Mark Moffett, tropical explorer and biologist, is traveling with globe with the support of the John Templeton Foundation to investigate the life and death of societies across the animal world and in humans right up to the present day.
Melissa Wells is an expert at managing healthcare systems in the US and abroad. When on expeditions with fellow explorer Moffett, she also captures the work and inspiration of scientific researchers through photography and film.
Stephon Alexander is a cosmologist and sax virtuoso who bridges physics with music in his book, The Jazz of Physics; his investigations push Einstein’s theory to new extremes by connecting the smallest and largest entities in the universe.
Rap artist Baba Brinkman, born in a log cabin built by his parents, is known for science-themed albums, TED talks and off-Broadway productions that combine hip-hop music with performance art, literature, and cutting-edge research studies.
Leading American anthropologist Helen Fisher is an expert on falling in love, human sexuality, and gender; among her accomplishments, she was instrumental in working out the criteria by which match.com connects men and women.
Artificial intelligence researcher and innovator Ayanna Howard was involved in building the Mars rover while at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and is currently constructing robots that, for example, assist children with learning disabilities.
Physician to the Dalai Lama, Buddhist monk Barry Kerzin arranges medical care for India’s poor, collaborates with scholars to study such topics as meditation, morality and compassion, and founded the Altruism in Medicine Institute in the U.S.
Award-winning neuroscientists Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen Macknik are foremost authorities on perception; they put together the “Best Illusion of the Year” contest and have recently co-authored the book, Champions of Illusion.
Scott McCloud is a graphic novelist and cartoonist with many Harvey and Eisner awards in this field who is best known for his insights about cartooning in books such as Reinventing Comics, leading to the moniker “the Aristotle of comics.”
The acclaimed landscape architect Kate Orff designs urban environments to better foster our social lives in the face of ongoing ecological change; she has taken the lead on projects that include rebuilding much of the New York City coastline.
Carl Safina is a MacArthur-winning conservationist and animal rights activist who explores human relationships to nature, most recently with the book Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace.
Randall Wells directs the world’s longest-running study of a wild dolphin population with his fifty year investigation of the social behavior, ecology, health, and conservation of the bottlenose dolphin community that resides in Sarasota Bay.
Preeminent American luthier Sam Zygmuntowicz, who’s crafted cellos and violins for Yo-Yo Ma, Isaac Stern and many others, has become expert on the physics of music from teaming up with scientists to better understand stringed instruments.