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.

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.

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.

Bill Blakemore became a reporter for ABC News 46 years ago, covering a wide variety of stories. He spearheaded ABC’s coverage of global warming, traveling from the tropics to polar regions to report on its impacts, dangers, and possible remedies.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Grammy-nominated Eldar Djangirov is one of the top jazz pianists on the scene today. He has played with many of the masters, including Dave Brubeck, Michael Brecker, Wynton Marsalis and Dr. Billy Taylor. His latest recording Virtue, made it to the Top 20 on Billboard’s Jazz album chart and Jazzweek’s radio chart by the third week.

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.

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.”

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 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.

David Hallberg has danced the title role in Apollo, Solor in La Bayadère, Albrecht in Giselle, Romeo in Romeo and Juliet and George Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, among many others, for the American Ballet Theatre.

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.

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.

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.

The Silk Road Ensemble is a collective of internationally renowned performers and composers from more than 20 countries. Many of the musicians first came together under the artistic direction of Yo-Yo Ma at a workshop at Tanglewood Music Center in Massachusetts in 2000.

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.

Lawrence Weschler was for over 20 years a staff writer at The New Yorker, where his work shuttled between political tragedies and cultural comedies. He is a two-time winner of the George Polk Award, for Cultural Reporting in 1988 and Magazine Reporting in 1992, and was also a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award.

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.

Klaus Zuberbühler’s award-winning work on the communication and cognition of non-human primates in their natural habitats in Africa, South America and Asia has had a considerable impact on our understanding of primate cognition and, more generally, what it means to be human.

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.

An activist who is known as “the Ralph Nadar of Canada,” Maude Barlow is the best-selling author of 16 books, including the recently released Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water.

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.

Brooke Gladstone is the Host and Managing Editor of NPR’s On the Media from WNYC. She’s also an accomplished print journalist with works appearing in the London Observer, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post and many other leading publications.

Playwright, storyteller, musician, poet, and actor, David Gonzalez was nominated for a 2006 Drama Desk Award for his original production The Frog Bride at Broadway’s New Victory Theater.

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.

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.

Colin McGinn is a professor and Cooper Fellow at University of Miami. In 2006, he joined the UM philosophy department, having taught previously at University of London, University of Oxford, and Rutgers University.

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.

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.

Mark Oliver Everett is the lead singer, songwriter, guitarist, keyboardist, and creative force behind the independent rock band, Eels. He is the son of Hugh Everett III, the physicist who proposed the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Inventor, entrepreneur, athlete, musician, and TV host Nate Ball draws on his many different pursuits to inspire budding engineers on PBS, the Discovery Channel, and the History Channel. Ball’s fascination with engineering started early.

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.

Edward Fredkin’s computer career started in 1956 when the Air Force assigned him to work at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratories. In 1968 he started at MIT as a full professor. From 1971 to 1974 he was the Director of CSAIL and he spent a year at Caltech as a Fairchild Distinguished Scholar, working with Richard Feynman.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

John Leventhal is a Grammy-winning musician, producer, songwriter, and recording engineer who has produced albums for Michelle Branch, Rosanne Cash, Marc Cohn, Shawn Colvin, Rodney Crowell, Jim Lauderdale, Joan Osborne, Loudon Wainwright, The Wreckers, and many others.

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 …

Dan Harris was named co-anchor of ABC News’ weekend edition of Good Morning America in October 2010. Additionally, Harris is a New York-based correspondent for ABC News’ broadcasts and platforms.

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.

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.

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.

Cumrun Vafa is the Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard University. He received his BS in Math and Physics from MIT in 1981 and his PhD in …

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Neil Gershenfeld leads a unique laboratory, the Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT, that is breaking down boundaries between digital and physical worlds.

Claire Max studies adaptive optics, a technology that can remove the blurring effects of the earth’s atmosphere and let telescopes on the ground “see” as clearly as if they were in space.

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.

Jarod Miller is a young naturalist, zoologist, pet expert, and regular guest lecturer for zoos, universities, and promotional events, having lectured on captive management and wildlife conservation at venues including the White House.

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.

Rachel Yehuda, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience, is the Director of the Traumatic Stress Studies Division at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and the Mental Health Patient Care Center Director at the James J. Peters Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

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.

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.”

Debra Monk has starred on Broadway in Curtains, Chicago; Reckless; Thou Shalt Not; Ah, Wilderness!; Steel Pier; Company; Picnic; Redwood Curtain; Nick and Nora; Pump Boys and Dinettes. Off-Broadway, she has appeared in Love, Loss, and What I Wore; Show People; The Seagull; The Time of the Cuckoo; Death-Defying Acts; Three Hotels; Assassins; and Oil City Symphony.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

William Hugh Woodin is a set theorist at University of California, Berkeley. He has made many notable contributions to the theory of inner models and determinacy. His recent work on Ω-logic suggests an argument that the continuum hypothesis is false.

Alexandra Horowitz is a professor of psychology at Barnard College, Columbia University and author of Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know and On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes. The Horowitz Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard conducts research on a wide range of topics.

Maia Guest trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama, London, and has worked in theater, television and film in London, New York, Los Angeles, and throughout the United States. She can be currently seen playing a scientist in BYUtv’s new period scripted drama, Granite Flats, and has appeared on shows on PBS, VH1, BBC, MTV.

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.

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.

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.

Rafael Yuste is professor of biological sciences and neuroscience at Columbia University. He was born in Madrid, where he obtained his M.D. at the Universidad Autónoma. He performed Ph.D. studies with Larry Katz in Torsten Wiesel’s laboratory at Rockefeller University and was a postdoctoral student of David Tank at Bell Labs.

Massimo Porrati is a professor of physics, and a member of the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, at New York University. His major research interests are string theory, supersymmetry and supergravity, nonperturbative aspects of strings and quantum field theory, and cosmology.

Terry Moran is a co-anchor of ABC News’ Nightline and covers the Supreme Court for the network from his base in Washington, DC. At Nightline Moran has led the program’s distinguished coverage of many of the major news stories over the past several years.

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.

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.

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.

Carter Burwell has composed the music for many feature films written, directed, and produced by the Coen Brothers, including Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Man Who Wasn’t There, No Country for Old Men, Burn After Reading, A Serious Man, and True Grit.

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.

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.

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.

Eric Nestler is a neuroscientist, professor of psychiatry, and chair of the neuroscience department at Mount Sinai, and the director of the Friedman Brain Institute.

CeCe Moore is a professional genetic genealogist who is considered an innovator in the use of DNA for genealogical purposes. Currently, she is working as the genetic genealogy consultant and scriptwriter for PBS’ Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

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.

Rick and Michael Mast are the co-founders and head chocolate makers of Mast Brothers Chocolate, a bean-to-bar chocolate making company located in Brooklyn. They are involved in every aspect of the process, from roasting and grinding the beans to aging the chocolate and molding the bars.

Kim Janda is a professor of chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute whose research efforts merge biology and chemistry. He has investigated using the immune system to target drug addiction, catalytic antibodies, and creating molecules to treat cancer.

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.

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.

Brian Hecht is a serial entrepreneur and a veteran of many startups in the digital media space. He is currently at the helm of two NY-based startups, both of which he co-founded. With a specialty in content and consumer marketing, he was also the Publisher of Premium Services for TheStreet.com, a publicly-traded financial media company.

Dr. Emily Rauscher received her B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley in Physics and Astrophysics. Rauscher then came to New York City for grad school, obtaining a Ph.D. in Astronomy from Columbia University.

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.

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.

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.

Masoud Mohseni is a senior research scientist at Google Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where he develops machine-learning algorithms that fundamentally rely on quantum dynamics.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Radu Sion is a professor at Stony Brook University (on leave), the director of the National Security Institute, and the CEO of Private Machines Inc. Sion’s research is in cyber security and large-scale computing. He has published 85-plus peer-reviewed works in top venues and has organized 65-plus conferences.

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.

A trained musician-mathematician, Whitney L. Coyle found her calling in Acoustics, the science of sound. Coyle studied clarinet performance and mathematics at Murray State University in Kentucky and is a recent Acoustics Ph.D. from the Penn State Graduate Program in Acoustics.

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.

Leon Wieseltier is the Isaiah Berlin Senior Fellow in Culture and Policy at the Brookings Institution. He is the author, among other books, of the acclaimed Kaddish. He was the literary editor of The New Republic from 1983 to 2014, and is now contributing editor and critic at The Atlantic.

Tobias Picker, called “our finest composer for the lyric stage” by The Wall Street Journal, has composed works in all genres including five operas to date. Picker’s operas have been commissioned by the Santa Fe Opera, The LA Opera, The Dallas Opera, San Francisco Opera, and The Metropolitan Opera, and have gone on to be produced by New York City Opera, L’Opera de Montreal, and many other distinguished companies.

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

Jennifer Ackerman has been writing about science, nature, and human biology for almost three decades. Her new book, The Genius of Birds (Penguin Press, 2016)–a New York Times bestseller–has been called a “lovely, celebratory survey” by The New York Times and “gloriously provocative and highly entertaining” by the Wall Street Journal.

Matt Brown is the writer & director of The Man Who Knew Infinity starring Dev Patel, Jeremy Irons, Devika Bhise, Stephen Fry, and Toby Jones. The film was released domestically by IFC, and was produced by Edward R. Pressman of Pressman Film. It is the true story of a friendship that forever changed mathematics.

Dr. Joanna Kaczorowska, internationally acclaimed for her virtuosity and artistry, has performed as a soloist and in combination with such artists as Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, and the Emerson String Quartet.

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.

Adam Gopnik, New Yorker staff writer, has been contributing to the magazine since 1986. During his tenure at the magazine, he has written fiction, humor, book reviews, and profiles, and reported pieces from abroad. Gopnik has engaged in many musical projects, working both as a lyricist and librettist.

Paola Antonelli’s work investigates design’s influence on everyday experience, often including overlooked objects and practices, and combining design, architecture, art, science, and technology. She is a Senior Curator at The Museum of Modern Art in the Department of Architecture & Design, as well as MoMA’s founding Director of Research & Development.

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.

Pablo Lavandera appears regularly in many prestigious venues in the United States, South America and Europe, both as a soloist and chamber musician, and in duo with violinist Joanna Kaczorowska with whom he received First Prize at the 2009 Liszt-Garrison International Piano Competition in the collaborative artists category including the Liszt and Bayreuth (Germany) performance prizes.

David Van Essen is the Alumni Endowed Professor of Neurobiology at Washington University in St Louis. He is internationally known for his research on the structure, function, connectivity, evolution, and development of cerebral cortex in humans and nonhuman primates.

David Wallace is a philosopher of physics. In 2016, he arrived at the Philosophy School of the University of Southern California, after twenty-two years at the University of Oxford as a student, a researcher, and faculty member. Wallace’s original training was in theoretical physics.

Erin Styfco is an engineer working in a very unlikely industry, insurance. After earning her Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from Clarkson University, Styfco entered the workforce as a project manager in commercial construction. While working, she also earned her Master’s degree in Civil Engineering from Norwich University which, like her undergraduate work, focused on structural engineering.

Peter Ulric Tse is interested in understanding, first, how matter can become conscious, and second, how conscious and unconscious mental events can be causal in a universe where so many believe a solely physical account of causation should be sufficient.

Yury Gogotsi is Distinguished University Professor and Trustee Chair of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University in Philadelphia. He is the founding Director of the A.J. Drexel Nanomaterials Institute and Associate Editor of ACS Nano.

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.

Dany Spencer Adams explores how ions moving among cells act as signals during regeneration, development, and cancer. She has uncovered evidence that bioelectric signals can trigger and regulate diverse complex processes that include gene expression changes.

Professor Ponisseril Somasundaran received his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. He was invested as the first La von Duddleson Krumb Professor.

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.

Sarah Demers is the Horace D. Taft Associate Professor of Physics at Yale University. She is a particle physicist who works to understand the most fundamental constituents of the universes and the forces between them.

David Baron is a journalist, author, and broadcaster who has spent his thirty-year career largely in public radio. He has worked as a science correspondent for NPR, a science reporter for Boston’s WBUR, and science editor for PRI’s The World. An avid umbraphile, Baron has traveled the world to witness nature’s grandest spectacle, a total solar eclipse.

Carla Shatz has broken new ground for women in neuroscience. At Harvard Medical School, she was the first woman to receive a PhD in Neurobiology and the first woman to chair the department. Her research aims to understand how early developing brain circuits are transformed into adult connections during developmental critical periods.

Sara Walker is an astrobiologist and theoretical physicist, researching the origin of life and how to discover life on other worlds. She is developing new theory to understand life, based on the fundamental role information plays in living matter. Her goal is to develop quantitative criteria for the origin of life and for identifying life on other worlds.

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 …

Oki Gunawan is a Research Staff Member at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Yoktown Heights, NY. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. from Princeton University in Electrical Engineering. Gunawan’s research areas are semiconductor technology and physics such as nanoscale transistor, solar cell and novel sensors for internet of things technology.

Lisa Kaltenegger is the director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell and professor in Astronomy. She is fascinated by the new worlds orbiting other Suns. Her research focuses on modeling these new worlds especially on how to spot signs of life.

Aviv Ovadya is Chief Technologist at the Center for Social Media Responsibility at the University of Michigan School of Information, where he works on ensuring our information ecosystem has a positive impact on society. This involves identifying, measuring, and mitigating indirect harms of technologies that affect public discourse. Ovadya received his bachelors and masters degrees in computer science at MIT.

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.

Dr. William “Buddy” Clark grew up on a farm in rural Virginia where he enjoyed building things and learning how machinery worked. He also developed a passion for baseball.

Matthew R. Willmann is the Director of the Plant Transformation Facility (PTF) at Cornell University. PTF is a service facility that makes transgenic and CRISPR/Cas genome-edited plants (maize, rice, wheat, and apple) for Cornell and external faculty.

Yiping Qi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture at University of Maryland, College Park. His current research focus is developing and applying plant genome editing tools for plant biology and crop improvement.

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.

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 …

Mari Kimura is a Violinist/Composer, and a leading figure in the field of interactive computer music. She received numerous awards including Guggenheim Fellowship Fromm Award residency at IRCAM in Paris and Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Growing up in South Africa, Master distiller Kevin Herson, formulated concoctions with his now antique chemistry set. His love for culture led him to travel the world and experience food and drinks of all customs and varieties. With a doctorate degree, “The Doc” has developed a unique palate for distilling, introducing delightful spirits to the craft beverage industry.

David Chalmers is University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science and co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at New York University. He is the author of The …

Shannon Vallor is the Regis and Dianne McKenna Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Santa Clara University. She is also a Visiting Researcher and AI Ethicist at Google, and a former President of the Society for Philosophy and Technology.

Dr. Denise Herzing, Founder and Research Director of the Wild Dolphin Project, has completed 34 years of her long-term study of the Atlantic spotted dolphins inhabiting Bahamian waters. She is an affiliate assistant professor in Biological Sciences at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida.

Suzana Herculano-Houzel, PhD, is a biologist and neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University, where she is associate professor in the Departments of Psychology and Biological Sciences. Her research focuses on what different brains are made of.

Dr. Omer Mei-Dan is an Orthopedic Sports and Trauma Surgeon. Originally from Israel, he has also trained and practiced medicine in Spain, New Zealand, and Australia, prior to establishing the Hip Preservation Service with the University of Colorado School of Medicine. 

Bruce Goldstone has written more than a dozen books for children, many of which encourage readers to see the playful side of math and numbers, such as Great Estimations, I See a Pattern Here, 100 Ways to Celebrate 100 Days, and That’s a Possibility! His latest book, Super Summer, completes his exploration of the sights, smells, and science of the seasons.

Grammy®-winning composer and conductor Eric Whitacre is one of the most popular musicians of our time. His music has been performed by millions across the world while his ground-breaking Virtual Choirs have united singers from over 120 different countries.

Naomi Leonard is the Edwin S. Wilsey Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and associated faculty member of the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics at Princeton University.

Dr. Jennifer Wiseman is a senior astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, where she serves as the senior project scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope.

Robert Gallager has been a professor at MIT since his ScD thesis in 1960 where he invented LDPC codes, which have evolved to be a major error-correction technique in the oncoming 5th generation wireless telecommunication standard.

Jeannette M. Wing is Avanessians Director of the Data Science Institute and professor of computer science at Columbia University. Her current interests are in the foundations of security and privacy, with a new focus on trustworthy AI.

John Preskill is the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology, and Director of the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter at Caltech. Preskill …

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 …

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 …

Will Kinney is a professor in the Department of Physics at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, where he has been on faculty since 2003. Dr. Kinney received his Bachelor of …

Michael Blumenstein is currently a Professor and the Deputy Dean (Research and Innovation) in the Faculty of Engineering and IT at University of Technology Sydney. Michael is a nationally and …

Lindsay Hays is the acting lead scientist for Mars Sample Return Mission, and is NASA’s program scientist for astrobiology, which means that she manages all of the research and coordination …

Hiranya Peiris is the 1909 Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge, the first woman to hold this prestigious chair in its 115-year history. She is a leading cosmologist …

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 …