Carl Zimmer writes books, articles, essays, and blog posts in which he reports from the frontiers of biology, where scientists are expanding our understanding of life. Since 2013 he has been a columnist at the New York Times, where his column "Matter" appears each week. He is a popular speaker at universities, medical schools, museums, and festivals, and he is also a frequent on radio programs such as Radiolab and This American Life. In 2016, Zimmer won the Stephen Jay Gould Prize, awarded annually by the Society for the Study of Evolution to recognize individuals whose sustained efforts have advanced public understanding of evolutionary science.

Summer Ash is the Director of Outreach for Columbia University's Department of Astronomy. She is the "In­House Astrophysicist" for The Rachel Maddow Show and has written for Scientific American, Slate, and Nautilus Magazine.

Tim McHenry is director of public programs and performance at the Rubin Museum of Art, presenting theater-going audiences with what The Huffington Post has called "some of the most original and inspired programs on the arts and consciousness in New York City." While the museum's onstage conversations have become a trademark (in particular the popular series of Brainwave -– soon in its seventh year), McHenry specializes in art experiences that break the traditional mold, such as the Dream-Over — a sleepover at the museum for grown-ups — and an event that converted the museum building into an olfactory Memory Palace.

David Schwartz is Chief Curator of the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City, and a contributor to the Museum's new website Moving Image Source. He is also a lecturer in Cinema Studies at Purchase College.

Rachel Chanoff has been working in performing arts and film for 35 years and is the founder and director of THE OFFICE performing arts + film, her New York City-based programming, consulting, and production company. She is the Curator of Performing Arts and Film for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), Director of Programming of the CenterSeries at the '62 Center for Theater and Dance at Williams College, Consultant to the Feature Film and Theater Programs for theSundance Institute and to the RAWI screenwriters lab in Jordan, Curator of The New York Jewish Film Festival and The Margaret Mead Film Festival, and the Artistic Director of the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival, New York's longest running free outdoor performing arts festival. Rachel is proud to serve on the board of the 52nd Street Project and Working Films. She is also a long time participant in the Theater Development Fund's Open Doors program, which introduces underserved high school students to the theater. Professional highlight: standing shoulder to shoulder with Prince in the wings at Celebrate Brooklyn! before his surprise performance.

John Steele is the founder, publisher, and editorial director of Nautilus, the online and print science magazine. He has previously worked at IMG/Fortmann Little, Critheann Entertainment, NBC and CBS News.

John Tintori has edited over a dozen feature length films. John is a member of the Director's Guild of America, the Writer's Guild of America, and the IATSE. He has been a member of the Tisch/Kanbar faculty since 1997. John has served as Chair of the Graduate Film Program at NYU since 2005, and was Chair of the Graduate Film Program at TischAsia in Singapore during its inaugural year of 2007/8. Joining forces with his colleagues in the Stern School of Business, John and Professor Sam Craig created the Dual MBA/MFA Degree in Producing, which accepted its first class in September 2008.

Eric Richard Kandel is an Austrian-American neuropsychiatrist. He was a recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research on the physiological basis of memory storage in neurons.

Heather Berlin conducts research to better understand the neural basis of impulsivity, compulsivity, and emotion with the goal of more targeted treatment. She employs neuroimaging and neuropsychological and psychopharmacological testing of brain lesion and compulsive, impulsive, and personality disorder patients. She is also interested in the neural basis of consciousness and dynamic unconscious processes. Dr. Berlin has conducted clinical research at hospitals in both the US and UK including Bellevue Hospital and the Institute of Psychiatry in London. She is a Visiting Scholar at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Vassar College, and a Visiting Lecturer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH)/University of Zurich, and at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Alex Pasternak is a journalist, editor, and video producer who hails from New York City and likes to linger at the intersection of science, technology, media, culture, law, design, and the environment. He is the founding editor of Vice's Motherboard, a contributing editor at Fast Company, and a co-founder of Bandwagon, a Brooklyn-based company that makes technology for sharing taxis and improving transportation.