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.

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.

Jill Bargonetti, a renowned cancer researcher, earned her B.A. at SUNY College at Purchase and her Ph.D. at New York University and did postdoctorate work at Columbia University. She serves as chair of the molecular, cellular, and development subprogram in the Ph.D. Program in Biology at the Graduate Center and as professor of biological sciences at Hunter College.

Jill Shapiro is the E3B Senior Lecturer/Director of Undergraduate Studies-EBHS. Systematics is at the core of her research, which spans several areas of biological anthropology, including human evolution, human and non-human skeletal biology, the history of the scientific race concept, and hominoid taxonomy.