Beth Shapiro is an evolutionary biologist who specializes in the genetics of ice age animals and plants. A pioneer in the young field called “ancient DNA,” Beth travels extensively in the Arctic regions of Alaska, Siberia and Canada collecting bones and other remains of long-dead creatures.

David Ferrucci is the lead researcher and principal investigator for the Watson/Jeopardy! project. He has been a Research Staff Member at IBM’s T.J. Watson’s Research Center since 1995 where he heads up the Semantic Analysis and Integration department.

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.

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.

Bruce Cuthbert, Ph.D., was named director of the Division of Adult Translational Research and Treatment Development (DATR) at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in 2010. A major component of this position involves coordinating the new Research Domain Criteria project to develop neuroscience-based criteria for studying mental disorders.

Meg Schwamb is an astronomer and planetary scientist. She is currently a National Science Foundation (NSF) astronomy and astrophysics postdoctoral fellow at Yale University’s Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics (YCAA).

Erik Verlinde is a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Amsterdam. He is known for the Verlinde formula, which has a wide range of applications in physics and mathematics. In 2010, he attracted international attention with a paper in which he argued that gravity is emergent, and results from changes in the entropy associated with microscopic information.

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.

Edward Witten is Charles Simonyi Professor in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study. His work has helped to bridge the gap between mathematics and physics, …

Jan Tauber has been involved in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) since 1993 when the European Space Agency received two proposals for space experiments to map the CMB. These experiments eventually became the Planck satellite, Europe’s flagship experiment in the field.

Michael Weisend is a neuroscientist whose research uses structural and functional neuroimaging to investigate normal memory, epilepsy, mental illness, and cognitive dysfunction.

Frans Pretorius is a Professor of Physics at Princeton University. His primary field of research is general relativity, specializing in numerical solution of the Einstein equations.

Jessica Giordano is a genetic counselor with 11 years of prenatal genetic counseling experience. She is currently working at Columbia’s Division of MFM and Institute of Genomic Medicine.

Anya Revah-Politi, MS, CGC, is a genetic counselor at the Columbia University Medical Center Institute for Genomic Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center.

Rick Doblin is the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), which has become one of the leading organizations behind modern psychedelic research. A pioneering …

Sébastien Bubeck is a Partner Research Manager at Microsoft Research (MSR). He won multiple awards for his machine learning results around robustness and optimization. Most recently, he has been interested …

Daniel Jafferis is a Professor of Physics at Harvard whose research involves string theory, supersymmetric quantum field theory, and quantum gravity. Jafferis was one of the discoverers of the low …