

Scott Atran, Research Director at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, France, has experimented extensively on the ways scientists and ordinary people categorize and reason about nature. He currently is an organizer of a NATO working group on suicide terrorism. His publications include In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion and The Native Mind: Cognition and Culture in Human Knowledge of Nature (co-authored with Douglas Medin and forthcoming from Oxford University Press).



Francisco Ayala, described as the "Renaissance Man of Evolutionary Biology" by The New York Times, has made singular contributions not only to evolutionary and population genetics, but also to education, philosophy, ethics, religion, and national science policy. The Donald Bren Professor of Biological Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Irvine, he is the author of the book Darwin and Intelligent Design.



Mahzarin Banaji, currently Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics at Harvard and Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, studies human thinking and feeling in social context, particularly how unconscious assessments reflect hidden attitudes about social group membership such as race, gender and class. Her research has implications for theories of individual responsibility and social justice.



Patricia Churchland, who chairs the University of California, San Diego Philosophy Department, focuses also on neuroethics and attempts to understand choice, responsibility and the basis of moral norms in terms of brain function, evolution and brain-culture interactions. Her books include Brain-Wise, Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain and On the Contrary, with Paul M. Churchland.



Paul Churchland is professor of philosophy at University of California, San Diego. With his wife and philosophical partner, Patricia, he has been an advocate of "eliminative materialism", which claims that scientific theories about the brain do not square well with our traditional commonsense beliefs about the mind. Among his books are Matter and Consciousness, A Neurocomputational Perspective, and The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul.



Paul Davies, who recently joined Arizona State University as a Distinguished Lecturer, is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist, author and broadcaster. He continues his association with the Australian Centre for Astrobiology at Macquarie University. He has written over 20 books, including the just published The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life? His other books include Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World and The God Experiment: Can Science Prove the Existence of God?



Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary theorist who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, has popularized the gene-centered view of evolution and theory of memetics. His many books include The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, and The New York Times best seller The God Delusion.



Ann Druyan, the CEO and co-founder of Cosmos Studios, which specializes in the production of science based entertainment for all media, has authored several books, including A Famous Broken Heart, and Comet, which was on The New York Times best seller list for two months. Additionally, she co-authored another New York Times best seller, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors with her late husband, Carl Sagan.



Stuart Hameroff is an anesthesiologist and the director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona. He is known for his promotion of the scientific study of the mechanisms of consciousness. He was the lead organizer of the first Tucson Consciousness Meeting, which is widely regarded as a landmark event. His collaboration with mathematical physicist Roger Penrose led to the development of the 'Orch-OR' theory of consciousness.



Charles Harper is Senior Vice President of the John Templeton Foundation. Originally trained in engineering at Princeton and philosophy and theology at the University of Oxford, he has published research articles in scientific journals such as Nature, Science, and the Astrophysics Journal, and been the co-editor of several books, including Science & Ultimate Reality: Quantum Theory, Cosmology and Complexity and Fitness of the Cosmos for Life.



Sam Harris has authored The New York Times bestsellers The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason, which won the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction, and Letter to a Christian Nation. His essays have appeared in Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times, The Times of London, The Boston Globe and elsewhere. He is currently researching the neural basis of religious belief while completing a doctorate in neuroscience.



Melvin J. Konner, the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Anthropology, Neuroscience, and Behavioral Biology at Emory University, and author of The Tangled Wing, has been described as "the nearest thing we have to a poet laureate of behavioral biology". His book Unsettled tells the story of the Jews from ancient history to the modern age.



Sir Harold Kroto, Chairman of the Board of the Vega Science Trust, a UK educational charity that produces science programs for television, in 1996 shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry with Robert Curl and Richard Smalley for the discovery of a new form of carbon, the C60 Buckminsterfullerene. He has received the Royal Society's prestigious Michael Faraday Award, given annually to a scientist who has done the most to further public communication of science, engineering or technology in the United Kingdom.



Lawrence Krauss, Director of the Center for Education and Research in Cosmology and Astrophysics at Case Western Reserve University, where he also serves as the Ambrose Swasey Professor of Physics and Astronomy, has authored The Fifth Essence: The Search for Dark Matter in the Universe, The Physics of Star Trek, Beyond Star Trek, and Hiding in the Mirror. He received the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award in 2002.



Elizabeth Loftus is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, and the Department of Criminology, Law, and Society, at the University of California, Irvine. Her publications include Eyewitness Testimony, Witness for the Defense: The Accused, the Eyewitness and the Expert Who Puts Memory on Trial and The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse.



Steven Nadler is Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Max and Frieda Weinstein-Bascom Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of books on Spinoza, including Spinoza: A Life. His research focuses on seventeenth-century philosophy and the antecedents to aspects of modern thought in medieval Latin and Jewish philosophy - including the problem of evil.



Susan Neiman, currently a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, is Director of the Einstein Forum, Potsdam. Author of Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy, she is now writing Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists, a defense of the moral language of the Enlightenment as foundation for a liberal world view robust enough to meet contemporary challenges.



Carolyn Porco is currently the leader of the Cassini Science Imaging Team and a lead imaging scientist on the New Horizons Pluto/Kuiper Belt mission. She is a Senior Research Scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and an Adjunct Professor at both the University of Colorado and the University of Arizona. An asteroid has been named in her honor.



VS Ramachandran, Director for the Center of Brain and Cognition and professor with the Psychology Department and the Neurosciences Program at the University of California, San Diego, co-authored Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind, with Sandra Blakeslee, and is the author of A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness.



Joan Roughgarden is a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford and teaches geophysics as well as a mathematical ecology. In her book, Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People, she challenges Darwin's theories and promotes a diversity-affirming model of biology and evolution. Her most recent work, Evolution and Christian Faith: Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist, reflects on the relationship between science and religion.



Loyal Rue, a two-time Templeton Award winner, is currently a professor of Religion and Philosophy at Luther College. His research focuses primarily on the Naturalistic Theory of Religion and his most recent book, Religion Is Not About God: How Spiritual Traditions Nurture Our Biological Nature, discusses the complex relationship between the concept of God and religion.



Terrence Sejnowski is an HHMI investigator, the Francis Crick Professor and Director of the Crick-Jacobs Center for Theoretical and Computational Biology at the Salk Institute. He is the author of several books including The Computational Brain and Liars, Lovers, and Heroes: What the New Brain Science Reveals About How We Become Who We Are.



Michael Shermer, a former college professor, is the founding publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Skeptic magazine. A monthly columnist for Scientific American, he is the author of The Science of Good and Evil. His most recent book, Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design, is a discussion of the boundary between religion and science.



Richard Sloan is the author of Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine. He is a professor of behavior medicine at Columbia University Medical Center where he conducts research on the relationship between psychological factors and health, including prayer and medicine.



Neil deGrasse Tyson, the new host of the PBS-TV program "NOVA scienceNOW", is director of the Hayden Planetarium in the Rose Center For Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History. He is the recipient of seven honorary doctorates and the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal.



Steven Weinberg, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin, where he founded its Theory Group and holds the Josey Regental Chair of Science, was awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics with colleagues Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow for combining electromagnetism and the weak force into electroweak force. He has written several popular books including the prize-winning The First Three Minutes, The Discovery of Subatomic Particles, and Dreams of a Final Theory.



James Woodward, the J.O. and Juliette Koepfli Professor of Humanities at the California Institute of Technology, focuses on research regarding the philosophical and normative aspects of causation and explanation. His recent book, Making Things Happen, won the 2005 Latokos Award from the London School of Economics and Political Science.