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.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Philip Glass is a graduate of the University of Chicago and the Juilliard School. In the early 1960s, Glass spent two years of intensive study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and while there, earned money by transcribing Ravi Shankar’s Indian music into Western notation.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

Padi Boyd is the project scientist for the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) Mission (a NASA Explorer Mission launched in 2018), and chief of the Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics Laboratory in the Astrophysics Science Division, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Christiansen is NASA’s Exoplanet Archive Task Scientist. As such, she works to maintain and enhance the capabilities of the NASA Exoplanet Archive to provide data and tools to the community …