Francis Collins is known for his landmark discoveries of disease genes and leadership of the Human Genome Project, an international project that culminated in 2003 with the completion of a finished sequence of the human DNA instruction book.

Robbert Dijkgraaf is director and Leon Levy Professor of the Institute for Advanced Study, one of the world’s leading centers for curiosity-driven research in the sciences and humanities.

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.

Jürgen Schmidhuber has published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers. His lab’s research on artificial neural nets won several handwriting recognition contests and number one rankings in several computer vision competitions and benchmarks.

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.

Bobak Ferdowsi, also known as “Mohawk Guy,” is a member of the Engineering Operations Team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He acted as Flight Director during the landing of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity on Gale Crater in 2012.

Dany Spencer Adams explores how ions moving among cells act as signals during regeneration, development, and cancer. She has uncovered evidence that bioelectric signals can trigger and regulate diverse complex processes that include gene expression changes.

Dr. William “Buddy” Clark grew up on a farm in rural Virginia where he enjoyed building things and learning how machinery worked. He also developed a passion for baseball.

Douglas McCuistion has 40 years’ experience in high technology and aerospace sectors. His NASA career culminated in the landing of the Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity rover mission after leading the “Golden Decade” of Mars exploration as NASA’s director of the Mars Program.

Dr. Sarah Pearson is a Danish astrophysicist who received her PhD from Columbia University in New York City, where she specialized in colliding galaxies and dark matter.