Kristin O’Brien is an Associate Professor of Biology University of Alaska Institute of Arctic Biology. She is interested in the unique biochemical and physiological characteristics that have evolved in fishes living in the chronically cold environment of Antarctica’s Southern Ocean. One of the most striking characteristics among the Antarctic fishes of the family Channichthyidae, known…read more »

Sukanya Chakarbarti is faculty member in the physics department at Florida Atlantic University. She researches the dynamical evolution of galaxies, with the goal of developing astrophysical probes of fundamental physics. Chakrabarti works on understanding galaxy evolution by performing hydrodynamical and magnetohydrodynamical simulations of galaxies combined with radiative transfer calculations. Dr. Chakrabarti has co-authored over 30…read more »

Judy Cheng works to learn to about galaxy formation by looking at our own Milky Way. She says that “detailed observations of our galaxy can be used to test predictions made by models of disk formation and evolution, and they complement the large surveys that study galaxies at high redshift. For the Milky Way in…read more »

Gavin A. Schmidt is a climatologist and climate modeler at the NASA GISS. He works on the variability of the ocean circulation and climate, using general circulation models (GCMs). He has also worked on ways to reconcile paleo-data with models. He helped develop the GISS ocean and coupled GCMs to improve the representation of the…read more »

Pamela A. Silver is a Professor in the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School and a founding core faculty member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering of Harvard University. Dr. Silver’s research focus is on building cell-based machines, designing novel therapeutics, and reengineering photosynthetic bacteria to produce hydrogen and other fuels….read more »

Planetary scientist Britney Schmidt is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Geophysics of the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Schmidt uses ice-penetrating radar to study the geophysical evolution of ices on Europa and in Antarctica. Schmidt received her Ph.D. in geophysics and space physics from The University of California, Los Angeles. Her research…read more »

Pamela Ronald is Professor of Plant Pathology at the University of California, Davis, where she studies the role that genes play in a plant’s response to its environment. In 2008 she and her colleagues were recipients of the USDA National Research Initiative Discovery Award for their work on submergence-tolerant rice. She is co-author with her…read more »

Jacqueline K. Barton is the Arthur and Marian Hanisch Memorial Professor of Chemistry and Chair of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. She is a native New Yorker. Barton was awarded the A.B. summa cum laude at Barnard College in 1974 and a Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry at…read more »

David Hanson develops human-like robots with realistic facial expressions and conversational abilities. He received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in film/animation/video, while developing robots as art. Hanson later worked as a sculptor and a technical consultant at Walt Disney Imagineering. Dr. Hanson received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at…read more »