Lawrence Krauss is an internationally known theoretical physicist and best-selling author. His research focuses on the intersection of cosmology and elementary particle physics. Krauss’s work addresses questions about the origin of matter in the universe.

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.

Laura Danly is a spectroscopist specializing in ultraviolet observations from space satellites. Her research focuses on the large-scale distribution and dynamics of the interstellar medium and its relationship to galaxy evolution.

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.

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.

Jennifer Klay is an expert in high-energy nuclear collisions, who helped discover the phenomenon of jet quenching in nuclear collisions with the STAR experiment at Brookhaven National Lab’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider.

Faith Salie is a three-time Emmy-winning contributor to CBS Sunday Morning and a regular on NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! She’s hosted five seasons of PBS’s Science Goes to the Movies and is a storyteller for The Moth. She hosts the new podcast “One Plus One,” from Wondery.

Tiler Peck has danced leading roles in ballets by George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, in addition to a wide variety of choreographers, including Peter Martins, Susan Stroman and Christopher Wheeldon. She has also had numerous works created for her, most recently by Wheeldon and Wayne McGregor for the 2010 New York City Ballet Spring season.

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.

George Ellis is Professor Emeritus of Applied Mathematics at the University of Capetown and investigates cosmology, the nature of time, and the emergence of complexity. He is the co-author with Stephen Hawking of The Large Scale Structure of Space Time.

Over the course of his career, Harrison Ford has become one of the most popularly acclaimed actors of our time. His body of work includes 41 feature films, eleven of which have exceeded $100 million each at the box office.

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.”

For over 30 years, National Dance Institute (NDI), a not-for-profit organization founded by New York City Ballet star Jacques d’Amboise, has transformed the lives of close to 2 million public school children through award-winning arts and learning programs.

After graduation from Oxford in 1964, Michael York joined the National Theatre company, making his film debut in The Taming of the Shrew. His more than 60 other screen credits include Romeo and Juliet, Cabaret, Jesus of Nazareth, The Three Musketeers, Logan’s Run, Murder on the Orient Express, Conduct Unbecoming, The Omega Code and all three Austin Powers movies.

Glennys Farrar is a collegiate professor of physics at New York University. She has made seminal contributions to theoretical particle physics, including demonstrating that quarks are not just mathematical constructs but are actually physically present in matter and pioneering the search for supersymmetry.

Known as the “Math Guy” on National Public Radio and author of 30 books and over 80 published research articles, Keith Devlin is a recognized mathematician. In 2003, he was lauded by the California State Assembly for his “innovative work and longtime service in the field of mathematics and its relation to logic and linguistics.”

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.

W. Dean Pesnell is the project scientist of the Solar Dynamics Observatory. He has published 80 papers in several research areas, including variable stars, the Sun-Earth connection, quantum mechanics, and meteors in planetary atmospheres.

Charles Sawyers shared the 2009 Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for his role in the development of molecularly-targeted treatments for chronic myeloid leukemia, converting a fatal cancer into a manageable chronic condition.

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.

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.

Robin Lloyd is responsible for editing and assigning stories for ScientificAmerican.com. She also manages Scientific American’s Twitter feed. Previously, she was a senior editor at LiveScience.com and SPACE.com. She has additional experience in print journalism (Pasadena Star–News); wire journalism (City News Service of Los Angeles); and network online journalism (CNN.com).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Carmelo ‘Nino’ Amarena is an electrical engineer with expertise in the field of digital wireless communications. He is also an inventor, designing a personal rocketpack called the ‘Thunderpack,’ which uses a peroxide-based reciprocating engine.

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.

A graduate of the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater B.F.A. actor training program, Michael Roush moved to New York City to act with the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. Following that season, he worked to bring We Happy Animals, a new play by Andrew Kramer, to the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival where he originated the role of Ben.

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.

Lawrence Rosenblum is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside and author of See What I’m Saying: The Extraordinary Powers of Our Five Senses. He is an award winning teacher of perceptual, cognitive, and introductory psychology.

Wylie Dufresne opened WD-50 in 2003, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. His partners in the venture are Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten and restaurateur Phil Suarez.

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.

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.

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.

Christina Tosi is the chef, owner and founder of Momofuku Milk Bar and the 2012 recipient of the James Beard Rising Star Chef Award.

Hannah Morris is an archaeologist studying how humans and plants interacted in the past. She is founder of the paleoethnobotanical consulting company, Chena Consulting Services, and is working on a long-term project with the American Museum of Natural History on St. Catherine’s Island, Georgia.

Farren Isaacs is assistant professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and Systems Biology at Yale University. He pioneered the development of synthetic RNA molecules capable of probing and programming cellular function.

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.

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

Dr. Aprille J. Ericsson is the first female to receive a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Howard University, and the first African-American civil servant female to receive a Ph.D. in Engineering at NASA GSFC. She received her B.S. in Aeronautical/Astronautical Engineering from MIT.

James Ransome and Lesa Cline-Ransome collaborated on their first book together with a biography of Satchel Paige, an ALA Notable Book and a Bank Street College “Best Children’s Book of the Year.”

Shep Doeleman is an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the Founding Director of the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration. He led the international team that three years ago …

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.

Hannah Elless made her Broadway debut singing “Bless the Lord” in the revival of Stephen Schwartz’s Godspell. She was most recently seen Off-Broadway at Classic Stage Company in Tennessee William’s Summer and Smoke.

Duncan Brown is the Charles Brightman Professor of Physics at Syracuse University. Brown has worked in gravitational-wave astronomy for 20 years and played a lead role in LIGO’s discovery of binary black hole and binary neutron star collisions. Brown’s research involves using gravitational-wave observations to understand the nature of the universe.

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.

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.