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.

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.

Buzz Hays is one of the pioneers in the field of 3D production, who in recent years was responsible for overseeing the adaptation of standard-release feature films into three-dimensional stereoscopic versions for the IMAX 3D and Real D platforms.

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

Stephen Morse is a renowned expert in criminal and mental health law, whose work emphasizes individual responsibility in criminal and civil law.

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

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.

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.

Recognized for his contributions to sleep research, Carlos H. Schenck has helped identify a wide range of extreme sleep behaviors known as parasomnias and therapies to treat them, as well as their potential forensic consequences.

Consuelo De Moraes is an internationally known biologist and ecologist who studies the complex role of chemistry in interactions among plants and other organisms.

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 …

Michael Rose began his work on the evolution of aging at the University of Sussex in 1976, where he created fruit fly stocks with postponed aging. His 1991 book Evolutionary Biology of Aging offered a view of aging that was a complete departure from the views that had dominated the aging field since 1960.

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.

Emily Bell is the director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and a professor of professional practice at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She was director of digital content for Britain’s Guardian News and Media from 2006 to 2010. Previous to that post, Bell was editor-in-chief of Guardian Unlimited from 2001 to 2006.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Glenn Saxe is the Arnold Simon Professor and Chair, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and director of the NYU Child Study Center. Saxe is a physician scientist with a focus on the psychiatric consequences of traumatic events on children.

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.

Tristan Perich’s work is inspired by the aesthetic simplicity of math, physics and code. WIRE magazine describes his compositions as “an austere meeting of electronic and organic.”

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

John Donvan was just named a 2017 Pulitzer Prize finalist for his bestselling book, In a Different Key: The Story of Autism, published in 2016 by Crown Books. He is also host of the Intelligence Squared U.S. Debates, which are heard on public radio and by podcast.

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

Lesley Stahl is one of America’s most honored and experienced broadcast journalists, her five-decade career marked by political scoops, surprising features and award-winning foreign reporting. She was CBS’ first female White House correspondent and moderator of Face The Nation.

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

Rachel Sussman is a Brooklyn-based artist and photographer. Since 2004, she has traveled the world to find continuously living organisms 2,000 years old and older for her transdisiplanary project The Oldest Living Things in the World. Sussman has exhibited across the U.S. and Europe, received numerous awards, and spoken at TED.

Musa Syeed is a writer and director. His first feature, Valley of Saints won the World Cinema: Dramatic Audience Award and the Alfred P. Sloan Film Prize at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. The film will have a theatrical release later this summer. He previously co-produced the award-winning documentaries, Bronx Princess and A Son’s Sacrifice.

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.

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

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.

Clay Shirky is a leading voice on the social and economic impact of Internet technologies. Considered one of the finest thinkers on the Internet revolution, Shirky provides an insightful and optimistic view of networks, social software, and technology’s effects on society.

Michael Moss is the author of the No. 1 New York Times bestseller Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us (Random House, 2013). He has been an investigative reporter with The New York Times since 2000.

Aniruddh D. Patel is associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Tufts University. After attending the University of Virginia as a Jefferson Scholar, he received a Ph.D. in organismic and evolutionary biology from Harvard University in 1996.

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.

Siu-Lan Tan is Professor of Psychology at Kalamazoo College. She served as primary editor of The Psychology of Music in Multimedia published by Oxford University Press 2013.

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

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

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

Joseph J. Fins is The E. William Davis, Jr. M.D. Professor of Medical Ethics and Chief of the Division of Medical Ethics at Weill Cornell Medical College where he is a tenured Professor of Medicine, Professor of Medical Ethics in Neurology and Professor of Health Care Policy and Research.

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.

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.

Eleanor G. Rieffel explores algorithm design and fundamental questions in quantum computation as a leader of NASA’s QuAIL team. Her book, Quantum Computing: A Gentle Introduction, with co-author Wolfgang Polak, was published by MIT Press and has received stellar reviews.

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.

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

Shara Bailey is an associate professor in the Center for the Study of Human Origins, in the Department of Anthropology at New York University. Bailey’s research focuses on answering questions about human evolution from a dental perspective.

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.

Justin M. Rao is a researcher at Microsoft Research in New York City. He did his undergraduate work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his Ph.D. in economics at the University of California in San Diego.

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.

Stephen Tsang is the László Bitó Associate Professor in Ophthalmology, Pathology & Cell Biology at Columbia University and an attending ophthalmologist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He has been culturing embryonic stem (ES) cells since 1992.

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.

S. Matthew Liao is Arthur Zitrin Professor of Bioethics, Director of the Center for Bioethics, and Affiliated Professor in the Department of Philosophy at New York University. He is the author of The Right to Be Loved, Moral Brains: The Neuroscience of Morality, and over 60 articles in philosophy and bioethics.

Louise Barrett was trained in both ecology and anthropology and is currently Professor of Psychology and Canada Research Chair in Cognition, Evolution & Behaviour at the University of Lethbridge. She ran a long-term project on baboons in South Africa for twelve years.

Ellen Burstyn’s illustrious sixty-year acting career encompasses film, stage, and television. In 1975 she became only the third woman in history to win both the Tony Award and the Academy Award in the same year for her work in Same Time, Next Year on Broadway and in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore for which she also received a Golden Globe nomination and a British Academy Award for Best Actress.

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.

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.

Brett Frischmann is The Charles Widger Endowed University Professor in Law, Business, and Economics at Villanova University. He is also an affiliated scholar of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, and a trustee for the Nexa Center for Internet & Society, Politecnico di Torino.

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.

Psyche Loui is an Assistant Professor in Psychology and in Neuroscience and Behavior at Wesleyan University. She graduated from University of California, Berkeley with her PhD in Psychology, and attended Duke University as an undergraduate with degrees in Psychology and Music.

Drew Dollaz is a pioneer of flexing, a Brooklyn-based genre of street dance also referred to as bone breaking, which is characterized by rhythmic contortionist movements. A self-taught dancer, Dollaz is known for blending flexing with other styles including ballet to create a transcendent hybrid of movement artistry.

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.

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.

Monica Gagliano is a research associate professor in evolutionary ecology. She is based at the University of Sydney as a Research Affiliate at the Sydney Environment Institute and a Senior Research Fellow at the School of Life and Environmental Sciences.

Daniel Dor, a linguist, media researcher and political activist, received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from Stanford University (1996). He is a professor at Tel Aviv University. Dor is the author …

Elise Crull received a B.Sc. with Honors in Physics and Astronomy at Calvin University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in History & Philosophy of Science from the University of Notre …

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 …