridge University (King’s College).

Neil Turok is Director and Niels Bohr Chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario, Canada. Previously he was Professor of Physics at Princeton and Chair of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge. He is also Founder and Chair of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences.

Nicholas Schiff studied history and philosophy of science at Stanford University before training as a physician at Cornell University Medical College. Following a detour into further training in applied mathematics, he completed a residency in neurology and post-doctoral training in quantitative systems neurophysiology.

Nita A. Farahany is a Professor of Law & Philosophy at Duke University and the director of Duke Science & Society. In 2010, she was appointed by President Obama to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, and continues to serve as a member.

Omid 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.

Peter Hoffmann is a professor of physics at Wayne State University and an Associate Dean in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. His research interests are the area of nanomechanics, biophysics and atomic force microscopy. He is one of the founders of the Wayne State Biomedical Physics program.

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.

Philip Clayton is the dean of Claremont School of Theology (CST) and provost of Claremont Lincoln University. He also holds the Ingraham Chair at CST.

Richard Matthew is a professor in the schools of social ecology and social science at the University of California at Irvine, and founding director of the Center for Unconventional Security Affairs.

Ronald Hoy is the David and Dorothy Merksamer Professor in biology at Cornell University. Besides teaching at Cornell, he has taught neuroscience and behavior at Cold Spring Harbor Labs and at the marine biological laboratory in Woods Hole, where he was a director of the neural systems and behavior course and, later, director of the Grass Foundation summer fellows program.

Sarah Robertson is an independent wildlife and science documentary producer and director specializing in the Arctic for 20 years. In 2007, Robertson was awarded the Lowell Thomas Award in recognition of excellence in exploring climate change.

Scott McVay is founding executive director of the Robert Sterling Clark and Geraldine R. Dodge Foundations, and the 16th president of the Chautauqua Institution. A graduate of Princeton, he discovered and documented the six-octave song of the Humpback whale and, with Roger Payne, published a cover article in Science.

Steven Strogatz is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University. He studied at Princeton, Cambridge, and Harvard and taught at MIT before moving to Cornell. He is a renowned teacher and one of the world’s most highly cited mathematicians.

Susan Zolla-Pazner, professor of pathology at the New York University’s school of medicine and director of AIDS research at the New York Veterans Affairs Medical Center, is a scientist who has devoted her professional life to areas of immunology.

Tim Maudlin is a professor of philosophy at NYU. He holds a B.A. in physics and philosophy from Yale and a Ph.D. in history and philosophy of science from the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity.

Born in the American Midwest, Christof Koch grew up in Holland, Germany, Canada, and Morocco. He studied Physics and Philosophy and was awarded his Ph.D. in Biophysics. In 1987, Koch joined the California Institute of Technology as a Professor in Biology and Engineering.

Craig Callender is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. His work focuses on the philosophy of science, especially physics. He has a lifelong interest in the mysteries of time. By attacking the problems associated with time through interdisciplinary means—especially physics, philosophy and psychology—he hopes to show how our manifest image of time arises in creatures like us.

Edward Vessel is an internationally recognized expert on neuroaesthetics. His research combines brain imaging with behavioral and computational approaches to study how individuals are moved by, and get pleasure from, visual experiences.

Edwin Olson is an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on autonomous robots, ranging from self-driving cars to teams of robots that work together to perform search and rescue missions. He received a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2008 for his work in robust robot mapping.

Frances A. Champagne is an associate professor in the department of psychology at Columbia University. Champagne received a master’s degree in psychiatry in 1999 and a doctoral degree in neuroscience in 2004 from McGill University.

Garth Stevenson is a Brooklyn-based film composer and double bassist. Raised in the mountains of Western Canada, nature became his primary inspiration and the common thread between his life and music. He has released two full-length solo albums, informed by his experiences carrying his 150-year-old double bass to the woods, the beach, and the desert.

Gregory Wheeler is an American logician, philosopher, and computer scientist, who specializes in formal epistemology. Much of his work has focused on imprecise probability.

William Yosses previously worked as White House executive pastry chef, where he was closely involved with Mrs. Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative with the goal of reducing childhood health problems related to diet. Other executive pastry chef experience include The Dressing Room in Westport Connecticut, Josephs Citarella in New York City, Bouley Bakery, and Bouley Restaurant.

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.

Anthony Wagner is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Stanford University, where he directs the Stanford Memory Laboratory and co-directs the Stanford Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging.

Beth Simone Noveck served in the White House as the first United States deputy chief technology officer and founder and director of the White House Open Government Initiative.

Francois Grey is a physicist and the head of Citizen Science at NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress. He launched the popular Science and the City hackfest series at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Steven E. Koonin was appointed as the founding director of NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress in April 2012. He previously served as the U.S. Department of Energy’s second Senate-confirmed under secretary for science from 2009–2011.

Jed Rakoff is a U.S. District judge and an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School. Prior to going on bench, Rakoff was an assistant U.S. attorney, a criminal defense lawyer, and partner at two major law firms. He teaches an upperclass course on science and the courts at Columbia Law School and is the author of several judicial opinions and law review articles on the interplay of science and the law.

Kent Kiehl is an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of New Mexico, and executive science officer of the non-profit Mind Research Network in Albuquerque, NM.

Jay N. Giedd is a practicing child and adolescent psychiatrist, chief of brain imaging at the child psychiatry branch of the National Institute of Mental Health, and an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the department of population, family and reproductive health.

Lone Frank is an award-winning science journalist and author with a Ph.D. in neurobiology and a background in biomedical research. A native of Denmark, she lives in Copenhagen and is a well-known voice in European debates relating to science, technology, and society.

Harold McGee writes about the science of food and cooking. He has been named food writer of the year by Bon Appetit magazine, and to the TIME 100, an annual list of the world’s most influential people. He started out studying physics and astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, and then English literature at Yale University.

Andreas Albrecht is a leading theoretical cosmologist. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1983 where, with Paul Steinhardt, he wrote one of the original papers on “new” or “slow roll” inflation.

Michael 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.

James Gleick is the author of several bestselling books about science and technology and their cultural implications. His first, Chaos: Making a New Science, made the Butterfly Effect a household word; his latest The Information, won awards for both science writing and history.

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.

Maxime Bilet is the co-author of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, which received the 2012 Book of the Year Award from the James Beard Foundation and the International Association of Culinary Professionals’ Visionary Achievement, among many other awards. He is also the co-author and of Modernist Cuisine at Home.

Amy Rowat is an assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Originally from Canada, she studied physics and various other subjects at Mount Allison University and completed her graduate work in Denmark.

In 2004, Dave Arnold founded the Museum of Food and Drink in New York to promote learning about the history and culture of food. In 2005, The International Culinary Center, home of The French Culinary Institute, tapped him to head its new culinary technology department until 2013.

Kent Kirshenbaum is a professor in the Department of Chemistry at New York University. He has appeared on the Food Network, the Cooking Channel, the Science Channel, the Discovery Channel, Sid the Science Kid (PBS), and at the Wellington-on-a-Plate Festival.

Owen Clark is the executive chef at Gwynnett St., where he started as sous chef on the opening team. Clark has cooked in New York City for seven years. Starting his culinary career in a family style Italian restaurant, he decided to enter a culinary program in Boulder at the Culinary School of the Rockies.

Anne E. McBride is the culinary program and editorial director for strategic initiatives at The Culinary Institute of America, where her responsibilities include leading the programming for the Worlds of Flavor® International Conference & Festival.

Robert (Bob) Grant has 29 years of experience with HIV/AIDS research and clinical care. He is a senior investigator at the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology and a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco.

After rapidly rising through the ranks of some of the world’s finest restaurants, Najat Kaanache “The Pilgrim Chef” continues to demonstrate her culinary skills not only with her creative restaurant concept but also with her tireless passion for culinary innovation, education, and clean food advocacy.

César Vega earned his doctorate in food science from the University College Cork in Ireland. His areas of expertise include dairy products, particularly ice cream and yogurt, the physical chemistry of cocoa and chocolate, and the science of cooking.

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.

Darlene Cavalier is the founder of SciStarter, an online citizen science community. The site is a one-stop-shop for citizen scientists and a shared space where researchers recruit participants. She is also the founder of ScienceCheerleader.com.

Melanie Boly is a neurologist and postdoctoral research fellow at the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research and at University of Wisconsin-Madison. She conducts research investigating the neural correlates of decreased consciousness during vegetative state, anesthesia, and sleep using functional neuroimaging techniques.

Jean-Pierre Issa is a professor of medicine and director at Fels Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Biology at Temple University. Issa’s laboratory has made important contributions to the understanding of the importance of epigenetics in the pathophysiology and treatment of cancer.

Bjørn Torger Stokke holds an engineering degree in physics and a Ph.D. in biophysics from the Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH). Stokke is currently a professor in physics, specialization in biophysics and medical technology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway.

Besides being the voice double for Matthew McConaughey, Brian Ralph has an amazing way with cheese. Ralph made his way into the cheese world after studying neurobiology at the University of Colorado at Boulder, so clearly, the man knows a thing or two about science.

Heather Berlin is a cognitive neuroscientist, assistant professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Visiting Scholar at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.

Joel David Hamkins conducts research in mathematical and philosophical logic, particularly set theory, with a focus on the mathematics and philosophy of the infinite.

Miyoung Chun is vice president of science programs at The Kavli Foundation in Oxnard, California. Prior to her current role, Chun was an assistant dean of science and engineering at University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB), in particular serving for the California Nanosystems Institute.

Trained as an epidemiologist, Julie Herbstman’s research focuses on the impact of prenatal exposures to environmental pollutants, including polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) on child growth and development.

Robin Dando, originally from the UK, is a professor at Cornell University. His lab studies the neurotransmitter interactions and signaling events that occur within the mammalian taste system. Our sense of taste is one of the strongest drives that we possess, and is inexorably linked to emotions, memories, and our quality of life.

Marion Nestle is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at NYU. She holds a doctorate in molecular biology. Her books, Food Politics and What to Eat won James Beard Awards; Why Calories Count won the 2013 IACP food matters book award.

Meg Schwamb is an astronomer and planetary scientist. She is currently a National Science Foundation (NSF) astronomy and astrophysics postdoctoral fellow at Yale University’s Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics (YCAA).

Emily Rice is an assistant professor at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York and a research associate in the astrophysics department of the American Museum of Natural History. She earned her Ph.D. at UCLA studying enigmatic objects called brown dwarfs, which form like stars but then cool and fade to resemble gas giant planets.

Jessica Wapner is a freelance writer focused mainly on science and medicine. Her first book, The Philadelphia Chromosome, was published in 2013. Publishers Weekly named The Philadelphia Chromosome a top-ten science book for Spring 2013, and Kirkus calls it “an absorbing, complex medical detective story.”

Zahi Fayad serves as professor of radiology and medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He is the director of the Translational and Molecular Imaging Institute; vice chair for research, department of radiology; director and founder of the Eva and Morris Feld Imaging Science Laboratories.

J. Kenji López-Alt is the author of the New York Times Best-Selling cookbook The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science, the managing culinary director of Serious Eats, and a columnist for Cooking Light.

Philip Rubin is the principal assistant director for science at the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in the Executive Office of the President of the United States, where he also leads the White House Neuroscience Initiative.

Corey S. Powell writes the column and blog Out There for Discover magazine. He is also the Interim Editor of American Scientist magazine, a contributor to Slate and Popular Science, and a glutton for intellectual punishment.

Joel and Ethan Coen direct, produce and write their films and are among today’s most honored and respected filmmakers.

Alec Baldwin has appeared in more than 40 films, including Beetlejuice, Working Girl, Miami Blues, The Hunt for Red October, Glengarry Glen Ross, Malice, The Juror, The Edge, Ghosts of Mississippi, State and Main, The Cat in the Hat, The Cooler, The Aviator, The Departed, and It’s Complicated.

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.

André Kuipers is the first Dutchman with two space missions to his name. His second mission is the longest spaceflight in European history. In total, the ESA astronaut spent 204 days in space: 11 days during mission DELTA in 2004 and 193 days during mission PromISSe.

Marco Bersanelli is Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics and Director of the Ph.D. School in Physics, Astrophysics and Applied Physics at the University of Milan, Italy.

Martijn van Calmthout is the chief science editor of the Dutch newspaper ‘de Volkskrant’. He studied physics at the University of Utrecht and writes about the natural sciences. He is the author of the biographical Einsteins Licht, the Survivalgids voor de Toekomst and many other popular books.

Steve Vance is a scientist in the Planetary Chemistry and Astrobiology group at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Dr. Vance is an Acting Staff Scientist for the Europa Clipper, a NASA mission pre-formulation study for a robotic mission, which is being conducted by JPL in partnership with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland.

Scott D. Lipscomb is Associate Professor of Music Education at the University of Minnesota, where he also serves as Associate Director and Director of Undergraduate Studies for the School of Music.

Jim Ottaviani is the author of many graphic novels about scientists, ranging from physicists to paleontologists to behaviorists. His most recent are The New York Times bestselling Primates, about Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas and Feynman, a book about the Nobel-prize winning physicist, bongo-playing artist, and best-selling author Richard Feynman.

Dominic Walliman is a physicist and an award-winning science writer. He is co-creator of the Professor Astro Cat science books with illustrator Ben Newman. He also makes YouTube videos communicating science.

Simone Buitendijk is vice-rector magnificus at Leiden University, and as such responsible for education, student affairs and diversity. She is a professor in Women’s and Family Health at the Leiden University Hospital LUMC.

Juliette Walma van der Molen is a professor of Talent Development and Science and Technology Education at Twente University. She researches the development of children’s and teachers’ skills and attitudes in science and technology.

Naïma Azough is an author, editor, documentary filmmaker and a former member of parliament. She studied English, German and International Relations at the Universities of Antwerp and Amsterdam.

Carolyn Porco is the leader of the imaging science team on the Cassini mission presently in orbit around Saturn, a veteran imaging scientist of the 1980 Voyager mission to the outer solar system, and an imaging scientist on the New Horizons mission on its way to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.

Michelle Thaller is a nationally recognized spokesperson for astronomy and science and the Assistant Director of Science at NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center. She has a Bachelor’s in astrophysics from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Georgia State University.

Fred Kavli, a Norwegian-born U.S. citizen, was a physicist, entrepreneur, business leader, innovator and philanthropist dedicated to supporting research and education that has a positive, long-term impact on the human condition.

David Brenner is the Director of the Columbia University Center for Radiological Research, which is the oldest and largest radiological research laboratory, worldwide. He is also the Principal Investigator of the Center for High-Throughput Minimally-Invasive Radiation Biodosimetry.

Michael Q. Bullerdick is a freelance contributing editor for several print, web and book publishers. He also frequently consults with publishers during critical transitions: launches, turnarounds, major workflow overhauls and leadership changes.

Amir Levine is an adult, adolescent, and child psychiatrist and neuroscientist at Columbia University in New York and The Center of Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.

Andrew W. Lo is a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, the director of MIT’s Laboratory for Financial Engineering, a principal investigator at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, and an affiliated faculty member of the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Bobak Ferdowsi, also known as “Mohawk Guy,” is a member of the Engineering Operations Team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He acted as Flight Director during the landing of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity on Gale Crater in 2012.

Odest Chadwicke Jenkins is an associate professor of Computer Science at Brown University. He explores human-robot interaction and robot learning with the goal of creating autonomous systems that can collaborate with humans in real-world tasks.

Christina Tosi is the chef, owner and founder of Momofuku Milk Bar and the 2012 recipient of the James Beard Rising Star Chef Award.

Claudia Raschke is an award-winning cinematographer who has worked on feature films and documentaries for more than 20 years. Her most recent feature documentary, Particle Fever, follows the quest for the Higgs Boson and the launch of the Large Hadron Collider.

David Kaplan is a theoretical particle physicist who explores supersymmetry, extra dimensions, dark matter, cosmology, and particles such as the Higgs boson. He is developing new techniques to discover physics beyond the standard model using particle colliders.

Dimitar Sasselov studies stars and planets at Harvard University, where he is the Phillips Professor of Astronomy. His research explores modes of interaction between light and matter. Sasselov and his team discovered several planets orbiting other stars with novel techniques that he hopes to use to find other planets like Earth.

Todd Disotell is a biological anthropologist who researches primate and human evolution. He runs NYU’s Molecular Primatology Laboratory, a research group that has developed molecular analysis techniques and helped clarify the primate evolutionary tree.

Michael S. Hopkins is a current NASA astronaut who returned from a six-month stay aboard the International Space Station in March. He served as a flight engineer and conducted both science experiments and maintenance, spending almost 13 hours outside of the station on spacewalks.

Dean Buonomano is a neuroscientist in the Departments of Neurobiology and Psychology, and a member of the Brain Research Institute and the Integrative Center for Learning and Memory at UCLA. He is a leading researcher on how the brain tells time and neurocomputation.

Catherine Ball leads a group of population geneticists, statisticians, and computer scientists and oversees the analytical approaches behind Ancestry.com’s direct-to-consumer genotyping services.

Sheldon Krimsky is a professor of Urban & Environmental Policy & Planning as well as adjunct professor of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts University. From 2012 to 2014, he is also a professor of philosophy at Brooklyn College, CUNY.

Simon Levin is a professor of biology and director of the Center for BioComplexity at Princeton University. His research centers on understanding how macroscopic patterns are maintained at the level of ecosystems and finding parallels between ecological and economic systems.

Naveen Sinha uses analogies from cooking to teach science. He has served as Teaching Fellow for the Science and Cooking course at Harvard University, helping illuminate the science of cocktails, the mathematics of cookie recipes, and the physics of chocolate.

Julie Hecht is a canine researcher and science writer. She manages Alexandra Horowitz’s Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College and has investigated dog olfaction, interspecies play, and theory of mind.

Evelynn Hammonds is the Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science and a professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University.

Jody Oberfelder is a choreographer and director who recently created her first immersive performance installation piece, “4Chambers,” which focuses on the heart.

Becca 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.

Nancy Hechinger is a faculty member at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program and has a diverse background in education, which includes interactive multimedia production, the development of interactive museum exhibits, and publishing.

Jennifer Ouellette is a science writer and the author of four popular science books, most recently Me, Myself and Why: Searching for the Science of Self. Her work has appeared in Discover, Slate, New Scientist, Salon, Smithsonian, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal, and Quanta.

Farren Isaacs is assistant professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and Systems Biology at Yale University. He pioneered the development of synthetic RNA molecules capable of probing and programming cellular function.

Mark Shriver is Professor of Anthropology and Genetics at The Pennsylvania State University. His research seeks to elucidate the genetic evolution that took place during and after the spread of modern humans.

Tim Chartier is a mathematician and author whose work regularly appears in the Huffington Post Science blog. In 2014, he was named the inaugural Math Ambassador of the Mathematical Association of America. He is on the advisory council for MoMath, the first museum of mathematics in the U.S.

Ted Williams is a planetarium professional who brings stars down to earth. He presents regularly at the Hayden Planetarium and Fels Planetarium, and serves as educator for the Franklin Institute for the Rittenhouse Astronomical Society in Philadelphia.

Tara M. Ruttley is an associate program scientist for the International Space Station for NASA at Johnson Space Center in Houston. Her current role consists of representing and communicating all research on the ISS, and supporting the ISS Chief Scientist’s research recommendations to NASA Headquarters.

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.

Rachel Meyer is a plant evolutionary biologist and co-founder of Shoots and Roots Bitters. Many of the species that she uses to manufacture bitters are simultaneously her research subjects.

Paula Amato is an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Oregon Health and Science University who specializes in reproductive endocrinology and infertility. Some of her research explores the ways to reprogram aged, differentiated cells into pluripotent cells that can give rise to any cell type.

Michel Maharbiz is one of the inventors of neural dust, a low-power solution for chronic brain-machine interfaces and untethered neural recording. He also developed the world’s first remotely radio-controlled cyborg insects (beetles).

Mark Siddall is known as “the leech guy,” though he has focused on the evolutionary biology of a wide range of parasites. He has led expeditions around the world, most recently including South Sudan, Cambodia, and the Lower Amazon of Brazil.

Margie Turrin is an education coordinator at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. There, she develops science projects that teach people about the Hudson River, climate science, human impacts on the planet, biodiversity, mapping, the polar regions, and how to use Earth system data in outreach education.

Kevin Denton is bar director of both wd~50 and Alder, where he crafts cocktails using obscure ingredients and modern techniques. He has been featured in The New York Times, Esquire, GQ, Details, and on the Cooking Channel and Martha Stewart Show.

Jo Marchant is an award-winning science journalist who has served as editor for both New Scientist and Nature. Her work has appeared in The Economist, The Observer, and The Guardian. She has a Ph.D. in genetics and medical microbiology and has written on everything from genetics to underwater archaeology.

Jared Lamenzo is the founder of Mediated Spaces, Inc., an award-winning development lab that uses mobile technology to spur citizen science. He also founded the WildLab, a program that facilitates data collection about the environment and enhances STEM education.

Jamie Grifo is the program director of the NYU Fertility Center. He is also director of reproductive endocrinology and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the NYU School of Medicine. As co-director of the NYU Egg Freezing Division, he has helped lead one of the largest and most successful egg preservation programs.

James Fowler is a social scientist studying networks, behavior, evolution, and genetics. He is a professor of political science and medical genetics at the University of California, San Diego, and a 2010 Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

Jack Szostak shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his investigation of telomeres. His current research delves into self-replicating systems and the origin of life.

Hilary Peddicord is a science educator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Her work supports the Science On a Sphere program, which uses a massive globe and projection system to explain storms, climate change, and other atmospheric patterns.

Mike Flowers is CUSP’s first Urban Science Fellow. Flowers works closely with CUSP to identify approaches to advance the use of data analytics in municipal operations and urban policymaking. A recognized leader in promoting the use of civic data, Flowers is a key participant in CUSP projects that will help define the emerging field of urban informatics around the world.

Ann Graybiel is a neuroscientist and investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. Her research focuses on the basal ganglia, a group of forebrain structures involved in controlling movement, cognition, and habit learning.

Jim Baggott is a freelance science writer and author. He received his doctorate in chemical physics at the University of Oxford and became a lecturer at the University of Reading, England, where he also ran a research team studying aspects of chemical kinetics and high-energy molecular vibrations.

Paul S. Weiss holds a UC Presidential Chair and is a distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and of materials science and engineering at UCLA. He served as the director of the California NanoSystems Institute and held the Fred Kavli Chair in NanoSystems Sciences.

David Holland is a physical climate scientist who studies phenomena relating to the polar regions and their impacts on global climate. His current research focuses on the computer modeling of the interaction of the Earth’s ice sheets with ocean waters.

Dr. Xichen Li works on climate modeling and climate changes in David Holland’s research group at New York University (NYU). He uses different diagnostic tools and numerical models to analyze and simulate the atmospheric circulations of the earth system, in order to study the natural variability and anthropogenic forcing to the present climate systems.

Dr. 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.

Louise Mirrer joined the New-York Historical Society as President and CEO in June 2004. Under her guidance, New-York Historical is reinvigorating its commitment to foster greater public understanding of history and its impact on the world of today.

Victoria Weeks is a filmmaker and the founder of Verglas Media, a production company focused on inspiring audiences through the partnership of art and science. Spending over a decade as a science media producer for NASA, Weeks specialized in spherical filmmaking and was the editor of Footprints, the original film for Science On a Sphere (SOS).

Dr. John Krasting is a climate scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (NOAA-GFDL) located in Princeton, NJ. Dr. Krasting earned his doctorate in atmospheric science from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ.

Before embarking on his film career, Mark Levinson earned a doctoral degree in particle physics from the University of California at Berkeley. In the film world, he became a specialist in the post-production writing and recording of dialogue known as ADR (Automated Dialog Replacement).

Caleb Scharf’s research career spans cosmology, exoplanetary science, and astrobiology. He currently leads efforts at Columbia University in New York to understand the nature of exoplanets and living environments in the universe.

“Science Bob ” Pflugfelder is a science teacher, maker, author, and presenter who loves sharing his passion for all things science. He regularly appears on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live, Live With Kelly & Michael, and The Dr. Oz Show.

Amanda Gefter is a physics and cosmology writer and a consultant for New Scientist magazine, where she formerly served as books and arts editor and founded CultureLab.

John Brockman is a cultural impresario whose career has encompassed the avant-garde art world, science, books, software, and the Internet. In the 1960s he coined the word “intermedia” and pioneered “intermedia kinetic environments” in art, theatre, and commerce, while also consulting for clients such as General Electric, Columbia Pictures, Scott Paper, The Pentagon, and the White House.

Lisa O’Sullivan, Ph.D., is director of the Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health at The New York Academy of Medicine. The Center preserves and promotes the heritage of medicine and public health and explores its cultural significance.

Nicholas Wade received a B.A. in natural sciences from King’s College, Cambridge. He was deputy editor of Nature magazine in London and then became that journal’s Washington correspondent.

Artur B. Chmielewski is the US Rosetta Project Manager. He has managed several flight projects at JPL: the Space Technology 8 mission, Mars Telecommunication Orbiter Rendezvous Experiment, Space Technology 6 mission, Gossamer Program, and Inflatable Antenna Flight Experiment.

Bijan Pesaran is an associate professor with the Center for Neural Science at New York University. Work in his lab seeks to understand and engineer the brain. He has pioneered the study of how populations of neurons communicate to guide behavior.

Mark Brokaw’s work on Broadway includes Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, The Lyons, After Miss Julie, Cry-Baby, The Constant Wife, Reckless. He has directed at London’s Donmar Warehouse and Menier Chocolate Factory, Dublin’s Gate Theatre, and the Sydney Opera House. Brokaw is the Artistic Director of the Yale Institute for Music Theatre.

Steve B. Howell is currently the Head of Space Science and Astrobiology for the NASA Ames Research Center. He previously was the project scientist for
NASA’s premier exoplanet finding missions: Kepler and K2. Howell has written over 800 scientific publications, numerous popular and technical articles, and has authored and edited eight books on astronomy and astronomical instrumentation.

A.J. Jacobs is the author of four New York Times bestsellers about self-experimentation, including Drop Dead Healthy, The Year of Living Biblically, My Life as an Experiment and The Know-It-All. He is the editor at large at Esquire magazine and a correspondent for NPR.

Johnny Luo received his BS from Peking University in 1997 and Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2003, both in atmospheric sciences. He joined the faculty of the City College of New York in 2007 as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2012.

Deborah Heiligman is the author of 30 books for children and teens, many of them nonfiction, including Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith, a National Book Award Finalist, Printz Honor, and YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award winner.

Kyle Cranmer is a physicist and a professor at New York University at the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics and Affiliated Faculty member at NYU’s Center for Data Science. He is an experimental particle physicist working, primarily, on the Large Hadron Collider, based in Geneva, Switzerland.

Catherine Crier earned her B.A. in political science and international affairs from the University of Texas and her Juris Doctor from Southern Methodist University School of Law. In 1984, she was elected to the 162nd District Court in Dallas County, Texas as a State District Judge. During her tenure on the bench, Crier also served as Administrative Judge for the Civil District Courts.

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.

Jim Dwyer is a columnist with The New York Times, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for commentary, and a finalist for the National Book Award. He is the author or co-author of six books. His latest, False Conviction: Innocence, Guilt & Science is an electronic book using video, animations, and text to explore the science behind errors in criminal investigations.

Eric Siegel leads the program, exhibition development, science and technology functions at the New York Hall of Science. He has been in senior roles in art and science museums for over 30 years and has published extensively in the museum field.

Mechthild Prinz is currently an Associate Professor and the Director of the Master in Forensic Science Program at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.

Jami Floyd is an award-winning journalist and national television personality. She is the former anchor of Court TV’s Jami Floyd: Best Defense, a daily live show that tackled the day’s front-page legal stories.

Nick Payne is a playwright. He is the author of If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet, for which he won the George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright. He also authored the plays Wanderlust, Sophocles’ Electra, Lay Down Your Cross, Blurred Lines, Incognito, and The Same Deep Water As Me, which was nominated for the Olivier Awards Best New Comedy.

Thomas Levenson is Professor of Science Writing and Director of the Graduate Program in Science Writing at MIT. He has written five books on science and the history of science, including Newton and the Counterfeiter, Einstein in Berlin and Measure for Measure: A Musical History of Science.

Rebecca Skloot is an award-winning science writer who contributes to The New York Times Magazine; O, the Oprah Magazine; NPR’s RadioLab; and others. Her debut book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, took more than a decade to research and write, then instantly hit The New York Times Best Seller list, where it has remained for four years.

Allyson Sheffield is an observational astronomer whose research focuses on the formation and structure of the Milky Way galaxy. She studies the motion and chemistry of old stars, from which we can infer the evolutionary history of the Milky Way.

Amber 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.

Dr. Ellen Stofan is the John and Adrienne Mars Director of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. She comes to the Museum with more than 25 years of experience in space administration and planetary science. Dr. Stofan was previously Chief Scientist at NASA.

Artur Ekert is a Professor of Quantum Physics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, and a Lee Kong Chian Centennial Professor at the National University of Singapore. He’s also the director for the Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT).

Daniel Gottesman is a faculty member at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ontario. He does research in the field of quantum computation, particularly quantum error correction, fault-tolerant quantum computation, quantum complexity, and quantum cryptography.

Adam Riess is the Thomas J. Barber Professor in Space Studies at the Johns Hopkins University Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, a distinguished astronomer at the Space Telescope Science …

Josh Frieman is a senior staff scientist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics. He’s also a member of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago.

Suresh Jagannathan joined DARPA in September 2013. His research interests include programming languages, program analysis and verification, and concurrent/distributed systems.

Azim Shariff is an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Oregon and the director of the Culture and Morality Lab. He graduated with his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of British Columbia in 2010, before joining the UO faculty.

Professor Lee R. Berger is an award-winning researcher, author, paleoanthropologist, and speaker. His explorations into human origins on the African continent, Asia, and Micronesia for the past two and a half decades have resulted in many new discoveries.

Brian Lehrer is host of the Peabody Award–winning program The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC New York Public Radio, 93.9 FM, AM 820, and wnyc.org. From scientists to heads of state, Lehrer hosts major thinkers and major newsmakers and involves the audience through phone calls and social media.

Richard J. Haier is professor emeritus at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine. Haier is also the associate editor of the Intelligence journal and the president-elect of the International Society for Intelligence Research.

Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist in the field of quantum gravity and in the history and philosophy of science. He is a co-founder of the loop approach to quantum …

As a theoretical physicist at the University of Pennsylvania, Vijay Balasubramanian pursues research in two different fields: string theory and theoretical neuroscience. He is an expert in statistical inference and “Occam’s Razor”—the trade-off between simple and accurate mathematical models.

Jim Holt writes about math, science, and philosophy for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Review of Books. His book Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story was an international bestseller.

Gabriela González is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Louisiana State University (LSU), where there is a large group of people working on the detection of gravitational waves, both in theory and experiment.

Bob Reiss is a best-selling author of 20 books, as well as a journalist, a former Chicago Tribune reporter, and former correspondent for Outside Magazine. His work has been published in The Washington Post, Smithsonian, Parade, Rolling Stone, and other national publications.

Catherine 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.

Laura J. Snyder is a historian, philosopher, and science writer. Oliver Sacks has called her “both a masterly scholar and a powerful storyteller.” Snyder is the author of Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni Van Leeuwenhoek and the Reinvention of Seeing.

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.

Neal Stephenson is an award-winning author and game designer known for his works of speculative fiction. His novels have been variously categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, “postcyberpunk,” and “baroque”.

David Quammen is an author and journalist whose 12 books include The Song of the Dodo, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, and Spillover, a work on the science, history, and human impacts of emerging diseases. Quammen is a contributing writer for National Geographic and a three-time recipient of the National Magazine Award.

Michael Stone is professor of clinical psychiatry at the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. From 2006 to 2008, Stone hosted the series Most Evil on the Discovery Channel, for which he developed a “Gradations of Evil Scale” to rank homicides from 1 to 22 based on their level of evil.

Chiye Aoki majored in biology at Barnard College, Columbia University. She entered the world of neuroscience during those years by participating in research that monitored brain activities of animals undergoing the natural transition from wakefulness to REM sleep to answer the question: Why do we need to sleep?

Astronaut Clayton Anderson (“Astro Clay”) applied 15 times before NASA selected him as an astronaut in 1998; he spent 30 years working for NASA as an engineer and astronaut.

Jake Hofman is a Researcher at Microsoft Research in New York City, where his work in computational social science involves applications of statistics and machine learning to large-scale social data. Prior to joining Microsoft, he was a member of the Microeconomics and Social Systems group at Yahoo! Research.

Janelle Robbins is the executive director at Bedford Audubon Society. She began her career championing clean water and strong communities as the staff scientist at Waterkeeper Alliance.

Jennifer Fogarty is the clinical translational scientist for Space and Clinical Operations Division in the Human Health and Performance Directorate, NASA. She facilitates communication, project development, and program interactions between the operations and research communities.

Koos Lodewijkx is the chief technical officer for IT risk in the office of the IBM CISO. His responsibilities include the multiyear technical strategy for Cybersecurity for the IBM Corporation, technical architecture, IT risk assessment, and various IT risk policies and standards.

Mandë Holford is as an Associate Professor in Chemistry at Hunter College and CUNY-Graduate Center, with scientific appointments at the American Museum of Natural History and Weill Cornell Medical College.

Professor Mary Carskadon is an authority on adolescent sleep. Her research raised public awareness about the consequences of insufficient sleep in adolescents and influenced education policy, prompting school districts to delay school start times for teens.

Michael López-Alegría has over three decades of aviation and space experience with the U.S. Navy and NASA in a variety of roles.

Nancy 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.

Nicole Stott has explored from the heights of outer space to the depths of our oceans. In awe of what she has experienced from these very special vantage points, she has dedicated her life to sharing the beauty of space — and Earth — with others. A veteran NASA Astronaut, her experience includes two spaceflights and 104 days spent living and working in space on both the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station (ISS).

Paul Glimcher began his professional career as a neurobiologist interested in how the brain makes decisions. Over the years he has explored many other scientific disciplines that are also concerned with how we make decisions.

Rein Ulijn is the founding director of the Nanoscience Initiative at CUNY’s Advanced Science Research Center. He was previously professor and vice dean of research at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, where he continues to hold a position.