David Gallo was one of the first oceanographers to use a combination of submarines and robots to map the undersea world. The Director of Special Projects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, he has taken part in an exploration of RMS Titanic and the German battleship Bismarck using the Russian MIR submarines, as well as a recent expedition to find the lost WWII submarine USS Grunion.

Vanessa Woods is an award-winning journalist and author who studies the cognitive development of chimpanzees and bonobos at sanctuaries in the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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.

Neuroscientist Nancy C. Andreasen is well known for her pioneering work using MRI imaging to explore mental illness and the neural bases for artistic creativity and innovation. She is the author of several books including The Creating Brain: The Neuroscience of Genius.

John Holdren is the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and President Barack Obama’s senior science and technology advisor.

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.

Brynn O’Malley has appeared on Broadway in Wicked, Sunday in the Park with George, Hairspray, and Beauty and the Beast. Other stage work includes Avenue Q, Boeing-Boeing, Oklahoma!, Meet Me In St. Louis, She Loves Me, Arsenic and Old Lace, Into the Woods, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Jekyll & Hyde. TV credits include The Big C, Royal Pains, and A Gifted Man.

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.

Ronald Hoy is the David and Dorothy Merksamer Professor in biology at Cornell University. Besides teaching at Cornell, he has taught neuroscience and behavior at Cold Spring Harbor Labs and at the marine biological laboratory in Woods Hole, where he was a director of the neural systems and behavior course and, later, director of the Grass Foundation summer fellows program.

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.

Bernadette Woods Placky is often called upon to discuss and explain extreme weather events and has appeared on a number of national and local television broadcasts. Before coming to Climate Central, she spent 11 years as a TV weather forecaster. Her most recent station was WJZ in Baltimore, where she earned an Emmy.

Frank Grasso directs the Biomimetic and Cognitive Robotics lab which researches the control, organization, and coordination of behavior using robots and living animals.