Starmus

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 […]

Emmanuelle Charpentier

Emmanuelle Charpentier is a French researcher in microbiology, genetics and biochemistry. After defending her dissertation, she worked at several universities and hospitals in the United States including Rockefeller University, New York University Langone Medical Center, Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine (all in New York) and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. After five years, […]

Michael Kezirian

Dr. Kezirian is a former Associate Technical Fellow for the Boeing Company, most recently supporting the Commercial Crew Program (Boeing CST-100 Starliner). He was a design analyst for the Nitrogen Oxygen Recharge System (NORS) for the International Space Station In support of the Space Shuttle Program, he was the Boeing Vehicle Safety Lead for the […]

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 […]

Diane Ackerman

Poet, essayist, and naturalist, Diane Ackerman is the author of over two dozen highly acclaimed works of nonfiction and poetry, including the bestsellers, “A Natural History of the Senses, “The Zookeeper’s Wife,” and “The Human Age” — books beloved by millions of readers all over the world. In prose so rich and evocative that one […]

Paul Franklin

Paul Franklin has been creating spectacular visual effects for over 25 years. Co-founder of Double Negative Visual Effects – one of the world’s leading digital visual effects studios – Paul is perhaps best known for his long-running collaboration with director Christopher Nolan.  Paul’s work has featured in more than thirty films including “Inception” , “Interstellar”, […]

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 […]

Wu Ji

Wu Ji is a President of Chinese Society of Space Research,  Former Director-General and Professor at National Space Science Center (NSSC), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Specialist in Space Science and Exploration, IEEE Fellow, Full Member of IAA, member of Advisory Board of Luxembourg Government for Space Resources, member of the Advisory Committee of UAE […]

Chris Hadfield

Colonel Chris Hadfield is an astronaut, business leader, hi-tech entrepreneur, 5-time best-selling author and global speaker on leadership, change and managing life. Having commanded the International Space Station and directed companies, he has deep experience with best practices and tactics on guiding teams through extreme circumstances of complexity and change, while also recognizing the importance […]

John Mather

John Cromwell Mather (USA) is an American astrophysicist and cosmologist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006 for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer Satellite (COBE) with George Smoot, measuring the cosmic microwave background radiation, showing it came from the early universe, and discovering that it has hot and cold spots that […]