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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Fabien Cousteau is an ocean explorer, the third generation to carry on the tradition of adventure pioneered by his grandfather Jacques Cousteau. His Natural Entertainment company works to raise environmental awareness through television and other media.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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

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.

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.

Rebecca Luker is frequently seen in leading roles on Broadway, and is equally known for her interpretations of music, old and new, at Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, the Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress and the White House.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Daniel Gilbert is Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He is the author of the best-selling book, Stumbling on Happiness, which has been translated into 30 languages. His research focuses on prospection — the ability to imagine oneself in the future — and the mistakes people make when they attempt to predict their hedonic reactions to future events.

Andy Borowitz is a comedian, actor and writer whose work appears regularly in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and at Newsweek.com. He is the first winner of the National Press Club’s humor award and has won seven Dot-Comedy Awards for his website, borowitzreport.com.

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.

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.

Michael Hogan played Colonel Saul Tigh in Battlestar Galactica. With more than thirty years experience working on stage and screen, he is also a recurring character in The L Word and has guested on such series as Millennium, The Outer Limits, Cold Squad, X Files and Monk.

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.

Hod Lipson is a roboticist who works in the areas of artificial intelligence and digital manufacturing. An award-winning researcher, teacher, and communicator, Lipson enjoys sharing the beauty of robotics though his books, essays, public lectures, and radio and television appearances.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Marilyn Maye is an award-winning, renowned jazz singer who has been named an Official Jazz Legend by the American Jazz Museum. She has been onstage with many of the greatest jazz performers, including Count Basie, Charlie “Bird” Parker, and Big Joe Turner.

Physicist Lyman Page measures the cosmic microwave background radiation left over from the Big Bang to better understand the very early universe and how it has since evolved. He is the Henry DeWolf Smyth Professor of Physics at Princeton University.

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.

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 …

Leonard Susskind is the Felix Bloch Professor of Theoretical Physics at Stanford University, and one of the discoverers of string theory, a candidate for a theory that unifies all laws of physics. An award-winning author, he is a proponent of the idea that our universe is one of an infinite number.

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.

Daniel L. Schacter is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. Many of Schacter’s studies and ideas are summarized in his 1996 book, Searching for Memory, and his 2001 contribution, The Seven Sins of Memory.

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.

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.

Katherine Freese is the Director of the Weinberg Institute for Theoretical Physics and the Jeff & Gail Kodosky Professor of Physics at the University of Texas at Austin. She is …

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Since a young age, Mike Cahill would experiment with filmmaking on Fisher Price and VHS camcorders. He began working for National Geographic, first as an intern, but within a few months, he became the youngest field producer, editor, and cinematographer on the NG staff.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Bob Balaban recently received an Emmy nomination for directing Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons in Georgia O’Keeffe (Lifetime). He received three 2008 Emmy Award nominations, two for directing and producing the HBO film Bernard and Doris, and the third for his performance in Recount.

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.

American-born stage and screen actor Bill Camp is best known for his extensive theatre work both on and off Broadway. The recipient of several awards and honors, including Obie, Eliot Norton, and Boston Critics Association awards, he has performed in Tony Kushner’s play Homebody/Kabul, The Misanthrope, Olly’s Prison, Coram Boy, Heartbreak House, The Seagull, St.Joan and Jackie: An American Life to name a few.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Brent Sexton was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Prior to settling in Los Angeles to pursue a career in Film and Television, he spent four and half years touring theatrically throughout Europe and the United States. Sexton played Harry Manning on HBO’s critically acclaimed series, Deadwood and he is also known for playing Officer Bobby Stark on the NBC series, Life.

Mike Daisey has been called “the master storyteller” and “one of the finest solo performers of his generation” by The New York Times for his groundbreaking monologs, gonzo journalism, and unscripted performance to tell hilarious and heartbreaking stories that cut to the bone.

Tony-nominated Mireille Enos is currently starring in the critically acclaimed AMC drama series, The Killing. Enos will star opposite Brad Pitt in the Marc Forster-directed zombie extravaganza World War Z, which is based on the novel by Max Brooks and goes into production this summer. For the past three seasons, Enos starred in the HBO drama Big Love.

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.

Julie Burstein is a Peabody Award-winning radio producer, best-selling author, and public speaker who has spent her working life in conversation with highly creative people. She is the co-author of Spark: How Creativity Works.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 …

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.

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

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.

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.

Tomás Saraceno’s work defies traditional notions of space, time, gravity, consciousness and perception through architectural, social and communitarian means that are utopian and participatory. His installations blend the boundary between sky and the earth, creating the sensation of flight.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Television personality, filmmaker and philosopher, Jason Silva was recently described as “part Timothy Leary, part Ray Kurzweil, and part Neo from The Matrix.”

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.

David Kuhn, a musician, singer, songwriter, performer was one of the original musicians chosen for both the development and Broadway productions of Pete Townshend’s Tony Award-winning rock opera The Who’s Tommy.

Drew Gehling was an original cast member of the revival of the classic musical On A Clear Day You Can See Forever where he played the role of Warren to critical acclaim alongside the incomparable Harry Connick, Jr.

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.

Howie Choset is a professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. Motivated by applications in confined spaces, Choset has created a comprehensive program in snake robots, which has led to basic research in mechanism design, path planning, motion planning, and estimation.

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.

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.

Tricia Rose Burt grew up in the South, where she was strongly encouraged to pursue business, marry a Southerner, raise children, and live below the Mason-Dixon line. Attempts to lead that life backfired. She is now a writer, performer, and artist and lives in New England.

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.

Jay Allison is an independent journalist, documentary maker, and leader in public broadcasting. He is a frequent producer for NPR news programs and This American Life, and a six-time Peabody Award winner.

Caitlin Trainor is the artistic director of Trainor Dance and a lecturer at Barnard College/Columbia University. Originally from Rhode Island, Trainor has taught, choreographed, and performed on both sides of the Atlantic.

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.

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.

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.

T. Oliver Reid was the recipient of the 2012 MAC Award for Debut Artist-Male and the 2011 Julie Wilson Award from the Mabel Mercer Foundation, Reid has spent the last 18 months singing and records the songs of the American Songbook across the country.

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.

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.

Ann Harada is best known for originating the role of Christmas Eve in Avenue Q on Broadway and in London. She is currently playing Charlotte, a stepsister, in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella.

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.

Peter Benson is a Broadway performer, with roles in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Harvey, Promises, Promises, To Be or Not To Be, Boeing-Boeing, The Pajama Game, Wonderful Town, Cabaret, Little Me, American Daughter, and State Fair.

Brynn O’Malley has appeared on Broadway in Wicked, Sunday in the Park with George, Hairspray, and Beauty and the Beast. Other stage work includes Avenue Q, Boeing-Boeing, Oklahoma!, Meet Me In St. Louis, She Loves Me, Arsenic and Old Lace, Into the Woods, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Jekyll & Hyde. TV credits include The Big C, Royal Pains, and A Gifted Man.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Rachel Dutton, Ph.D. is a Bauer fellow at the Harvard University Center for Systems Biology. After receiving her Ph.D. in microbiology from Harvard Medical School, she founded her own lab with the mission of using cheese as a way to understand microbial ecosystems.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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

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.

Randall Pinkston was a CBS News correspondent for more than 30 years, including two years covering the White House. Among his many awards are three Emmys, including one for Outstanding Investigative Reporting for CBS Reports: Legacy of Shame about migrant farm workers in the USA.

Steve Metzger grew up in Queens, NYC. He went to Baruch College and received his Masters in Education from Bank Street College. He taught young children for 15 years before moving on to Scholastic, where he has mainly worked with the Book Clubs.

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.

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.

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.

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 …

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.

Diane Ackerman is the author of 24 works of nonfiction and poetry. Her works include the New York Times best sellers The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us, which received the PEN Henry David Thoreau Award and One Hundred Names for Love, a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Circle Critics 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.

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.

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.

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.

Tony Wilson is interested in how and why animals reproduce the way they do, and is fascinated by the remarkable reproductive diversity of aquatic organisms. Over the past decade, Wilson’s research has focused on seahorses and pipefish, a group with a unique and highly developed form of reproduction—male pregnancy.

Mindy Greenstein is a clinical psychologist, psycho-oncologist, and writer, who also serves as a consultant to the geriatric group in the Department of Psychiatry at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Christine Vogel originally trained as a biochemist in Germany, but moved to Cambridge, England, to obtain her PhD in computational and structural biology with Dr. Cyrus Chothia and Dr. Sarah Teichmann at the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Biology.

Scott Faris directed the arena spectacular Walking with Dinosaurs, Bette Midler’s The Showgirl Must Go On, at Caesars Palace and EFX at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas; William Shatner’s one-man show, Shatner’s World on Broadway, many concerts at New York’s prestigious Lyrics & Lyricists series at the 92Y, and traveled to six continents to stage productions of the hit musical, Chicago.

59 Productions is a multi-award-winning design studio and production company based in London and New York. Whether creating stage productions, museum installations, live music shows, large-scale events, or films, 59’s team generates creative and technical ideas to help realize ambitious artistic projects.

Heather McKellar received her Ph.D. from Columbia where she studied the hippocampus, a part of the brain important for learning and memory. Now at the NYU Neuroscience Institute, she is passionate about education and runs the graduate program in Neuroscience and Physiology as well as NOGN at NYU.

Marom Bikson is a Cattell Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the City College of New York (CCNY) of the City University of New York (CUNY) and codirector of the Neural Engineering Group at the New York Center for Biomedical Engineering.

France A. Córdova is an astrophysicist and the 14th director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the only government agency charged with advancing all fields of scientific discovery, technological innovation, and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education.

Angelique Corthals is a biomedical/forensic anthropologist who earned her PhD at the University of Oxford. Her work has focused on biomedical research, including the study of the ecology of infectious diseases and auto-immune diseases, as well as forensic anthropology in South America and the Middle East.

Erick Ordoñez is currently in the Systems Engineering Group at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) and the lead systems engineer for In Space Manufacturing (ISM) and Additive Construction with Mobile Emplacement (ACME) Projects at NASA MSFC.

Wendell Wallach is a consultant, ethicist, and scholar at Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics. He is also a senior advisor to The Hastings Center, a fellow at the Center for Law, Science & Innovation at the Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law (Arizona State University), and a fellow at the Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technology.

Szabolcs Marka is leader of the Columbia Experimental Gravity Group in LIGO and a professor of physics at Columbia. He has received an NSF Career Award and a Grand Challenges Explorations Award from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Eric Jordan has been sought by opera companies for his trademark “big bass and presence to match” (Opera News). His voice is described as possessing “a resonant, ringing tone that was well produced throughout its range” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch), and The New York Times stated that his “powerful, nuanced singing and thoughtful acting amounted to a wholly remarkable portrayal.”

Christine Ebersole has captivated audiences throughout her performing career, from the Broadway stage to television series and specials, films, concert appearances, and recordings.

Pianist-Composer Michael Brown, winner of a 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant, has been described by The New York Times as a “young piano visionary” and “one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers.”

Peter Parnell’s most recent play Dada Woof Papa Hot was produced by the Lincoln Center Theater Company in 2015. He wrote the new books for Disney Theatrical’s production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (music and lyrics Menken-Schwartz), and the Broadway revival of Lerner and Lane’s On a Clear Day You Can See Forever starring Harry Connick, Jr. and Jessie Mueller.

Raychelle Burks is an analytical chemist and assistant professor at St. Edward’s University. She has a background in forensic science, having a passion for scientific detection since junior high school. Out of the lab, Dr. Burks specializes in applying scientific principles to stories and trends in popular culture.

Duncan Watts is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research and a founding member of the MSR-NYC lab. He is also an AD White Professor at Large at Cornell University. Prior to joining MSR, he was from 2000-2007 a professor of Sociology at Columbia University, and then a principal research scientist at Yahoo! Research.

Cathy O’Neil earned a Ph.D. in math from Harvard, was a postdoc at the MIT math department, and a professor at Barnard College where she published a number of research papers in arithmetic algebraic geometry.

Mary Elizabeth Williams is the author of A Series of Catastrophes and Miracles: A True Story of Love, Science, and Cancer. She has written for numerous publications including The New York Times, LA Times, and Salon.

Amy Harmon covers the social implications of science and technology for The New York Times. She has won two Pulitzer Prizes, one in 2008 for her series, The DNA Age, the other as part of a team in 2001 for a series on race relations in America.

Carl Safina’s work has been recognized with MacArthur, Pew, and Guggenheim Fellowships, and his writing has won Orion, Lannan, and National Academies literary awards and the John Burroughs, James Beard, and George Rabb medals.

Claudia Perlich leads the machine learning efforts that power Dstillery’s digital intelligence for marketers and media companies. With more than 50 published scientific articles, she is a widely acclaimed expert on big data and machine learning applications, and an active speaker at data science and marketing conferences around the world.

Neal Weiner received his undergraduate degree in Physics and Mathematics from Carleton College and a PhD in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley. After completing his postdoctoral training at the University of Washington, Dr. Weiner joined the faculty of the Department of Physics at NYU in 2004.

Agustín Fuentes, trained in Zoology and Anthropology, is a Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. His research delves into the how and why of being human.

A Mississippi to NYC transplant, Joshua Winter has been teaching physics for over 15 years to students of all age levels. Whether kindergartners or college students, his engaging teaching style and exciting demonstrations make even the most complex concepts accessible.

Birgitta Whaley is Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, co-Director of the Berkeley Quantum Information and Computation Center, and Faculty Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Kevin Laland is Professor of Behavioural and Evolutionary Biology at the University of St Andrews, where he is a member of the Centre for Biological Diversity, the Centre for Social learning and Cognitive Evolution, the Institute for Behavioural and Neural Sciences, and the Scottish Primate Research Group.

Mark Van Raamsdonk is a professor of physics at the University of British Columbia, where he also received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics. He completed a Ph.D. in physics at Princeton University followed by postdoctoral research at Stanford University.

Dr. Jackie Faherty received a Bachelors in Science as a Physics major from the University of Notre Dame in 2001. She received her Ph.D. in Physics from Stony Brook University in 2010 with a thesis entitled the Brown Dwarf Kinematics Project, for which she received the University’s highest honors.

Caleb Harper is the Principal Investigator and Director of the Open Agriculture (Open Ag) Initiative at the MIT Media Lab. He leads a diverse group of engineers, architects, and scientists in the exploration and development of future food systems.

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

Pilobolus has created and toured over 120 pieces of repertory to more than 65 countries and currently performs its work each year for over 300,000 people across the U.S. and around the world. In 2015, Pilobolus was named one of the Dance Heritage Coalition’s “Irreplaceable Dance Treasures.”

Pilobolus is a rebellious dance company. For 45 years, Pilobolus has tested the limits of human physicality to explore the beauty and the power of connected bodies. They continue to bring this tradition to global audiences through our post-disciplinary collaborations with some of the greatest influencers, thinkers, and creators in the world.

Early Morning Opera (EMO) is a genre-bending performance and art lab whose works explore emerging technologies, live audiences, and unclassifiable experience, while reflecting artistic director Lars Jan’s background in progressive activism.

Henry T. (Hank) Greely is the Deane F. and Kate Edelman Johnson Professor of Law and Professor, by courtesy, of Genetics at Stanford University. Greely graduated from Stanford and Yale Law School. He was a law clerk for Judge John Minor Wisdom on the Fifth Circuit and Justice Potter Stewart on the Supreme Court.

Dava Sobel has been writing about science for forty years, including a series of articles for The New York Times describing her month-long stint as a human subject in a laboratory study of circadian rhythm. Sobel is the author of several bestselling books about the history of astronomy.

Shana Corey has a flair for finding the story in history and making it fun. She was named a Publishers Weekly Flying Start for her first picture book, You Forgot Your Skirt, Amelia Bloomer!, which went on to inspire the American Library Association’s Amelia Bloomer Project.

Time for Three (Tf3) transcends traditional classification, with high-energy performances free of conventional practices. Drawing from the members’ differing musical backgrounds, the trio performs its own arrangements of traditional repertoire with elements of classical, country western, gypsy and jazz idioms forming a blend all its own.

Dan Kahan is the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law & Professor of Psychology at Yale Law School. His primary research interests are risk perception and science communication.

Ting (C.-ting) Wu is a Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. She is also Director of the Consortium for Space Genetics and Director of the Personal Genetics Education (pgEd.org) Project. She received her B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University and is a recipient of the NIH Director’s 2012 Pioneer Award for her laboratory’s work on genome organization and inheritance.

Dr. John R. Smith is an IBM Fellow and Manager of Multimedia and Vision at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. He leads IBM’s Research & Development on Visual Comprehension including IBM Watson Developer Cloud Visual Recognition, Intelligent Video Analytics, and Video Understanding for Augmented Creativity.

Vasant Dhar is a Professor at the NYU Stern School of Business and the Center for Data Science, and Editor-in-Chief of the Big Data journal. He is also the founder of SCT Capital Management, a machine learning based investment entity in New York City that implements a systematic process of knowledge discovery to make trading decisions autonomously.

Dr. Jerry M. Chow is the Manager of the Experimental Quantum Computing group at IBM and a Distinguished Research Staff Member. His technical expertise is in the area of design, measurement, and integration of superconducting qubits.

Matias Zaldarriaga is a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He has a PhD from MIT and is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the Gribov Medal from the European Physical Society, and the Helen B. Warner Prize from the American Astronomical Society.

Fronting GRAMMY® Award-nominated multiplatinum rock leviathan Disturbed and industrial disruptor Device, vocalist, songwriter, and producer David Draiman casts an inescapable shadow over modern rock.

Maryam Zaringhalam is a molecular biologist and an AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow. She received her Ph.D. in molecular biology from the Rockefeller University, where she used protozoan parasites as a model to investigate how small changes to our genetic building blocks can affect how we look and function.

A four-time Emmy Award-winning writer for Bill Nye the Science Guy, Lynn Brunelle has over 25 years experience writing for people of all ages, across all manner of media. Brunelle has created, developed and written projects for National Geographic, Scholastic, Random House, Penguin, A&E, The Discovery Channel, Disney, ABC TV, NBC, NPR, World Almanac, Cranium, and PBS.

Mayim Bialik is best known for her award-winning role on the hit CBS comedy, The Big Bang Theory as ‘Amy Farrah Fowler’ and her role as ‘Blossom Russo’ on the hit 90’s sitcom Blossom. After starring as the lead in her own TV show, she left acting to attend UCLA, where she earned a Ph.D. in Neuroscience.

Budd Mishkin is a broadcast journalist in New York City. As correspondent and host for NY1’s weekly profile series, One on 1 with Budd Mishkin, Mishkin profiled almost 400 influential New Yorkers with significant personal and professional ties to the city.

Bill Nye is a science educator, mechanical engineer, New York Times bestselling author, and the creator and host of the Emmy award-winning syndicated television show Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Gregory Mone is a novelist, science journalist, and speaker who has written several books for children including Fish and Dangerous Waters. As a magazine writer, he has covered artificial intelligence, robots, physics, and biology.

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

Dr. Kathy-Anne (Brickman) Soderberg, Senior Research Scientist at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Information Directorate, is the primary investigator for AFRL’s Trapped-Ion Quantum Networking group.

Tina Fey is an award-winning writer, actress, and producer who broke barriers as Liz Lemon on her three-time Emmy Award-winning comedy series 30 Rock. Prior to creating 30 Rock, Ms. Fey completed …

Anita de Waard has a degree in low-temperature physics from Leiden University and worked in Moscow before joining Elsevier as a physics publisher in 1988. Since 1997, she has worked on bridging the gap between science publishing and computational and information technologies, collaborating with groups in Europe and the United States.

In 2001, Dayu Lin received a B.S. in biological sciences from Fudan University in China. In 2006, she received her Ph.D. in Neurobiology from Duke University, working with Larry Katz. She studied as a postdoctoral fellow with David Anderson at California Institute of Technology.

Dr. Kirk Borne is the Principal Data Scientist in the Strategic Innovation Group at Booz-Allen Hamilton since 2015. He was Professor of Astrophysics and Computational Science in the George Mason University (GMU) School of Physics, Astronomy, and Computational Sciences during 2003-2015

Daniela Buccella is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at New York University. Born and raised in Venezuela, she received her B.S. in Chemistry in 2002 from Simón Bolívar University in Caracas, and started research as an undergraduate in the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research under the supervision of Professor Roberto Sánchez-Delgado.

Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig is a Senior Research Scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, where she heads the Climate Impacts Group. She is Co-Chair of the New York City Panel on Climate Change, a group of climate science experts that provides regular updates about climate change in the metropolitan region to the Mayor of New York.

Anna Gunn starred as “Skyler White” on the Emmy Award-winning series Breaking Bad on AMC, earning an Emmy Award, an AFI Award, and the prestigious Peabody Award. She previously starred in the role of “Martha Bullock” in the iconic HBO series Deadwood.

Trey Taylor co-founded Verdant Power, a New York-based company. He is a founding member of the American Council on Renewable Energy and recently founded Anchor Coalition – a project of The Ocean Foundation, a non-profit organization – dedicated to securing water and energy for our communities.

Shannon Louie is a chemist in the Global R&D Regulatory Operations & Ingredient Coordination group at Avon Products, Inc. She works with ingredient suppliers to maintain Avon’s Raw Ingredient specifications to ensure a robust safety and technical evaluation of new materials and compliance with product related regulations.

Liz Knapp is a senior chemist in the New Technology group in Research and Development at Avon Products, Inc. In this role, she uses her skill in science and art to develop new skin care and color cosmetics. She enjoys working on teams to come up with innovations to help consumers around the world look and feel like their best selves.

Mellanie Garner is a regulatory scientist in the Regulatory Operations/Raw Ingredients group in Research and Development at Avon Products, Inc. In her time at Avon she was responsible for global regulations on new raw ingredients for consumer products, including color; skincare; and hair care products.

Susan Schneider is the 2019 Distinguished Scholar at the Library of Congress and the Director of the AI, Mind and Society (AIMS) Group at the University of Connecticut. She writes about the fundamental nature of the self and mind.

Mike Vago is the creator of several unusual-format books, including The Miniature Book of Miniature Golf and the Journey Through the Pages series. He is also a regular contributor to The A.V. Club.

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

Mike Ressler has combined his passion for sports with his computer science education and accidentally stumbled across his favorite line of work, Sports Technology. Hooked on sports tech, Ressler joined local Pittsburgh startup Diamond Kinetics as director of engineering.

Mike Meacham holds a M.Eng. in mechanical engineering from Cornell University, concentrating in vehicular design and creating off-road skateboards as part of his education. He spent the first part of his career at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)

Meredith Whittaker is co-founder of the AI Now Institute, a leading university institute dedicated to researching the social implications of artificial intelligence and related technologies in an interdisciplinary context.

Adam Alter is an associate professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business with an affiliated appointment at the NYU Psychology Department where he studies human judgment and decision-making.

Jay Van Bavel is an Associate Professor of Psychology & Neural Science at New York University. He conducts research on how group identities’ moral values and political beliefs shape the mind and brain.

Timnit Gebru works in the Fairness Accountability Transparency and Ethics (FATE) group at Microsoft Research, New York. She is currently studying the ethical considerations underlying any data mining project, and methods of auditing and mitigating bias in sociotechnical systems.

Kathryn Denning is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at York University in Toronto. Her research includes projects on the social impacts of astrobiology and SETI, the evolution of intelligence, and contemporary ideas concerning the colonization of space.

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

Jocelyn Read is an assistant professor in the Gravitational Wave Physics and Astronomy Center of California State University, Fullerton. She has spent more than a decade studying neutron star astrophysics and gravitational waves.

Dr. Scott M. Smith leads the Nutritional Biochemistry Laboratory at the NASA Johnson Space Center. This group is charged with keeping crews healthy with respect to nutrition, including using nutrition as a means to optimize astronaut health and safety.

David Kipping is a Professor of Astronomy at Columbia University where he leads the Cool Worlds Lab – a research team primarily focussed on discovering new planets and moons. Kipping’s …

Andrea Pocar joined the physics faculty at UMass-Amherst in 2009, where his research in experimental nuclear/particle physics includes searches for neutrino-less double beta decay, for weakly-interacting dark matter particles, and solar neutrinos.

Lindley Winslow’s work focuses on answering big questions about the universe by developing novel particle detectors. She received her BA in physics and astronomy in 2001 and her PhD in physics in 2008, both from the University of California at Berkeley.

Solon Barocas is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Science at Cornell University. His current research explores ethical and policy issues in artificial intelligence, particularly fairness in machine learning, methods for bringing accountability to automated decision-making, and the privacy implications of inference.

Florian Pinel is a Senior Technical Staff Member and Master Inventor in the Watson Content and IoT group at IBM. He is the co-inventor of IBM Chef Watson, an application that uses machine learning and natural language processing to demonstrate computational creativity and suggest original recipe ideas.

Shannon Odell is a Brooklyn based writer, comedian, and scientist. She co-hosts and produces Drunk Science, an experimental comedy show deemed “a stroke of genius” by Gothamist and a finalist in TruTV’s comedy break out initiative.

Tim Urban is the Writer, Illustrator, and Co-Founder of Wait But Why, a long-form, stick-figure-illustrated website with over 600,000 subscribers and a monthly average of one million visitors. He has produced dozens of viral articles on a wide range of topics, from artificial intelligence to social anxiety to humans becoming a multi-planetary species.

Matthew Chun graduated from Jericho High School in 2014 and participated in ISEF in 2013 (4th place: Materials and Bioengineering) and 2014 (2nd place: Chemistry). Chun is currently a senior at MIT studying Mechanical Engineering.

Tamara Tunie is a versatile actress who consistently garners praise and recognition for her work on the big and small screens, in theater, and in her community. She currently stars in the upcoming AMC dark comedy Dietland as Julia with Joy Nash and Julianna Margulies.

Olivier Elemento, PhD is the Director of the Weill Cornell Medicine Englander Institute for Precision Medicine, an institute that focuses on using genomics and informatics to make medicine more individualized.

Dr. Stephen Ross researches the therapeutic application of psychedelic treatment models to treat psychiatric and addictive disorders. He is an expert in psycho-oncology and is studying novel pharmacologic-psychosocial approaches to treating psychological and existential distress associated with advanced or terminal cancer.

Michael Dine is a professor of physics at University of California Santa Cruz. He is noted for work on cosmology where he has proposed one of the leading candidates for the dark matter and several ideas for how the asymmetry might arise between matter and antimatter for work in particle physics.

Mariangela Lisanti is an associate professor of physics at Princeton University whose research focuses on the nature of dark matter. She has tested ideas about dark matter using data from a wide range of experimental and observational probes.

Ronald Arkin is Regents’ Professor and Director of the Mobile Robot Laboratory at Georgia Tech. He served as visiting professor at KTH Stockholm, Sabbatical Chair at Sony in Tokyo, member Robotics/AI Group at LAAS/CNRS in Toulouse, and in Queensland University of Technology and CSIRO/Brisbane.

David Pogue is a four-time Emmy winner for his stories on CBS Sunday Morning, host of 17 science specials on NOVA on PBS, and the “Crowdwise” columnist for The New York Times.

Gloria P. Huang is a research scientist in the New Technology group in Research and Development at Avon Products, Inc. She works to develop innovations for skin care and color cosmetics by combining her love of research and collaboration to help uncover ways to delight consumers around the world.

Ruth Spiro is the author of the Baby Loves Science board book series, published by Charlesbridge. Titles include Baby Loves Aerospace Engineering, Baby Loves Coding, and Baby Loves Green Energy. She hopes her books inspire kids to observe the world, ask questions, and when it comes to their futures, dream big!

Stefano Scarani is the founder of Tangatamanu group with Alberto Morelli. He is professor of Electroacoustic and Audiovisual composition at Musikene and associate professor in Fine Art faculty at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV).

Michelle Rucker is a native of Anchorage, Alaska and a veteran of NASA. She began her career in the Houston oil industry, designing down-hole sensors while pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees in Mechanical Engineering.

Nuria Lloret Romero PhD, is a professor of Digital Communication and collaborative online projects at Universitat Politècnica de València. Her research focuses on the use of technology to create and enable online collaborative projects.

Georgia Frances King is an editor and facilitator born in Melbourne Australia and based in New York. Currently the Ideas Editor at Quartz and formerly the Editor of Kinfolk magazine, she has fused her background in lifestyle journalism with her passion for emerging technology.

Loren Grush is a senior science reporter for The Verge, the technology and culture brand from Vox Media, where she specializes in all things space—from distant stars and planets to human spaceflight and the commercial space race.

Kirsten is the Research and Payloads Group Lead at the European Space Agency’s Directorate of Human and Robotic Exploration. In that role, she leads a team of expert scientists and …

Karl Glazebrook is a Distinguished Professor of Astronomy at the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne. Karl is an observational astronomer whose research interests …

Anna Ijjas is a theoretical and computational physicist, working in gravitation and cosmology, whose research is aimed at the most fundamental questions about the universe: what is the mechanism that …

Erin Kara is MIT’s Class of 1958 Career Development Assistant Professor of Physics. Her research focuses on how black holes grow and affect their environments. She also works to develop …

James Peebles is the Albert Einstein Professor of Science (Emeritus) at Princeton University and is regarded as one of the greatest theoretical cosmologists of the last 50 years. His work …

Stephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha and the Wolfram Language; the originator of the Wolfram Physics Project; and the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research. Over the course …

Daniel Jafferis is a Professor of Physics at Harvard whose research involves string theory, supersymmetric quantum field theory, and quantum gravity. Jafferis was one of the discoverers of the low …

Julian Barbour is a British theoretical physicist renowned for his work on the nature of time and quantum gravity. Largely independent from academic institutions, he has pursued research outside traditional …

Kate Stockly is a qualitative researcher specializing in the scientific study of religion and gender and sexualities studies. She is a co-author of High On God: How Megachurches Won the Heart …

Daniel Harlow is a theoretical physicist and professor at MIT, recognized for his work in quantum gravity, black hole physics, and quantum information theory. He is known for linking quantum …

Alain Aspect is a former student of ENS Cachan and Paris-Sud University (now Université Paris-Saclay). He has held positions at the Institut d’Optique, ENS Yaoundé (Cameroon), ENS Cachan, the ENS/Collège …