2009 Festival Participants

David Albert is the Frederick E. Woodbridge Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. Prof. Albert is world renowned for his insights into philosophical questions about the nature of time. read more

Alan Alda, a six-time Emmy Award–winner, played Hawkeye Pierce on the classic television series, M*A*S*H, and, more recently, appeared in continuing roles on ER and The West Wing. Altogether, he has been nominated for the Emmy 32 times - as actor, writer, and director. In 1994, he was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame. read more

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. read more

Interviewing Sylvia Earle
Shreya has a knack for discovering and learning more about the world through science. She is particularly passionate about chemistry and environmental science, and has been studying the effects of global warming on the population size of Western Hudson Bay polar bears for her Advanced Science Research project. read more

Kurt Andersen is the author of two novels, the critically acclaimed bestsellers Heyday and Turn of the Century. His forthcoming book is called Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America. He is also host and co-creator of the Peabody Award-winning public radio program Studio 360, editor-at-large for Random House, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, and writes for film, television and the stage. read more

Anderson has a message that resonates with audiences as he talks of building the smallest team to ascend Everest’s largest face, without oxygen. And he speaks of team building and achieving goals as he guides expeditions deep into Tibet to the summits of the worlds tallest peaks, developing the skills of his international teams as they climb through the night to touch the clouds. read more

Kristin Baldwin is interested in using stem cell technology and genetic engineering to understand the brain and the causes of neurological disease. read more

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. She is the Senior Advisor on Water to the President of the United Nations General Assembly as well as Chair of the Board of the Washington-based Food and Water Watch. read more

John Barrow is a research professor of mathematical sciences in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge in England. He is also the author of nearly twenty books for a general audience, including The Book of Nothing, and is the director of the Millennium Mathematics Project, a mathematics education initiative. read more

Hazel A. Barton has explored caves on five continents, studying microorganisms to research cures for antibiotic-resistant diseases. She coordinates an active undergraduate research laboratory, including a National Institutes of Health funded study examining microbial responses to starvation and a National Science Foundation funded project examining the energetic interactions of bacteria in cave environments. read more

David Battisti is The Tamaki Chair of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington. His research is focused on understanding the natural variability in climate that stems from the interaction between the ocean, atmosphere, land and sea ice. He is also studying the impacts of natural climate variability and climate change on global food security. read more

For more than two decades, Joshua Bell’s charismatic artistry has brought a fresh voice to venerable masterpieces and new works heard on recordings, in concert halls and movie theatres. read more

Arthur Benjamin is a professor of mathematics at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. A professional magician, Benjamin can also multiply large numbers faster than a calculator, figure out the week day of any date in history and has memorized the decimal numbers of pi out to 100 digits. He is the author of several books, including Secrets of Mental Math. read more

Jamshed Bharucha is Provost and Senior Vice President of Tufts University. Dr. Bharucha's research has focused on the cognitive and neural basis of the perception of music, using perceptual experiments, neural net modeling, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). He has served on the National Science Foundation's Advisory Panel in Perception and Cognition, and was Editor of the interdisciplinary journal Music Perception. read more

Journalist Bill Blakemore has been with ABC News since 1970. He was ABC's Vatican correspondent throughout the papacy of John Paul II, and was ABC's Rome Bureau Chief for six years. Blakemore has covered major events worldwide including 12 wars and conflict zones. He currently spearheads ABC News‚ coverage of global warming and climate change. read more

Leonardo Bonanni is a PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab. He has a background in architecture and sculpture from Columbia University, and has been working as an industrial designer and an inventor for the past six years. Since 2007 Leonardo has been developing new interfaces for art diagnostics and restoration with Maurizio Seracini. read more

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. read more

Nick Bostrom is a co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association and Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. His research areas of interest include artificial intelligence, bio-enhancement and mind uploading. He devised a thought experiment describing one of the strange philosophical implications of multiverse theories: our universe may be a computer simulation. read more

Rob Boyd is Professor of Anthropology at UCLA. He studies the evolution of cooperation in large groups, and is the co-author of numerous books on cultural evolution, including Not By Genes Alone. read more

Derek E.G. Briggs is Frederick William Beinecke Professor of Geology and Geophysics and Director of Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History. A distinguished paleontologist whose primary research interest is the preservation and evolutionary significance of exceptionally preserved fossils, Briggs joined the faculty of Yale University in 2003. He served as Director of the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies from 2004 to 2008. read more

Danny Burstein is currently playing Luther Billis in the Broadway revival of South Pacific (also Cast recording) at Lincoln Center for which he received a 2008 Outer Critics Circle Award and Tony & Drama Desk Award nominations. Danny was nominated for a 2006 Tony Award for the role of Aldolpho in the original Broadway production of The Drowsy Chaperone (also Cast Recording). read more

Sean Carroll is a Senior Research Associate at the California Institute of Technology and the author of From Eternity to Here, about cosmology and the arrow of time. His research ranges over a number of topics in theoretical physics, focusing on cosmology, field theory, particle physics, and gravitation. read more

Majora Carter is a green economic consultant who combines social, economic development, and region wide infrastructure needs into positive feedback systems. She has been a driving force behind some of NYC's most progressive environmental legislation, as well as cultural acceptance of sustainable practices. read more

Dr. Chang joined Argonne National Laboratory in 1974 and has been responsible for leadership of advanced reactor design and fuel cycle technology development activities. read more

Interviewing Harold Varmus
Diana is currently conducting research on novel treatments for pancreatic cancer at SUNY Downstate under the guidance of Dr. Josef Michl, and is also interested in immunology, health policy and medical ethics. read more

Nicola Clayton is professor Comparative Cognition in the Department of Experimental Psychology at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Clare College. Clayton’s work in integrating biology and psychology led to a re-evaluation of the cognitive capacities of animals, particularly birds, resulting in a theory that intelligence evolved independently in at least two disparate groups, apes and corvids. read more

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 as “Best Actress in a TV Drama.” read more

Chuck Close’s work has been the subject of more than 150 solo exhibitions including many major museum retrospectives; most recently, Chuck Close Paintings: 1968/2006, at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid in 2007, which traveled to the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst in Aachen, Germany and The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. read more

Brother Guy Consolmagno, SJ, earned undergraduate and masters' degrees from MIT, and a Ph. D. in Planetary Science from the University of Arizona. He was a researcher at Harvard and MIT, served in the US Peace Corps (Kenya), and taught university physics at Lafayette College, Pennsylvania, before entering the Jesuits in 1989. read more

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. read more

Iain Couzin is Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. He studies the actions and interactions that give rise to collective behavior — from marching ants and swarming locusts to flocking birds and crowds of people — and what we might learn from successful swarming. read more

Paul Davies is Director of the BEYOND Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University and the co-Director of the ASU Cosmology Initiative. His research interests range from the origin of the universe to the origin of life. read more

In the emerging field of medical ecology, Dickson Despommier is a trailblazer, devising solutions to problems in agriculture and public health that likely will be magnified by climate change. A microbiologist, he is a Professor of Public Health at Columbia University's Mailman School, where he developed the idea of growing food in urban farm skyscrapers. read more

Professor John Donoghue was the founding chairman of the Department of Neuroscience at Brown, a position he held for thirteen years. He is currently the director of the Brown Institute for Brain Science, which unites more than one hundred Brown faculty members to support interdisciplinary research on the nervous system. Dr. Donoghue received a Jacob Javits award from the NIH and won Germany's Zulch Prize in 2007 for his research. read more

The National Geographic Society's explorer-in-residence since 1998, Sylvia Earle tirelessly works for the preservation and exploration of the world's marine ecosystems. She has led more than 50 expeditions and spent more than 6,500 hours of her life underwater. read more

Chris Eckstrom is a writer, videographer, and producer. Her stories have appeared in National Geographic Magazine, Audubon, International Wildlife, National Geographic Traveler, and other publications. Her Traveler story, “The Last Real Africa,” won a 2007 Lowell Thomas Award for Best Magazine Article on Foreign Travel from the Society of American Travel Writers. read more

George Ellis is Professor Emeritus of Applied Mathematics at the University of Capetown, and investigates the physical foundations of the flow of time.. He is the co-author with Stephen Hawking of The Large Scale Structure of Space Time. read more

Harold Evans is an editor and author of two critically acclaimed best-selling histories of America: The American Century and, most recently, They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine: Two Centuries of Innovators. In 2004 he was honored with a knighthood in the Queen's 2004 New Year's Honors list. read more

Interviewing Sylvia Earle
Jesse first developed a love for science when he picked up The Anatomy of the Human Body. He’s since worked with lasers and with the bacteria staphylococcus, and is currently researching weather tracking systems. read more

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. read more

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. read more

Evalyn Gates is the Assistant Director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago and a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics. Her research focuses on theoretical cosmology and particle astrophysics. Her book, Einstein’s Telescope: The Hunt for Dark Matter and Dark Energy in the Universe was published in 2009. read more

Daniel Gilbert is Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He is the author of the best-selling book, Stumbling on Happiness, which has been translated into 30 languages. His research focuses on prospection — the ability to imagine oneself in the future — and the mistakes people make when they attempt to predict their hedonic reactions to future events. read more

Interviewing Sylvia Earle
Aneela, a junior at Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics, is passionate about biology and is working towards a career in medicine. read more

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. read more

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. His poem, Oh Hudson, was commissioned by the Empire State Plaza Performing Arts Center to commemorate the Quadricentennial of Hudson's exploration. read more

Brian Greene is a Professor of Physics and Mathematics at Columbia University, and is recognized for a number of groundbreaking discoveries in his field of superstring theory. read more

Alan Guth is Professor of Physics at MIT, and world-renowned for his discovery of inflationary cosmology, the dominant cosmological paradigm for over two decades. His current research focuses on developing mathematical tools for quantitatively analyzing inflation's suggestion that there are an infinite number of universes. read more

Patrick Haggard is a researcher at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London. He has studied the relationships between brain activity and subjective experience. He has published extensively on voluntary action, particularly on how and when we become conscious of our intentions and our actions. read more

Dr. James Hansen is director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. An active researcher in planetary atmospheres and climate science for nearly 40 years, Hansen is best known for his Congressional testimonies on climate change that widely elevated the awareness of global warming. read more

Tyrone Hayes is Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California at Berkeley. He transformed his childhood love of tadpoles, frogs and toads into a serious study of the connections between pesticides, amphibians, and the impact of molecular changes on the public health environment. read more

John-Dylan Haynes is a leading expert investigating neural correlates of consciousness and volitional processing, and has developed groundbreaking methods for decoding or "reading out" a person's mental states from their brain activity. He is Professor for Theory and Analysis of Large Scale Brain Signals at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin. read more

Interviewing Harold Varmus
Gladi has long dreamed of working in medicine, and believes that through science she can help people and make their lives easier, and is currently interning at Dr. Franklin Constantini’s genetics lab at Columbia University Medical Center. read more

Michael Heller is a Professor of Philosophy at the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Krakow, Poland. His research interest is the intersection of physics, philosophy and theology in describing the nature of time. read more

Hugh Herr is Associate Professor at MIT and Director of the Biomechatronics group at the MIT Media Lab. His research seeks to advance technologies merging body and machine, and encompasses a diverse set of disciplines, from biomechanics and biological movement control to the design of biomedical devices for the treatment of human physical disability. read more

John Hockenberry is an award-winning journalist with twenty-five years experience in radio, broadcast television and print. He is co-host of WNYC and PRI's The Takeaway, host on The DNA Files, and a contributor to The Infinite Mind. read more

Paul Hoffman is the author of a memoir called King's Gambit and two biographies, The Man Who Loved Only Numbers and Wings of Madness. Formerly the publisher of Encyclopaedia Britannica and the long-time editor in chief of Discover magazine, Paul has performed mathematical paper-folding tricks on David Letterman and strapped Oprah into a virtual hang-glider while she accused him of ogling her butt. read more

Michael Hogan played Colonel Saul Tigh in Battlestar Galactica. With more than thirty years experience working on stage and screen, he is also a recurring character in The L Word and has guested on such series as Millennium, The Outer Limits, Cold Squad, X Files and Monk. read more

Radley Horton conducts regional climate change scenario assessments for stakeholders around the globe, projecting impacts on agriculture, water resources, ecosystems, and infrastructure. He is an Associate Research Scientist at the Center for Climate Systems Research at Columbia University. Currently, he is the lead for the Science Policy Team of the New York City Panel on Climate Change. Additional research interests include polar climate, sea level rise, and abrupt climate change. read more

Sarah Hrdy is Professor Emerita at the University of California, Davis. An award-winning author, Dr. Hrdy’s latest book is Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding. read more

Elizabeth Hutchinson is Assistant Professor of Art History at Barnard College and Columbia University. She is the author of The Indian Craze: Primitivism, Modernism, and Transculturation in American Art, 1890-1915. For the past several years, she has participated in “River Summer,” an interdisciplinary field course on the Hudson River organized by the Environmental Consortium of Hudson Valley colleges and universities. read more

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. read more

Shirley Ann Jackson is President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She served as Chairman of the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission under the Clinton Administration and presently sits on President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. read more

At Duke University, neurobiologist Erich Jarvis leads a team that studies the abilities of songbirds, parrots and hummingbirds to learn new sounds and pass along a vocal repertoire in to the next generation. read more

Mitchell Joachim is on the faculty at Columbia University and Parsons School of Design. He is a partner in Terrefuge, a New York-based organization for philanthropic architecture and ecological design. His design of a compact, stackable “city car,” developed with the MIT Smart Cities Group, won the 2007 Time Magazine “Best Invention of the Year.” read more

Dominic Johnson received a D.Phil. in evolutionary biology from Oxford University and a Ph.D. in political science from Geneva University. He draws on both disciplines in his work on the role of religion in the evolution of cooperative behavior, the role of evolutionary psychology in political decision-making, and how evolutionarily-based lessons from Nature can help us improve human security in the face of threats like climate change, natural disasters, and terrorism. read more

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. read more

Lawrence Krauss is Foundation Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and Director of the Origins Initiative at Arizona State University. He is an internationally known theoretical physicist, winner of numerous international awards for his research accomplishments, and is also an acclaimed science writer. read more

Robert Krulwich is an award-winning radio and television journalist who has been called ‘the most inventive network reporter in television’ by TV Guide. He is an ABC News correspondent, NPR science correspondent, and co-host of WNYC's science documentary program, Radio Lab. read more

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. read more

Xavier LePichon is Professor and Chair of the Department of Geophysics at the College de France in Aix en Provence. In addition to his groundbreaking work in geophysics and plate tectonics, Prof. LePichon has done extensive research on human compassionate behavior and how society is structured counter-intuitively to the laws of natural selection. read more

Leon Lederman is the Pritzker Professor of Science at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, and the Director Emeritus of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988. He is the author of several books, including The God Particle, and Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe. read more

Emily Levine has recently upgraded herself to Emily 3.0. Emily 1.0 was a stand-up comedian, appearing in comedy clubs and on Dave Letterman’s "Late Night” TV show, among others. Emily 2.0 was a television writer/producer, working on shows such as "Designing Women", "Love and War" and "Dangerous Minds". At Universal Studios and The Walt Disney Company, she created and produced pilots for ABC, NBC, CBS and HBO. read more

Daniel J. Levitin is the James McGill Professor of Psychology and Neurosciences at McGill University, where he holds associate appointments in the Department of Neurology & Neurosurgery, the Faculty of Education, School of Computer Science, and in the Schulich School of Music. He is the author of two best-selling books about music cognition: This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, and The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature. read more

Andrei Linde is Professor of Physics at Stanford University. He is one of the authors of the inflationary multiverse theory, which proposes that the universe may consist of many universes with different properties. read more

Hod Lipson works in evolutionary robotics and has created several ‘self aware’ robots. His research focuses primarily upon the application of biologically inspired approaches to engineering problems, machine self-replication and programmable self-assembly. He directs the Computational Synthesis group in the departments of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and the faculty of Computing & Information Science of Cornell University. read more

A professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Livingstone is best known for her work on visual processing. Her work 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. read more

Thomas Lovejoy holds the Biodiversity Chair at the Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment based in Washington, DC, and is a recipient of the prestigious Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement and the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award. read more

Dr. Jane Lubchenco, a marine ecologist and environmental scientist, is the ninth Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Her scientific expertise includes oceans, climate change, and interactions between the environment and human well-being. read more

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. read more

Fotini Markopouolou-Kalamara is an Adjunct Professor at the Univeristy of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, and is on the faculty of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. She works to develop models of space-time that account for the flow of time. read more

Alex Matthiessen is the President of Riverkeeper, the organization that has been leading the decades-long effort to reclaim the Hudson River. By forging partnerships with leading academic and research institutions, he has strengthened and expanded Riverkeeper’s environmental enforcement efforts and advanced scientific understanding of the Hudson River. read more

Alan McDonald is Head, Programme Coordination Group, Department of Nuclear Energy, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The Department of Nuclear Energy supports interested Member States in improving the performance of nuclear power plants and the nuclear fuel cycle, catalysing innovation, building energy planning capabilities around the world, managing nuclear knowledge, and advancing science and industry through improved operation of research reactors. read more

Mary McDonnell is an academy award nominated actress. She plays President Laura Roslin in Battlestar Galactica and more recently Dr. Virginia Dixon in Grey’s Anatomy. Her other screen credits include Grand Canyon, Sneakers, Independence Day and Donnie Darko. McDonnell’s stage credits include Broadway productions of Execution of Justice, The Heidi Chronicles, and Summer and Smoke. read more

What Bobby McFerrin does is not an act; it’s spontaneous invention. He peers over the edge of the cliff, acknowledges the void below, and dives head first, buoyed by the element of surprise. Bobby uses dense rhythms, extraordinary scales, and complicated intervals that accomplished musicians and educators have studied and dissected. read more

Colin McGinn is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami. His research interests include the philosophy of mind (particularly consciousness, intentionality and imagination), as well as metaphysics, ethics and philosophical logic. He has published numerous articles, and is the author of 20 books. read more

Christopher McKay is a research scientist with the NASA Ames Research Center. His current research focuses on the evolution of the solar system and the origin of life. He is also actively involved in planning for future Mars missions including human exploration. read more

Bill McKibben is the author of a dozen books about the environment, including The End of Nature (1989), the first book for a general audience about global warming. A scholar in residence at Middlebury College, he is also the founder of the first global scale grassroots campaign to fight climate change, 350.org McKibbon has been awarded Guggenheim and Lyndhurst Fellowships and won the Lannan Prize for nonfiction writing in 2000. read more

Warren Meck is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. An internationally recognized expert on time perception, Prof. Meck’s research explores the neural basis of the “internal clocks” humans and other animals use to time events in seconds, minutes, and hours. read more

Alfred Mele is the William H. and Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. He researches free will and its moral implications. He is the author of several books including Free Will and Luck and Effective Intentions. read more

Kenneth R. Miller is Professor of Biology and Royce Family Professor for Teaching Excellence at Brown University. A cell biologist, he serves as an advisor on life sciences to the NewsHour, a daily PBS television program on news and public affairs, and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). read more

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. read more

Mark Moffett did his doctorate under Edward O. Wilson on the marauder ant, an Asian ant species that he discovered behaves like an army ant in hunting on a massive scale, and has just finished a four year examination of army ants and other ants around the world for an upcoming book for the University of California Press. read more

Anna Nagurney is the John F. Smith Memorial Professor in the Department of Finance and Operations Management at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research focuses on congested transportation networks and their relationship within different systems ranging from the Internet to global supply chains to electric power generation and distribution networks. read more

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. In 1990 he moved to the Psychology Department at Harvard and is now the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology. read more

Michael Novacek has served since 1982 as a curator at the American Museum of Natural History where he is currently Senior Vice President and Provost of Science and Curator of Paleontology. Awarded a doctoral degree (with honors for outstanding graduate research) at the University of California, Berkeley, his studies concern patterns of evolution and relationships among extinct and extant organisms. His interests have ranged from the fossil record to new data on DNA sequences. read more

Paul Nurse is a Nobel Laureate and the President of Rockefeller University, where he continues to do research in cell biology. He is the former Chief Executive of Cancer Research, UK. In 1999 he was knighted in Great Britain for his contributions to cancer research. read more

Femi Oke is the news anchor and senior editor for the national live morning news radio show "The Takeaway." Femi Oke joined CNN International in 1999, where she reported on science and feature stories, and most recently worked in CNN’s Johannesburg, South Africa bureau. She also hosted the weekly award-winning African affairs program "Inside Africa," a feat of ingenuity and creativity carried out with almost no resources. read more

Lawrence Parsons is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom. His early research on action, spatial reasoning and object recognition was followed by his current work in reasoning, language, emotion and the improvisation of music and dancing. read more

Sir Roger Penrose has made seminal contributions to our understanding of space and time. In describing the initial conditions of the universe, he provided the foundation for studying the origins of the arrow of time. read more

Irene Pepperberg is Adjunct Associate Professor at Brandeis University and Research Associate and Lecturer at Harvard. She has studied the cognitive and communicative ability of Grey parrots for over two decades. Her book, Alex and Me, a description of life with her famous subject, became a New York Times bestseller. read more

Nobel Prize-winning physicist William Phillips is a professor at the University of Maryland and leads the Laser Cooling and Trapping Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. His research on manipulating atoms with laser light has led to more accurate atomic clocks and a more fundamental understanding of light-matter interactions. read more

A reporter for the New York Times, Andrew C. Revkin is one of America's most honored science writers. He has spent a quarter century providing ground-breaking coverage of subjects ranging from the Asian tsunami to the assault on the Amazon, from the politics of climate to science at the North Pole. He has been an environment reporter for The New York Times since 1995. read more

Bill Ritter was named co-anchor of Eyewitness News at 6 p.m. in February of 2001. Ritter, who has been the co-anchor of the 11 p.m. news since September 1999, is also a correspondent for the ABC News program "20/20." He started at Eyewitness News in the summer of 1998 as a weekend anchor. read more

Emmy award winning journalist Charlie Rose has been praised as "one of America's premiere interviewers." He is the host of Charlie Rose, the nightly PBS program that engages America's preeminent thinkers, writers, politicians, athletes, entertainers, business leaders, scientists and other newsmakers. read more

Jonathan Rosen has written about the ivory-billed woodpecker, a bird long thought to be extinct. His most recent books are The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature and The Talmud and the Internet. His writings have also appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker magazine, the American Scholar and numerous anthologies. read more

David Rothenberg is a Professor of Philosophy and Music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and is the author of Why Birds Sing and Thousand Mile Song, about making music with whales. He writes on the deep connections between humans and the natural world. read more

Neurologist Oliver Sacks has spent a lifetime exploring a vast array of human experience – from Tourette's syndrome and autism to phantom limb syndrome and schizophrenia. His many best-selling books include Uncle Tungsten, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and Awakenings, which became an acclaimed film. Sacks is a professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center and a Columbia University Artist. His writings appear regularly in The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. read more

Faith Salie hosted NPR’s Fair Game from PRI with Faith Salie and hosts Sundance Channel’s coverage of the Sundance Film Festival. She is a monthly contributor to O, the Oprah Magazine and has appeared as a commentator on The Oprah Winfrey Show as well as CNN and Fox News. As an actor and comedian, she has appeared in numerous sitcoms and dramas—from Bravo’s Significant Others to Sex and the City. She earned her sci-fi cred in a recurring role on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. read more

By examining historical maps and archeological records in combination with geographic computer modeling and scientific sleuthing, Eric Sanderson has reimagined the old growth forests, wetlands and meadows that Henry Hudson saw when he first arrived on the shores of Manhattan in 1609. A landscape ecologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, Sanderson works at the boundary of ecology and geography, but informed by a background in literature and an interest in history. read more

John Schaefer is the host of WNYC’s innovative music/talk show Soundcheck, which features live performances and interviews with a variety of guests. Schaefer has also hosted and produced WNYC’s radio series New Sounds since 1982 and the New Sounds Live concert series since 1986. read more

Irena Schulz is the founder and president of Bird Lovers Only Rescue Service, Inc., but is perhaps best known for her cockatoo, Snowball, the famous dancing bird on You Tube.  Irena worked as a molecular biologist studying Parkinson's Disease and Alzheimer's Disease, but has dedicated her entire life to owning, studying, and caring for parrots.  She is currently collaborating on cognitive music studies with Snowball as the subject of study. read more

Ben Schwegler is Walt Disney Imagineering R&D’s chief scientist, and is particularly interested in the development of sustainable engineering techniques. He was instrumental in the creation of the most energy efficient theme park ever built as well as a new generation of environmentally friendly fireworks. read more

Maurizio Seracini is a pioneer in the use of multispectral imaging to examine works of art. Using diagnostic and analytical technologies, he has studied over 2,500 works of art and historic buildings, including major works by Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Raphael, Caravaggio. In 2008, Italy’s Ministry of Cultural Heritage named Seracini to lead the scientific search for a long lost mural by Leonardo. read more

Anna Deavere Smith has been hailed by Newsweek as “the most exciting individual in American theater.” She began interviewing people across the country 20 years ago. Without props, sets, or costumes, she translates those encounters into profound performances, each drawing verbatim from the original recorded interview. The New York Times commented that “Anna Deavere Smith is the ultimate impressionist — she does people’s souls.”   read more

As director of the CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities, William Solecki's research focuses on urban environmental change, urban land use and suburbanization. A professor in the Geography Department at Hunter college, he is presently co-chair of Mayor Bloomberg's New York City Panel on Climate Change. Solecki has served on the U.S. National Research Council's Special Committee on Problems in the Environment. read more

Interested in the links between art, science, and technology through the ages, New York artist Devorah Sperber's work addresses the way the brain processes visual information versus the way we think we see. "As a visual artist," she says, "I cannot think of a topic more stimulating and yet so basic than the act of seeing-how the human brain makes sense of the visual world." read more

Julienne Stroeve studies the decline of the Arctic Sea ice cover with the goal of understanding how a seasonally ice-free Arctic will impact climate in the Northern Hemisphere. She is a research scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado and specializes in reading data gathered by satellite and other remote measuring tools. read more

Ofer Tchernichovski is an Associate Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Animal Behavior at City University of New York’s City College. His work involves mapping the mechanisms of song learning by studying the behavior and dynamics of the sound production of song birds.
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The Inspirational Voices of Abyssinian Baptist Church is the resident choir of one of the most prominent African-American institutions in America. Under the leadership of its pastor, the Rev. Dr. Calvin O. Butts, III, the Abyssinian Baptist Church has followed the African-American church tradition of actively building communities, and remains a champion of spiritual empowerment, social justice and reform. read more

From 2001-2008 Stephen Tindale was executive director of Greenpeace UK and and chair of the environmental organization's European unit. He has worked to mitigate climate change for the last two decades through associations with business, NGOs, the British Labour Party and in academia. In February of this year he founded Climate Answers, an organization and website to promote solutions to climate change "that can make us healthier, happier and richer." read more

Frank Tong is a cognitive neuroscientist and an associate professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University. He uses functional brain imaging and neural decoding methods to predict what people are seeing or thinking from their patterns of brain activity. His lab has revealed how the visual areas of the brain reflect the contents of what a person consciously perceives, pays attention to, or actively holds in memory. Dr. read more

Christopher Tyler spent his research career exploring the fascinating processes of how the eyes and brain work together to produce meaningful vision. His most recent work analyzes the visual perception of faces and the role of symmetry in face recognition. read more

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. read more

Interviewing Harold Varmus
Nibh does extensive community service and recently completed an internship at the medical clinic of New York Methodist Hospital. He loves the sense of discovery that comes with doing experiments, and is certain he will pursue a career in science. read more

Garrick Utley has worked for over 40 years as a broadcast journalist on NBC, ABC, CNN, as well as Public Radio and Public Television. With a primary focus on international affairs, Utley has reported from more than seventy-five countries. As a network anchor, he was a familiar face on the evening news and Sunday morning programs. Currently, he is the President of the Neil D. Levin Graduate Institute of International Relations and Commerce of The State University of New York. read more

Harold Varmus, president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, received the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Michael Bishop, his former colleague at the University of California, San Francisco, for their discovery of cellular genes that are progenitors of retroviral oncogenes. read more

John Waldman is professor of biology at Queens College, City University of New York. Prior to this appointment in 2004, he was employed for 20 years by the Hudson River Foundation for Science and Environmental Research. His research interests focus on the ecology and evolution of fishes, particularly diadromous forms, urban aquatic environments, and historical ecology. read more

Kevin Warwick is Professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading in England. Warwick works in robotics and artificial intelligence and recently designed an intelligent deep brain stimulator to treat Parkinson's Disease. Best known for his pioneering research with implants, including experimentation on himself which led to him being called the 'World's First Cyborg.' read more

Daniel M. Wegner is Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He studies how human minds accomplish self-control and guide us through social life. He conducted pioneering research on how people identify their actions and what gives us the sense that we are consciously causing them. read more

Professor Frank Wilczek is considered one of the world's eminent theoretical physicists. In 2004, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction – key to several major problems in particle physics and beyond. read more

E.O. Wilson is a life-long explorer of the natural world whose pioneering studies of ants have led to revolutionary insights across a wide range of fields, from evolution to animal and human behavior. A founding father of the environmental movement, Wilson teaches us to understand, protect, and celebrate the earth and has greatly influenced the way scientists and nonscientists view the interwoven complexity and diversity of our planet. read more

Damian Woetzel (director and producer) is the artistic director of the summer Vail International Dance Festival, the artist-in-residence of the Aspen Institute, and is a frequent speaker on arts policy. Mr. Woetzel was a principal dancer at New York City Ballet from 1989 until his retirement from the stage in June of 2008, and he has choreographed a number of ballets for NYCB among other companies. read more

Paul Root Wolpe, Ph.D. is the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Bioethics, Raymond Schinazi Distinguished Research Professor of Jewish Bioethics, Professor of Medicine, Pediatrics, and Sociology, and the Director of the Center for Ethics at Emory University. Dr. read more

Josh Zepps is the creative producer and on-air host of the Science Channel's Brink, an irreverent weekly look at the latest breakthroughs, inventions, innovations and discoveries that could be on the brink of changing our lives. read more

Award-winning science writer Carl Zimmer explores the frontiers of biology in his writing. His work appears regularly in the New York Times and many magazines. He is the author, most recently, of Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life. In 2007 he was awarded the National Academies' Science Communication Award. read more