David B. Allison is internationally renowned for his research on obesity and statistical genetics. He has won numerous awards, including the Alabama Academy of Science’s Wright A. Gardner Award and the American Society of Nutrition’s Dannon Institute Mentorship Award in 2013, and the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring in 2006. He has authored more than 450 scientific publications, edited five books, and is the founding field chief editor of Frontiers in Genetics. In 2012 he was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.
Dr. Allison is Distinguished Professor, Quetelet Endowed Professor of Public Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he also serves as associate dean for science, director of the Office of Energetics, and director of the NIH-funded Nutrition Obesity Research Center. He received his B.A. in psychology from Vassar College and his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Hofstra University.
Dr. Allison has earned a reputation as being a stalwart advocate for high standards of evidence for obesity research and science in general.
Rick Borchelt is director of communications and public affairs for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Mr. Borchelt has held numerous high-level communications positions, most recently as special assistant for public affairs in the Office of the Director at the National Cancer Institute. He served as executive communications director for the Pew-funded Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University
and as communications director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Research, Education, and Economics Mission Area. He also has directed media relations for the National Academy of Sciences, has acted as press secretary for the U.S. House of Representatives Science Committee, and was special assistant for public affairs in the Executive Office of the President during the Clinton administration. Mr. Borchelt has worked overseas as well. He spent time in Nairobi, Kenya, as executive speechwriter to the United Nations under the secretary general and executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme. Mr. Borchelt received a B.S. in biology from Southeast Missouri State University.
Ann Bostrom is a professor of public affairs with the Evans School faculty of the University of Washington. Her research focuses on risk perception, communication, and management, as well as environmental decision making and policy. She has authored or contributed to numerous publications in these areas.
Dr. Bostrom also serves on the editorial board for Risk Analysis and as an associate editor for the Journal of Risk Research and Human and Ecological Risk Assessment. She was the recipient of the 1997 Chauncey Starr award for a young risk analyst from the Society for Risk Analysis. She received the award for her work on mental models of hazardous processes. Dr. Bostrom holds a Ph.D. in public policy analysis from Carnegie Mellon University, an M.B.A. from Western Washington University, and a B.A. in English from the University of Washington.
David V. Budescu is the Anne Anastasi Professor of Psychometrics and Quantitative Psychology at Fordham University in New York. His research is in the areas of human judgment, individual and group decision making under uncertainty and with incomplete and vague information, and statistics for the behavioral and social sciences. He is associate editor of Decision Analysis and Psychological Methods, and member of the editorial boards of Applied Psychological Measurement; Journal of Behavioral Decision Making; Journal of Mathematical Psychology; and Multivariate Behavioral Research. He is past president of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making (2000-2001), fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, and an elected member of the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychologists.
Ralph J. Cicerone is president of the National Academy of Sciences and chair of the National Research Council. His research—on atmospheric chemistry, the radiative forcing of climate change due to trace gases, and the sources of atmospheric methane, nitrous oxide, and methyl halide gases—has involved him in shaping science and environmental policy nationally and internationally and has been recognized internationally
by memberships in scientific societies and awards, including the Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science (1999) of the Franklin Institute, the Macelwane Award (1979) and the Revelle Medal (2002) of the American Geophysical Union, and the Albert Einstein World Award in Science (2004).
Dr. Cicerone’s previous affiliations are the University of Michigan; the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego; the National Center for Atmospheric Research; and the University of California, Irvine, where he was the founding chair of the Department of Earth System Science, the dean of the School of Physical Sciences, and chancellor.
Noshir Contractor is the Jane S. and William J. White Professor of Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University and director of the university’s Science of Networks in Communities (SONIC) Research Group. He is investigating factors that lead to the formation, maintenance, and dissolution of dynamically linked social and knowledge networks in a wide variety of contexts, including business, translational science, and engineering communities of practice.
Dr. Contractor has published or presented more than 250 research papers dealing with communicating and organizing. His book, Theories of Communication Networks (co-authored with Professor Peter Monge and published by Oxford University Press), received the 2003 Book of the Year award from the Organizational Communication Division of the National Communication Association. Dr. Contractor received a bachelor’s degree in tech electrical engineering from the Indian University of Technology and his M.A. and Ph.D. in communication from the University of Southern California.
Elizabeth Corley is the Lincoln Professor of Public Policy, Ethics, and Emerging Technologies and an associate professor in the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University. Her research interests focus on technology policy and environmental policy. Her recent book, Urban Environmental Policy Analysis (with Heather E. Campbell), was published by M.E. Sharpe in 2012.
Dr. Corley currently serves as a co-principal investigator and team leader for the $12.7 million National Science Foundation–funded Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University. She is also a member of the editorial board for three peer-reviewed journals: Evaluation & Program Planning, Journal of Technology Transfer, and Research Evaluation. Dr. Corley received three engineering degrees (B.S.C.E. in Civil Engineering, M.S.C.E. in Environmental Fluid Mechanics, and M.S. in Environmental Engineering) and a Ph.D. in Public Policy—all from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
William J. Courville is a leadership educator, coach, and consultant. He has more than 30 years of experience in business, counseling, leadership development, and coaching. Dr. Courville has coached executives from a wide range of organizations, including Fannie Mae, the World Bank, and Lockheed Martin. He also has worked with senior leaders around the world.
In addition to his involvement in the corporate sector, Dr. Courville teaches management and coaching at many institutions, including University of Maryland University College and Georgetown University. Dr. Courville has a B.A. in philosophy from Loyola University, a B.S. in business administration from Louisiana State University, an M.Ed. in counseling from Loyola University (New Orleans), and a Ph.D. from the University of Ottawa (Ontario, Canada). He also received his certificate of Leadership Coaching from Georgetown University and is a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with the International Coach Federation.
Michael Dahlstrom is an assistant professor in the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University. His research focuses on the effects of narratives on perceptions of science and the biases inherent when attempting to perceive topics beyond the realm of human scale. He is also part of an interdisciplinary, 3-year National Science Foundation grant to explore the ethical issues surrounding communicating science to non-experts.
Dr. Dahlstrom’s research has been published in leading journals in the communication field, such as Communication Research, Media Psychology, and Science Communication, and he currently sits on the board of the Communicating Science, Health, Environment and Risk Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. He also received the Shakeshaft Master Teaching Award in 2013. Dr. Dahlstrom received a B.S. in biophysics, a B.A. in journalism, and an M.S. in biophysics from Iowa State University and his Ph.D. in journalism and mass communication from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Julie Downs is director of the Center for Risk Perception and Communication in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University and associate research professor in that department. Her research focuses on how social influences affect decision making, and how people can make better decisions by understanding the nature of these influences. Her work encompasses many areas, including developing interventions to help girls make better decisions about their sexual behavior and devising strategies to help e-mail users identify fraudulent e-mails.
Dr. Downs has published extensively in psychological, public policy, and medical journals. She has given invited addresses at a number of
distinguished venues, including the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the United Kingdom’s Health and Safety Executive. Dr. Downs received her B.A. in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, and her Ph.D. in social psychology from Princeton University.
Kevin Dunbar is professor of human development and quantitative methodology at the University of Maryland in College Park and the director of the Laboratory for Scientific Thinking, Reasoning, and Education: Genes, Brains, Minds, and Creativity. He also has maintained his professorship in psychology at the University of Toronto, Scarborough.
Over the past 25 years, Dr. Dunbar has been conducting research on the nature of the scientific mind. He investigates the ways that scientists work in the lab, and the informal teaching strategies that professors use in biology and immunology labs. Currently, he is using functional magnetic resonance imaging to understand how the human brain reasons and changes as a function of education. He has published widely in his field, and his work has also appeared in the popular press. Dr. Dunbar received his B.A. and M.A. in psychology from the National University of Ireland and his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Toronto.
Adam M. Finkel is the executive director of the Penn Program on Regulation and a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He is one of the nation’s leading experts in the evolving field of risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis, with 25 years of experience improving methods of analysis and making risk-based decisions to protect workers and the general public from environmental hazards. He is the recipient of the David Rall Award from the American Public Health Association for “a career in advancing science in the service of public health protection.” From 1995 to 2005 he was a senior executive at the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Dr. Finkel has published more than 60 articles on risk assessment and management in the scientific, economic, legal, and popular literature. He received his A.B. from Harvard College, his M.P.P. in public policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and his Sc.D. in environmental health science from the Harvard School of Public Health.
Baruch Fischhoff has expertise in decision making and risk analysis. As the Howard Heinz University Professor in the Departments of Social and Decision Sciences and Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, he works with students studying the decision sciences.
Dr. Fischhoff has many professional affiliations. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and is a past president of
the Society for Judgment and Decision Making and the Society for Risk Analysis. He also has been a member of the Eugene, Oregon, Commission on the Rights of Women, the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Advisory Committee, and the Environmental Protection Agency Scientific Advisory Board, where he chaired the Homeland Security Advisory Committee. A graduate of the Detroit public schools, Dr. Fischhoff holds a B.S. in mathematics and psychology from Wayne State University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Susan T. Fiske is Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at Princeton University. She investigates social cognition, especially cognitive stereotypes and emotional prejudices, at cultural, interpersonal, and neuroscientific levels. Author of more than 300 publications and winner of numerous scientific awards, she has most recently been elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Sponsored by a Guggenheim, her 2011 Russell Sage Foundation book is Envy Up, Scorn Down: How Status Divides Us. Her forthcoming book is The Human Brand: How We Relate to People, Products, and Companies (2014). With Shelley Taylor, she wrote a foundational 1984 text: Social Cognition (2013,), and she has written Social Beings: Core Motives in Social Psychology (2014). She has lately edited Beyond Common Sense: Psychological Science in the Courtroom (2008), the Handbook of Social Psychology (2010), Social Neuroscience (2011), the Sage Handbook of Social Cognition (2012), and Facing Social Class: How Societal Rank Influences Interaction (2012). Currently an editor of Annual Review of Psychology, Science, and Psychological Review, she is also president of the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Her graduate students arranged for her to win the University’s Mentoring Award.
Lynn Litow Flayhart is an organizational development consultant with 30 years of experience in many areas, including leadership assessment, executive coaching, organizational assessment and development, culture assessment and change management, strategic and business planning, group facilitation, and team building. Her clients include Dell, Fannie Mae, the International Monetary Fund, and the National Academy of Sciences.
An adjunct faculty member of the Center for Creative Leadership and its affiliate, the National Leadership Institute, Ms. Flayhart is a published author and frequent speaker. She has consulted on executive development with the Columbia University Senior Executive Program. Ms. Flayhart also was a member of the World Association of Business.
Craig Fox’s research cuts across many disciplines: management, psychology, law, economics, neuroscience, and basic science. He studies behavioral decision theory, how people make decisions under conditions of risk, uncertainty, and ambiguity. He has been published in the top journals in multiple fields and is the cofounder of the forthcoming journal Behavioral Science and Policy.
Dr. Fox is the Ho-Su Wu Term Chair in Management at UCLA Anderson School of Management. He holds a joint appointment as professor of psychology in the UCLA College of Arts and Letters and professor of medicine at the UCLA Geffen School of Medicine. Dr. Fox is the cofounder and codirector of the UCLA Interdisciplinary Group in Behavior Decision Making. He received his B.A. in economics and psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University.
Melanie Green is assistant professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. As a social psychologist, she looks at the power of narrative to change beliefs, including the effects of fictional stories on real-world attitudes. Her theory of “transportation into a narrative world” focuses on immersion into a story as a mechanism of narrative influence. Dr. Green has examined narrative persuasion in a variety of contexts, from health communication to social issues. She has also investigated the influence of technology (in particular, television and the Internet) on social capital, and the ways in which trust can develop in online relationships.
In addition to publishing extensively, Dr. Green also has been recognized for her teaching. She received her B.S. in psychology and literature from Eckerd College and her Ph.D. in social psychology from Ohio State University.
William K. Hallman is professor and chair of the Department of Human Ecology, and is a member of the graduate programs in psychology, nutritional sciences, and planning and public policy at Rutgers University. Dr. Hallman has served on several National Research Council committees related to food safety risks, and currently serves on the Risk Communication Advisory Committee of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Dr. Hallman’s research examines public perceptions of biotechnology and nanotechnology in food production, risk perception and communication related to food safety risks, foodborne illness outbreaks, and food recalls, and public understanding and use of health claims made for food products and dietary supplements. He earned his B.S. from Juniata College and his M.A. and Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of South Carolina.
Ellen Harvey is the coaching talent manager for the National Leadership Institute. She is a licensed psychologist with 20 years of experience consulting for public- and private-sector organizations on the issues of executive coaching, leadership training, organizational development, and team building. She has held adjunct positions in the University of Maryland’s Executive MBA and Executive Master’s of Information Technology programs as well as Marymount University’s graduate psychology program.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson is the Elizabeth Ware Packard Professor of Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication and the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. She helped create FactCheck.org and FlackCheck.org, two nonpartisan projects of the Annenberg Public Policy Center that monitor deception in U.S. politics.
Dr. Jamieson is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the International Communication Association. She has won university-wide teaching awards at each of the three universities where she has taught and political science or communication awards for four of her books. Dr. Jamieson received a B.A. in rhetoric and public address from Marquette University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in communications arts from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Xeni Jardin is on the cutting edge of new media. She is the founding partner and co-editor of the award-winning blog Boing Boing. The blog is an eclectic selection of stories related to science, politics, and business, as well as human interest features. Ms. Jardin is also executive producer and host of the Webby-honored Boing Boing video, which is available online and in-flight on Virgin America.
Ms. Jardin has contributed to a range of traditional news and media outlets, including National Public Radio, Wired, The New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC. A founding board member of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, Ms. Jardin is committed to transparency in journalism and its important role in exposing law breaking and corruption in government. In 2011 Ms. Jardin was diagnosed with breast cancer and has used her own experience to educate women about the disease and raise awareness.
Marty Kaplan’s career has had a broad reach, encompassing government and politics, the entertainment industry, and journalism. He is the Norman Lear Professor of Entertainment, Media and Society at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journal-
ism. He also was associate dean of the USC Annenberg School for 10 years and is the founding director of the School’s Norman Lear Center, which studies the impact of media and entertainment on society.
In the political arena, Dr. Kaplan served as chief speechwriter to Vice President Walter F. Mondale. He also worked at Walt Disney Studios, was a featured commentator for NPR, and has been blogging for The Huffington Post since its inception. Dr. Kaplan graduated from Harvard College with an A.B. in molecular biology and received an M.A. in English from Cambridge University. As a Danforth Foundation Fellow, he received a Ph.D. in modern thought and literature from Stanford University.
Punam Anand Keller is the Charles Henry Jones Third Century Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Her research focus is designing and implementing communication programs. In 2009 Dr. Keller was tapped to serve as the marketing director for the Financial Literacy Center, an endeavor launched by the RAND Corporation, Dartmouth College, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and funded by the Social Security Administration. In 2010 her health communication model was selected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as the best tool to tailor health communications (healthcommworks.org).
Dr. Keller’s approach is to empower the voice of the consumer and to understand employee barriers to using financial and health benefits. She is past president of the Association for Consumer Research, a member association that connects researchers in multiple fields. Dr. Keller received her B.A. in economics and statistics from Elphinstone College, Bombay University, her M.B.A. from Bajaj Institute of Management, Bombay University, and her Ph.D. in marketing from Northwestern University.
Anthony Leiserowitz is widely recognized as an expert on how Americans and the international community view global warming, including public perception of climate change. As director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and as a research scientist, he investigates the psychological, cultural, political, and geographic factors that influence public environmental perception and behavior. His work has addressed values and attitudes at the local, state, and global levels.
Dr. Leiserowitz has served as a consultant to many institutions, including Harvard University, the United Nations Development Program, and the Global Roundtable on Climate Change at the Earth Institute (Columbia University). He earned a B.A. in international relations from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. in environmental science, studies, and policy from the University of Oregon.
Alan Leshner has been chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and executive publisher of the journal Science since 2001. Before AAAS, Dr. Leshner was director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. He has published more than 150 papers for both the scientific and lay communities on many topics, including science and technology policy, science education, and public engagement with science.
Dr. Leshner is an elected fellow of AAAS and a member (and on the Governing Council) of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, as well as a member of the National Science Board. He received an undergraduate degree in psychology from Franklin and Marshall College and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physiological psychology from Rutgers University.
Edward Maibach joined the George Mason University faculty in 2007 to create the Center for Climate Change Communication. Trained in public health and communication, he has extensive experience as an academic researcher and a communication and social marketing practitioner in government, business, and the nonprofit sector. His research focuses on the broad question of how public engagement in climate change can be expanded and enhanced. He has written numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, and the book that he edited, Designing Health Messages, earned a distinguished book award from the National Communication Association.
Dr. Maibach is currently a principal investigator on several climate change education grants funded by the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He also serves on the National Climate Assessment Development and Advisory Committee. Dr. Maibach received a B.A. in social psychology from the University of California, San Diego, an M.P.H. from San Diego State University, and a Ph.D. in communication research from Stanford University.
Davis Masten For more than 30 years, Davis Masten built Cheskin, a successful design consulting practice. The company focused on youth culture, branding, trust, and product development. Over the years, Cheskin worked on more than 2,500 projects in innovation for retail environments, corporate positioning, and identity.
In 2007 Mr. Masten sold the business to take on a new challenge—using science to address the needs of our growing population. To realize this goal, Mr. Masten serves as the cochair of the President’s Circle of the National Academies and chair of the advisory board of Quantified Self, a collaboration of people interested in self-tracking to gather and share knowledge.
As part of his ongoing commitment to young designers and scientists, Mr. Masten is the Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Media X program at Stanford University. He received his B.A. in marketing and psychology from the University of Redlands.
Douglas Medin is the Louis W. Menk Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University, with a joint appointment in the School of Education and Social Policy. His research focuses on three areas: concepts and categorization, decision making, and cross-cultural studies. In a partnership with the American Indian Center of Chicago, the Menominee tribe of Wisconsin, and Northwestern University, Dr. Medin and his team are studying how culture affects knowledge and reasoning about the natural world. He also has conducted research on cognition and learning among both indigenous and majority culture populations.
Dr. Medin is a recipient of an American Psychological Association (APA) Presidential Citation and the APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Education. Dr. Medin also was the recipient of a James McKeen Cattell Sabbatical Fellowship Award for the 2010-2011 academic year and in 2013 received the Association for Psychological Science William James Award for lifetime achievement. He received his B.A. from Moorhead State College and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of South Dakota.
Katherine Milkman is an assistant professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research relies heavily on “big data” to document various ways in which individuals systematically deviate from making optimal choices. Her work has paid particular attention to the question of what factors produce self-control failures, such as exercising too little or eating too much junk food, and how to reduce the incidence of such failures.
Dr. Milkman has published extensively in leading social science journals, and her work has been covered in the popular press, including The New York Times and National Public Radio. In 2011 Dr. Milkman was recognized as one of the top 40 business school professors under 40 by Poets and Quants. She received her B.S. degree from Princeton University in operations research and financial engineering and her Ph.D. from Harvard University’s joint program in computer science and business.
Julia Moore has had a long career in public policy, with a focus on international science, technology, and security issues. She is a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and senior officer, Emerging Issues in the Government Performance Group at The
Pew Charitable Trusts. Previously, she served as deputy director of the Wilson Center and Pew Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies. She also is a former senior advisor in the Office of International Science and Engineering and past director of legislative and public affairs at the National Science Foundation.
Ms. Moore has worked for numerous other organizations. She is a past executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility and past deputy director of the Arms Control Association at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, as well as a former Dean and Virginia Rusk Fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. Ms. Moore received her B.S. from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.
Robert T. Pennock is a professor at Michigan State University, where he is on the faculty of Lyman Briggs College and the Departments of Philosophy and Computer Science. His research involves both experimental and philosophical questions that relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science, such as the evolution of altruism, complexity, and intelligence. A national leader in evolution education, he was an expert witness in the historic Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Board Intelligent Design creationism case. He also leads the Scientific Virtues Project.
Dr. Pennock is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and has served on the AAAS Committee on the Public Understanding of Science and Technology and the National Academy of Sciences Science, Evolution, and Creationism authoring committee. Dr. Pennock received his B.A. in philosophy and biology from Earlham College and his Ph.D. in history and the philosophy of science from the University of Pittsburgh.
Nick Pidgeon is professor of environmental psychology and director of the Understanding Risk Research Group at Cardiff University in Wales. Dr. Pidgeon’s research centers on risk, risk perception, and risk communication, with a focus on the interface of social psychology, environmental sciences, and science and technology studies. Currently, he is studying public responses to energy technologies and climate change risks.
Dr. Pidgeon has led many policy-oriented projects related to public response to environmental risk for United Kingdom government departments, research councils, and the Royal Society. He also has published widely in his field. Dr. Pidgeon is currently a member of the UK Department for Energy and Climate Change’s Science Advisory Group and a theme leader for the Climate Change Consortium for Wales. He received a B.A. in mathematics and psychology from the University of Keele and a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Bristol.
Barbara Kline Pope is executive director for Communications at the National Academies and executive director of the National Academies Press. She is responsible for innovative and dynamic programs designed to bring science, engineering, and medicine to public audiences, including the Science & Entertainment Exchange and the Science and Engineering Ambassador Program. The Sackler Colloquium series on the Science of Science Communication is part of her portfolio of communication activities and reflects her deep interest in social and behavioral research.
Ms. Pope combines her responsibilities for communicating to diverse audiences with supervision of the National Academies’ publishing programs, through which its lists of both scholarly and trade books have been available on the Web free to read since 1995. She is the president-elect of the Association of American University Presses, serves on the corporate advisory board of the marketing department at the University of Maryland, and also on the management board of MIT Press. Ms. Pope holds an M.S. from the University of Maryland.
Rebecca Ratner is professor of marketing in the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on factors underlying suboptimal decision making, with an emphasis on variety seeking, consumer memory and motivation, and the influence of social norms. She has been published in many decision-making journals, including the Journal of Consumer Research and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. She currently serves as associate editor for the Journal of Consumer Research and Journal of Marketing Research.
Dr. Ratner also has been recognized for her teaching. She received the Allen J. Krowe Award for Teaching Excellence from the Robert H. Smith School of Business in 2010. She earned a B.A. in psychology from Williams College and her M.A. and Ph.D. in social psychology from Princeton University.
Deb Roy is a tenured professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is chief media scientist at Twitter. He conducts research at the MIT Media Lab on language, games, and social dynamics at the intersection of artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology. In 2008 he cofounded and was the founding CEO of Bluefin Labs, a social TV analytics company, which MIT Technology Review named as one of the 50 most innovative companies of 2012. Bluefin was acquired by Twitter in 2013. An author of more than 100 academic papers in machine learning, cognitive modeling, and human-machine interaction, his TED talk, Birth of a Word, has been viewed more than 2.5 million times.
A native of Canada, Dr. Roy received a B.S. in applied science (computer engineering) from the University of Waterloo and a Ph.D. in media arts and sciences from MIT.
Cara Santa Maria has a passion for science education, making it her mission to ensure that the fascination she feels for the natural world is shared by as many people as possible. Currently, Ms. Santa Maria cohosts Take Part Live on Pivot TV. She has also cohosted the Weather Channel’s original series Hacking the Planet and Young Turks Network. Previously, she was the senior science correspondent for The Huffington Post. She coproduced and hosted a science talk show pilot for HBO and cohosted an episode of StarTalk Radio with Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Ms. Santa Maria is a North Texas native who currently lives in Los Angeles. Prior to moving to the West Coast, she taught biology and psychology courses to high school students and college undergraduates. Her published research has spanned topics from clinical psychological assessment to the neuropsychology of blindness. She received a B.S. in psychology and philosophy and an M.S. in neurobiology from the University of North Texas.
Barbara Schaal’s career as a leading evolutionary biologist began with a youthful fascination with plants. Currently the Mary-Dell Chilton Distinguished Professor and dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, she is known for her work on the genetics of plant species. In particular, she has been recognized for her studies that use DNA sequences to understand evolutionary processes, such as gene flow, geographical differentiation, and the domestication of crop species. In her research, Dr. Schaal often collaborates with students and researchers from the Missouri Botanical Gardens.
In 2005 Dr. Schaal became the first woman elected to the vice presidency of the National Academy of Sciences. Since 2009 she has served on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Born in Berlin, Germany, Dr. Schaal grew up in Chicago and graduated from the University of Illinois, Chicago, with a B.S. in biology. She earned her Ph.D. from Yale University.
Dietram Scheufele has received much recognition for his work in mass communication. He is one of only two scholars to win both early career awards in the discipline: the Young Scholar Award for outstanding early career research from the International Communication Association and the Hillier Krieghbaum Under-40 Award for outstanding achievement in teaching, research, and public service from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
Dr. Scheufele is the John E. Ross Professor in Science Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and co-principal investigator of the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University. His current research program focuses on public opinion dynamics surrounding controversial science, with an emphasis on the interplay among media, policy makers, and lay audiences. He also consults with many organizations, including PBS, the World Health Organization, and the World Bank. Dr. Scheufele received his B.A. from the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Eugenie Scott has spent most of her career fighting for science. As the founding executive director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), she has been a researcher and an activist in the creationism/ evolution controversy for more than 25 years. She is well versed in many aspects of the controversy, including educational, legal, scientific, religious, and social issues. Recently, the NCSE has taken on climate change, refuting the claims of those who question its validity and supporting teachers and other citizens in their efforts to keep good science in the classroom.
Dr. Scott has received national recognition for her NCSE activities, including awards from scientific and educational societies and humanist groups. She is the author of Evolution vs. Creationism and co-editor, with Glenn Branch, of Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools. Dr. Scott received her B.S. and M.S. from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and her Ph.D. in physical anthropology from the University of Missouri. She also holds nine honorary degrees.
Ben Strauss serves as chief operating officer and director of the Program on Sea Level Rise at Climate Central. In the latter capacity, he has published multiple scientific papers, testified before the U.S. Senate, and authored the Surging Seas report, which led to the development of SurgingSeas.org, a coastal flood risk tool. This tool has been widely covered in the popular press and has led to multiple appearances on television and radio outlets.
Previously, Dr. Strauss was a founding board member of grist.org, an environmental website, and helped launch the Environmental Leadership Program. He also co-organized the Campus Earth Summit and authored a report on college environmental education and practices for the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Dr. Strauss received a B.A. in biology from Yale University, an M.S. in zoology from the University of Washington, and a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from Princeton University.
Patrick Sturgis is professor of research methodology at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, director of the Economic and Social Research Council National Centre for Research Methods, and president of the European Survey Research Association. His research interests are in the areas of survey methodology, statistical modeling, public opinion and political behavior, and public understanding of science and technology. He also has worked on the processes of inter- and intragenerational social mobility and public attitudes toward science and technology, as well as engagement with these subjects.
Currently, Dr. Sturgis is principal investigator of the Wellcome Monitor Study. He has a B.A. in psychology from the University of Liverpool and an M.S. and a Ph.D. in social psychology from the London School of Economics.
Richard Tanenbaum is president of Behavior Consultants and Global Learning Partners, LLC, specializing in executive coaching and leadership/organization development. His experience as a clinical psychologist, nonprofit executive, civilian working with the military, and actor enable him to work well with diverse clients from administrative staff to senior executives in any industry.
Dr. Tanenbaum’s clients include the American Institute of Architects, Freddie Mac, the INOVA Health System, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Inter-American Development Bank, the National Institutes of Health, the United States Naval Academy, the World Bank, and all branches of the military.
Dr. Tanenbaum earned his Ph.D. and master’s degree in clinical psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University. He received his bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a certified coach for the Center for Creative Leadership and serves on the faculty of the National Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland and the Uniformed Services University. A licensed psychologist, Dr. Tanenbaum is certified in a wide spectrum of psychological and leadership assessment instruments.
Dan Vergano is a senior writer-editor at National Geographic. He spent the previous 14 years as the science writer for USA Today. He has written widely on areas that include climate change, evolution, and archaeology. Before entering journalism, Mr. Vergano worked as a space policy analyst and aerospace engineer.
Mr. Vergano has received numerous awards for his work. He won the 2011 Gene Stuart Award from the Society for American Archeology for a story and video series on Maya archeology, and the 2006 David Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Journalism from the American Geophysi-
cal Union for a USA Today cover story on climate change. Mr. Vergano was also a 2007-2008 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, where he concentrated on the intersection of science and politics. He received a B.S. in aerospace engineering from the Pennsylvania State University and an M.A. in science, technology, and public policy from George Washington University.
Brian Wansink is the John Dyson Professor of Consumer Behavior at Cornell University, where he directs the Cornell Food and Brand Lab. Dr. Wansink’s award-winning academic research on eating behavior, behavioral economics, and behavior change has been published in the world’s top marketing, medical, and nutrition journals. He also is the author of a book for the popular press, the 2006 best-selling Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think.
His work has had practical applications. It contributed to the introduction of smaller “100 calorie” packages to prevent overeating and removing 500 million calories from restaurants each year via Unilever’s Seductive Nutrition program. From 2007 to 2009, Dr. Wansink served as executive director of U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, the federal agency charged with developing the 2010 Dietary Guidelines and promoting the Food Guide Pyramid. Dr. Wansink received a B.S. from Wayne State College, an M.S. from Drake University, and a Ph.D. in consumer behavior from Stanford University.
Duncan Watts is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research and a founding member of the MSR-NYC lab. From 2000 to 2007, he was a professor of sociology at Columbia University, and from 2007 to 2012 he was a principal research scientist at Yahoo! Research, where he directed the human social dynamics group. He has also served on the external faculty of the Santa Fe Institute and was recently named an A. D. White Professor at Large at Cornell University.
Dr. Watts’ research on social networks and collective dynamics has appeared in a wide range of journals, including Nature, Science, and American Journal of Sociology. He is also the author of three books, most recently Everything Is Obvious Once You Know the Answer: How Common Sense Fails Us. Dr. Watts holds a B.Sc. in physics from the Australian Defense Force Academy, from which he also received his officer’s commission in the Royal Australian Navy, and a Ph.D. in theoretical and applied mechanics from Cornell University.
Paul Weiss is the director of the California NanoSystems Institute, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UCLA, and Fred Kavli Chair in NanoSystems Sciences. His interdisciplinary research group includes
chemists, physicists, biologists, materials scientists, electrical and mechanical engineers, and computer scientists. Their work focuses on the atomic-scale chemical, physical, optical, mechanical, and electronic properties of surfaces and supramolecular assemblies. They work to advance nanofabrication down to ever-smaller scales and greater chemical specificity to connect, operate, and test molecular devices.
Dr. Weiss has published extensively and holds numerous patents. He also has given more than 400 invited and plenary lectures. Before coming to UCLA, Dr. Weiss was a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Physics at the Pennsylvania State University. He received his S.B. and S.M. degrees in chemistry from MIT and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley.
Joe Witte is a weather consultant to NASA on outreach to national and local television weather broadcasters. He also pursues graduate research studies at George Mason’s Center for Climate Change Communication, where he is focused on engaging TV weathercasters as climate change educators. He is particularly interested in the visual rhetoric of climate change communication.
Mr. Witte is a fellow and councilor of the American Meteorological Society, and is a Fellow of the Explorers Club stemming from his field work in the arctic on Ice Island T-3. He began his career as a glaciologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, after which he worked at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, NJ. He was chief meteorologist at local TV stations in Seattle, Philadelphia, and New York City. He also acted as chief meteorologist and weather reporter at NBC where he worked at the TODAY Show and Nightly News. His weather field work included flights into three hurricanes. Mr. Witte earned an M.S. in atmospheric sciences from the University of Washington.
Gabrielle Wong-Parodi is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Climate and Energy Decision Making in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University.
Dr. Wong-Parodi’s area of expertise is in risk perceptions and communications. More specifically, she applies behavioral decision-making methods to address real-world energy and environmental problems to inform policy. Dr. Wong-Parodi has published papers on the risk perceptions of emerging technologies such as carbon capture and sequestration and smart grid technologies.
Previously, Dr. Wong-Parodi was a research associate with the Energy Efficiency Standards group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Her most recent work at the lab was developing a model of the U.S. natural
gas and coal system to be used to assess the economic and environmental impact of proposed climate change policies on federal residential appliance standards. Dr. Wong-Parodi received her B.A. in psychology and her M.A. and Ph.D. in energy and resources from the University of California, Berkeley.
Peter Zandan is the global vice chair and worldwide research practice group leader at Hill+Knowlton Strategies, a leading communications firm with 90 offices in 52 countries. He has been instrumental in developing the firm’s reputation management and communications research offerings.
Prior to joining H+K Strategies, Dr. Zandan founded Intelliquest and served as its chairman and CEO for 15 years. Under his leadership, Intelliquest became the fastest growing market research company worldwide and was publicly traded on the Nasdaq. Dr. Zandan also founded and served as CEO of Zilliant, a successful venture-backed pricing optimization company. He has been named Ernst & Young’s “Entrepreneur of the Year” and was selected by Interactive Week as one of the “Unsung Heroes of the Internet.”
Dr. Zandan is a member of the Presidents’ Circle of the National Academies and serves as a lifetime member of the McCombs School of Business Advisory Council. He earned his M.B.A. and Ph.D. in evaluation research from the University of Texas at Austin.
Kathleen M. Zelman is director of nutrition at WebMD, where she is responsible for overseeing diet, nutrition, and food information. In that role, Ms. Zelman is senior nutrition correspondent; writes features, columns, and diet book reviews; provides expert editorial review of diet and nutrition articles; and covers national meetings. Ms. Zelman also has extensive media experience, including cohosting a weekly radio program and serving as a national spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (formerly the American Dietetic Association) for 12 years.
Ms. Zelman has received much recognition for her work. The Institute of Food Technologists awarded her the 2012 Media Award for Excellence in Consumer Journalism, and in 2011 she received the Nutrition Science Media Award from the American Society for Nutrition for fostering public understanding of nutrition issues. Ms. Zelman received a B.S. from Montclair State University and an M.P.H. from Tulane University.
