Participants
Gregory Chaitin is a mathematician and computer scientist who began making lasting contributions to his field while still a student at the Bronx High School of Science. His approach to mathematics views the field as much as an art form as science and inextricably linked with philosophical questions.
Read MoreFabien Cousteau is an ocean explorer, the third generation to carry on the tradition of adventure pioneered by his grandfather Jacques Cousteau. His Natural Entertainment company works to raise environmental awareness through television and other media.
Read MoreBevil Conway, originally from Zimbabwe, is an artist and neuroscientist who researches the neural basis for visual behavior, with a focus on color vision, and investigates the relationship between visual processing and visual art.
Read MoreNeil 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. Tyson is best known as an ardent popularizer of astronomy and astrophysics.
Read MoreDominic Johnson received a D.Phil. in evolutionary biology from Oxford University and a Ph.D. in political science from Geneva University.
Read MoreDickson 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 MoreKlaus Zuberbühler’s award-winning work on the communication and cognition of non-human primates in their natural habitats in Africa, South America and Asia has had a considerable impact on our understanding of primate cognition and, more generally, what it means to be human.
Read MoreE.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.
Read MoreDavid 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 MorePlaywright, 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.
Read MoreDerek 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.
Read MoreBestselling Author
Sean Carroll is the Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Johns Hopkins University, and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Prior to that he was a research …
Read MoreEmmy, 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.”
Read MoreAt 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 MoreBy 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.
Read MoreJohn 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.
Read MoreEben Bayer uses biology to solve important environmental challenges by growing safe and healthy new materials as well as envisioning creative ways to use natural technology at industrial scales and in consumer applications.
Read MoreXavier 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 MoreMichael 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.
Read MoreEmergency physician and avid outdoorsman, Jay Lemery is an authority on the effects of wilderness exposure on the human body. He is known for research on treatments for conditions resulting from high altitude climbing, natural and environmental disasters, and the exposure to other extreme environments.
Read MoreA co-founder of Ecovative Design, Gavin McIntyre is an avid backpacker with an intense interest in preserving the natural world. Under McIntyre’s direction, Ecovative garnered a grant from the New York State Energy and Development Authority to fund the testing of its flagship product, Greensulate™ organic insulation.
Read MoreIan Tattersall is a prominent anthropologist whose work focuses on the evolution of humans and other primates. He is a curator emeritus for the division of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and an adjunct professor at Columbia University and the City University of New York.
Read MoreBernie Krause is a bioacoustician — an expert on the sounds of nature — who has traveled the world recording and archiving the sounds of endangered creatures and environments. He is President and CEO of Wild Sanctuary, Inc., one of the world’s largest archives of natural sounds.
Read MoreA leading authority on landscape management and plant conservation, Edward Toth is Director of the Greenbelt Native Plant Center, which collects and raises specimens of New York’s indigenous flora and maintains a seed bank for the preservation of local species.
Read MoreBeth 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.
Read MoreDavid 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.
Read MoreKatherine Freese is the Director of the Weinberg Institute for Theoretical Physics and the Jeff & Gail Kodosky Professor of Physics at the University of Texas at Austin. She is …
Read MoreJim Pfaus has sex on the brain. An internationally known expert in the neurobiology of sexual behavior, Pfaus has authored over 150 publications and chapters that examine how the brain’s neurochemical and neuroanatomical systems are organized for sexual arousal, desire, pleasure, and inhibition.
Read MoreCharles Limb is an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, where he specializes in neurotology and skull base surgery.
Read MoreMatt Ridley is an English science communicator. Educated at Oxford University, where he received a doctorate in zoology, he embarked upon a career as a science writer, serving as science editor for The Economist from 1984 to 1987.
Read MoreAs the director of astrovisualization at the American Museum of Natural History, Carter Emmart directs the museum’s groundbreaking space shows and heads up development of an interactive 3D atlas called The Digital Universe.
Read MoreJoy Hirsch, a neuroscientist at Yale, studies interpersonal interactions between people in natural environments using novel brain imaging technology (near infrared spectroscopy) that acquires brain signals using head mounted detectors (instead of a scanner) and enables simultaneous functional imaging of two or more communicating partners.
Read MoreBora Zivkovic is the blog editor at Scientific American magazine. Born in Belgrade, Serbia (then Yugoslavia) he majored in biochemistry and molecular biology in high school, trained horses, and studied veterinary medicine at University of Belgrade. Upon arrival in the United States, Zivkovic did research on circadian rhythms in Japanese quail at North Carolina State University.
Read MoreCharles 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.
Read MoreCristine Russell is an award-winning journalist who has written about science, health, and the environment for more than three decades. She is a senior fellow in the Environment and Natural Resources Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
Read MoreBreakthrough Prize
Cumrun Vafa is the Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard University. He received his BS in Math and Physics from MIT in 1981 and his PhD in …
Read MoreChris Stringer is a distinguished paleoanthropologist and a founder of the “Out of Africa” theory, the most widely accepted model for how modern humans evolved and spread across the globe.
Read MoreFran Norris studies disaster and human resilience as a community-social psychologist and a research professor in Dartmouth Medical School’s Department of Psychiatry.
Read MoreKeith Oatley has spent the last twenty years researching the psychology of reading and writing fiction, as both a scientist and the author of three novels.
Read MoreLynette Wallworth is an Australian artist whose immersive video installations reflect on the connections between people and the natural world.
Read MoreGeorge Bonanno is a pioneering researcher in the science of bereavement and loss. He is a professor of clinical psychology at the Teacher’s College of Columbia University, and under his direction, the Loss, Trauma and Emotion Lab is investigating how human beings cope with extreme adversity.
Read MoreAlison Brooks is Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at the George Washington University and a founding member of the Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology.
Read MoreNancy Knowlton researches the ecology, evolution, and conservation of coral reef organisms as the Sant Chair in Marine Science at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
Read MoreTomás Saraceno’s work defies traditional notions of space, time, gravity, consciousness and perception through architectural, social and communitarian means that are utopian and participatory. His installations blend the boundary between sky and the earth, creating the sensation of flight.
Read MoreApoorv Agarwal is a fourth year doctoral student in the Computer Science department at Columbia University, New York City. His areas of interest and specialization are Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning.
Read MoreThe Babycastles story has been one of opening new cultural territory for independent video games by inserting them aggressively into new spaces. This includes DIY punk-houses, Brooklyn music culture, art galleries, wearable games dance parties, and the Museum of Modern Art.
Read MoreKelle Cruz is an Assistant Professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department at Hunter College and a Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), Department of Astrophysics.
Read MoreDr. David Gruber is a marine biologist who uses extended-range SCUBA and Remote Operated Vehicle technologies to explore the deeper portion of the world’s coral reefs. His research focuses on photosynthesis and biofluorescence and his research team has discovered over 30 novel fluorescent proteins from coral reefs, including one that is responsive to phosphorylation.
Read MoreLaura Allen is the editorial producer of the American Museum of Natural History’s Science Bulletins program, which produces video and visualization for exhibition at the museum and other public spaces that highlight cutting-edge scientific research and issues.
Read MoreJohn Cooley grew up fascinated by the natural world in general and cicadas in particular. He spent a number of years studying flies in high alpine meadows of Colorado and exploring the mountains of the Front Range.
Read MoreKristin Laidre is a marine mammal ecologist at the University of Washington, Seattle working at the Polar Science Center and the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. She is a member of the IUCN Species Survival Commission Cetacean Specialist Group and Polar Bear Specialist Group.
Read MoreMarlene Zuk is a biologist and writer who is interested in sex, evolution, and behavior. She is especially interested in the ways that parasites and disease influence those issues. Her current research focuses on rapid evolution and mating behavior in field crickets that live in Hawaii.
Read MoreMohan K. Wali is Professor Emeritus in the school of environment and natural resources (SENR) at Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus. At OSU since 1990, he served as director both of SENR, and of the OSU’s multi-college environmental science graduate program. He was also a professor in the John Glenn school of public affairs.
Read MorePeter 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.
Read MoreRichard Matthew is a professor in the schools of social ecology and social science at the University of California at Irvine, and founding director of the Center for Unconventional Security Affairs.
Read MoreCheryl Perry is a classically trained chef who has more than 20 years experience working in New York City as a culinary instructor, restaurant owner, and consultant. Perryl was the owner of the contemporary American restaurant Dish for six years, and has been an instructor at the Natural Gourmet Institute of Health and Culinary Arts since 1992.
Read MoreBesides being the voice double for Matthew McConaughey, Brian Ralph has an amazing way with cheese. Ralph made his way into the cheese world after studying neurobiology at the University of Colorado at Boulder, so clearly, the man knows a thing or two about science.
Read MoreJuan Maldacena is the Carl P. Feinberg Professor in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He has made numerous ground-breaking contributions to theoretical physics, …
Read MoreEmily Rice is an assistant professor at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York and a research associate in the astrophysics department of the American Museum of Natural History. She earned her Ph.D. at UCLA studying enigmatic objects called brown dwarfs, which form like stars but then cool and fade to resemble gas giant planets.
Read MoreMartijn van Calmthout is the chief science editor of the Dutch newspaper ‘de Volkskrant’. He studied physics at the University of Utrecht and writes about the natural sciences. He is the author of the biographical Einsteins Licht, the Survivalgids voor de Toekomst and many other popular books.
Read MoreRob DeSalle works in molecular systematics, microbial evolution, and genomics. His current research concerns the development of bioinformatic tools to handle large-scale genomics problems using phylogenetic systematic approaches.
Read MoreHannah 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.
Read MoreNancy Hechinger is a faculty member at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program and has a diverse background in education, which includes interactive multimedia production, the development of interactive museum exhibits, and publishing.
Read MoreMark Siddall is known as “the leech guy,” though he has focused on the evolutionary biology of a wide range of parasites. He has led expeditions around the world, most recently including South Sudan, Cambodia, and the Lower Amazon of Brazil.
Read MoreDr. Xichen Li works on climate modeling and climate changes in David Holland’s research group at New York University (NYU). He uses different diagnostic tools and numerical models to analyze and simulate the atmospheric circulations of the earth system, in order to study the natural variability and anthropogenic forcing to the present climate systems.
Read MoreNicholas Wade received a B.A. in natural sciences from King’s College, Cambridge. He was deputy editor of Nature magazine in London and then became that journal’s Washington correspondent.
Read MoreStatia Luszcz Cook is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History. Her research focuses on observing and modeling planetary atmospheres. She is an enthusiastic observer, having spent more than 50 days and nights at CARMA, a millimeter array in Eastern California; and several nights at the Palomar and W.M. Keck Observatories in California and Hawaii, respectively.
Read MoreFields Medalist
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, …
Read MoreAllyson Sheffield is an observational astronomer whose research focuses on the formation and structure of the Milky Way galaxy. She studies the motion and chemistry of old stars, from which we can infer the evolutionary history of the Milky Way.
Read MoreDavid Quammen is an author and journalist whose 12 books include The Song of the Dodo, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, and Spillover, a work on the science, history, and human impacts of emerging diseases. Quammen is a contributing writer for National Geographic and a three-time recipient of the National Magazine Award.
Read MoreDiane Ackerman is the author of 24 works of nonfiction and poetry. Her works include the New York Times best sellers The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us, which received the PEN Henry David Thoreau Award and One Hundred Names for Love, a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Circle Critics Award.
Read MoreChiye Aoki majored in biology at Barnard College, Columbia University. She entered the world of neuroscience during those years by participating in research that monitored brain activities of animals undergoing the natural transition from wakefulness to REM sleep to answer the question: Why do we need to sleep?
Read MoreMandë Holford is as an Associate Professor in Chemistry at Hunter College and CUNY-Graduate Center, with scientific appointments at the American Museum of Natural History and Weill Cornell Medical College.
Read MoreMarco Leona is the David H. Koch Scientist in Charge of the Department of Scientific Research at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He studied in Italy where he obtained a Laurea in Chimica (M.Sc., Chemistry), and a Ph.D. in Crystallography and Mineralogy from the Universita’ degli Studi di Pavia.
Read MoreTony Wilson is interested in how and why animals reproduce the way they do, and is fascinated by the remarkable reproductive diversity of aquatic organisms. Over the past decade, Wilson’s research has focused on seahorses and pipefish, a group with a unique and highly developed form of reproduction—male pregnancy.
Read MoreScott Atran is currently Research Professor and Presidential Scholar at the Center on Terrorism at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and Visiting Professor of Psychology and Public Policy at the University of Michigan.
Read MoreKelley Remole, Ph.D., is director of neuroscience outreach at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. She is a trained neuroscientist with a passion for communicating the wonders of the brain. As a doctoral student in neuroscience at Columbia University, she was not content to contain her enthusiasm for science to the lab.
Read MoreMarcia Bartusiak is an author, journalist, and Professor of the Practice of the Graduate Program in Science Writing at MIT. She writes about the fields of astronomy and physics. Bartusiak has been published in National Geographic, Discover, Astronomy, Sky & Telescope, Science, Popular Science, and more.
Read MoreMatthias Scheutz is a professor at Tufts University School of Engineerings Computer Science Department, and is director of the Human-Robot Interaction Laboratory.
Read MoreAngelique Corthals is a biomedical/forensic anthropologist who earned her PhD at the University of Oxford. Her work has focused on biomedical research, including the study of the ecology of infectious diseases and auto-immune diseases, as well as forensic anthropology in South America and the Middle East.
Read MoreMerry Camhi is director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York Seascape program. This initiative, based at the NY Aquarium, seeks to raise public awareness and action to conserve threatened marine wildlife and habitats in the New York Bight, through field research, improved policy, and education.
Read MoreJennifer Ackerman has been writing about science, nature, and human biology for almost three decades. Her new book, The Genius of Birds (Penguin Press, 2016)–a New York Times bestseller–has been called a “lovely, celebratory survey” by The New York Times and “gloriously provocative and highly entertaining” by the Wall Street Journal.
Read MoreDr. Joanna Kaczorowska, internationally acclaimed for her virtuosity and artistry, has performed as a soloist and in combination with such artists as Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, and the Emerson String Quartet.
Read MoreRush D. Holt, is the CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and executive publisher of the Science family of journals. Before coming to AAAS, Holt served for 16 years as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Read MorePamela Abshire is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Institute for Systems Research at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her areas of specialty are in the fields of integrated circuit design and bioengineering.
Read MoreDr. Eleanor Sterling is Chief Conservation Scientist at the American Museum of Natural History’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation. She has over thirty years of international field research and community outreach experience in terrestrial and marine systems.
Read MoreA Mississippi to NYC transplant, Joshua Winter has been teaching physics for over 15 years to students of all age levels. Whether kindergartners or college students, his engaging teaching style and exciting demonstrations make even the most complex concepts accessible.
Read MoreDr. Jackie Faherty received a Bachelors in Science as a Physics major from the University of Notre Dame in 2001. She received her Ph.D. in Physics from Stony Brook University in 2010 with a thesis entitled the Brown Dwarf Kinematics Project, for which she received the University’s highest honors.
Read MoreProfessor Ponisseril Somasundaran received his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. He was invested as the first La von Duddleson Krumb Professor.
Read MoreJana Grcevich is co-author of The Vacation Guide to the Solar System, a travel guide to the planets. She holds a PhD in Astronomy from Columbia University, worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the American Museum of Natural History, and is a data scientist living in New York.
Read MoreAnnalisa Calo has a degree in Chemistry and a master in Photochemistry and Chemistry of Materials, based in the design of molecules and materials with new properties and on their characterization by means of high-resolution techniques from the University of Bologna, Italy.
Read MoreMargaret Flanagan is a native New Yorker, who after years of serving as a classroom teacher, brought her marine education expertise out to the waterfront full time. While sailing, she continued inspiring students and community members to better understand and appreciate our valuable natural resources.
Read MoreDr. Bhavna Agrawal, a leading researcher at IBM, is bringing education and artificial intelligence technology together to help solve various problems in elementary and higher education. Some of her latest work involved working with automatic recognition of children’s speech.
Read MoreFred Gould is Co-Director of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center of North Carolina State University. He conducts research on the application of evolutionary biology and population genetics to sustainable use of insect resistant crops and genetically engineered agricultural pests.
Read MoreMichael Benson’s work focuses on the intersection of art and science. A writer, artist, and filmmaker, Benson has staged a series of large-scale shows of reprocessed planetary landscape photography in major museums.
Read MoreMarcelo Magnasco carried out his undergraduate studies in Physics at the University of La Plata, in Argentina, and his PhD, also in Physics, at the University of Chicago, and currently heads the Laboratory of Integrative Neuroscience at Rockefeller University.
Read MoreFlorian Pinel is a Senior Technical Staff Member and Master Inventor in the Watson Content and IoT group at IBM. He is the co-inventor of IBM Chef Watson, an application that uses machine learning and natural language processing to demonstrate computational creativity and suggest original recipe ideas.
Read MoreGrowing up in South Africa, Master distiller Kevin Herson, formulated concoctions with his now antique chemistry set. His love for culture led him to travel the world and experience food and drinks of all customs and varieties. With a doctorate degree, “The Doc” has developed a unique palate for distilling, introducing delightful spirits to the craft beverage industry.
Read MoreMarcelo Gleiser is the Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy and a professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He obtained his PhD from King’s College London and received the 1994 Presidential Faculty Fellows Award from the White House.
Read MoreRick Potts, PhD, heads the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program at the National Museum of Natural History. Since joining the Smithsonian, Potts’s research has focused on piecing together the record of Earth’s environmental change and human adaptation.
Read MoreSimon Garnier is an associate professor in the Federated Department of Biology at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers-Newark. He is the head of the Swarm Lab, an interdisciplinary research lab that studies the mechanisms underlying collective behaviors and swarm intelligence in natural and artificial systems.
Read MoreColleen R. Evans is the Staten Island Museum’s Director of Natural Sciences. A biologist who specializes in museum collections, Evans also brings a wide knowledge of arthropods and science education to her post. She earned her BS and MS in Biology at the University of North Texas.
Read MoreJasmine Lawrence currently serves as a technical program manager on the Portal team at Facebook. This team is building products that make it easier for people to connect with the ones they love most.
Read MoreBarbara Natterson.-Horowitz, M.D., is a cardiologist and psychiatrist who turns to the natural world for insights into human health and development. Faculty in Harvard-MIT HST Program, Harvard Department of Human …
Read MoreMarkus J. Buehler is a materials scientist and engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a professor and the department head at MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, …
Read MoreRufin VanRullen is a cognitive neuroscientist and AI scientist based in Toulouse (France). He is a CNRS Research Director and holds a Research Chair at the Artificial and Natural Intelligence …
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