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 […]
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”, […]
Jaan Tallinn

Jaan Tallinn is an Estonian programmer, investor, and physicist who participated in the development of Skype in 2002 and FastTrack/Kazaa, a file-sharing application, in 2000. Jaan Tallinn is partner and co-founder of the development company Bluemoon which created the game SkyRoads. He graduated from the University of Tartu in 1996 with a BSc in Theoretical […]
The Spacewalker
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 […]
Robert Williams

Professor Robert Williams, an astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), is President of the International Astronomical Union. (IAU). He is an STScI Distinguished Research Scholar and Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Physics and Astronomy Department in Baltimore. Professor Williams served as Hubble STScI Director from 1993 until 1998, before which he had […]
Torsten Wiesel

Torsten Nils Wiesel is a Swedish neurophysiologist. Together with David H. Hubel, he received the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for their discoveries concerning information processing in the visual system; the prize was shared with Roger W. Sperry for his independent research on the cerebral hemispheres. In 1947, he began his scientific career in […]
Nuno Bettencourt

Guitar virtuoso, singer-songwriter, and record producer, Nuno Bettencourt rose to international prominence as guitar player with the multi-platinum rock band EXTREME. To date, the Grammy-nominated band is one of the most successful rock acts of the early to mid 1990s selling over 8 million records worldwide. Nuno penned the acoustic ballad “More Than Words” that […]
George Smoot

Astrophysicist at the University of California Berkeley (USA), Professor Smoot won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006 for his work on COBE with John C. Mather that led to the measurement of the anisotropy and blackbody form of the cosmic microwave background radiation. He is a senior scientist at LBL and, since 2010, a professor of […]
Brian E. Cox

Brian E. Cox is University Professor of particle physics at Manchester University. He is best known to the public as the presenter of science programmes. Before his academic career, Cox was a keyboard player for the bands D. Ream and Dare. Cox is a PPARC advanced fellow and member of the High Energy Physics group […]
