Donna Strickland
Dr. Donna Strickland is one of the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2018 for co-inventing Chirped Pulse Amplification with Dr. Gérard Mourou, her PhD supervisor at the time of the discovery. She earned her PhD in optics from the University of Rochester and her B. Eng. from McMaster University. Dr. Strickland was a […]
Gerald Griffin
Gerry Griffin is the former Director of the NASA Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston. In prior positions at NASA he served as the Deputy Director of the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the Hugh F. Dryden (now Neil A. Armstrong) Flight Research Center in California. At NASA Headquarters in Washington […]
Eric Betzig
After obtaining a BS in Physics from Caltech, Eric Betzig moved to Cornell, where his thesis involved the development of near-field optics — the first method to break the diffraction barrier in light microscopy. He then became a PI at AT&T Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ, where he further refined the technology and explored […]
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins is an English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was the University of Oxford’s Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008. Dawkins first came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centred view of evolution and […]
Garik Israelian
Dr Israelian, an astrophysicist at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (Spain), is the creative director and spiritual father of the STARMUS Festival. In 1999 he led a collaboration reported in the journal Nature that found the first observational evidence that supernova explosions are responsible for the formation of black holes. His research has led […]
Nergis Mavalvala
Nergis Mavalvala is a Pakistani-American astrophysicist known for her role in the first observation of gravitational waves. She is the Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she is also the Associate Head of the Department of Physics. She was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2010. Mavalvala is best known for her work on the detection of gravitational waves in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) […]
Nicole Stott
Nicole Stott is an astronaut, aquanaut, engineer, artist, author of Back to Earth: What Life In Space Taught Me About Our Home Planet – And Our Mission To Protect It; and most importantly a mom. She creatively combines the awe and wonder of her spaceflight experience with her artwork to inspire everyone’s appreciation of our role […]
Giancarlo Erra
UK based Italian composer, multi-instrumentalist and visual artist Giancarlo Erra started his career in 2005 with one man studio project Nosound. In 2008 Erra signed the project to the acclaimed UK based experimental label Kscope and moved to the UK to establish and expand his career. Being both writer and producer, his music inventively combines […]
Michel Mayor
Professor Michel Mayor is an astrophysicist at Geneva University (Switzerland). Together with Didier Queloz, in 1995 he discovered the first extrasolar planet, named 51 Pegasi b, orbiting the sunlike star 51 Pegasi. Professor Mayor was awarded the Swiss Marcel Benoist Prize in recognition of his work and its significance for human life. In 2000 he was […]
Tim Peake
Born in Chichester, England, on 7 April 1972, Tim is married with two sons. Among his leisure activities he enjoys skiing, scuba diving, cross-country running and climbing. Other interests include quantum physics and aviation. Education Tim completed his secondary education at Chichester High School for Boys in West Sussex, England, in 1990. In 1992, he graduated from […]