Lawrence Bender
Lawrence Bender is a producer and political activist based in Los Angeles. His film “An Inconvenient Truth” raised unprecedented awareness about climate change and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. His other films to date – including “Inglorious Bastards”, “Pulp Fiction” and “Good Will Hunting”, among many others – have garnered box office revenues of over a billion dollars, have been honored with 36 Academy Award nominations, and have won 8 Academy Awards. Bender also produced the documentary “Countdown To Zero”, which details the risk posed by proliferation, terrorism, and accidental use of nuclear weapons. He is a founding member of Global Zero, an organization of leaders around the world aimed at the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. Bender is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Pacific Council, the Israeli Policy Forum, and co-chair of the board of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA. He is a recipient of the Torch of Liberty Award from the ACLU.
Nadia Drake
Nadia Drake is a science journalist and contributing writer at National Geographic. She received an A.B. in biology, psychology, and dance at Cornell University, where she also earned a Ph.D. in genetics and development. She is a 2011 graduate of the Science Communications program at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the daughter of SETI pioneer Frank Drake. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Nature, New Scientist, Scientific American, Science News, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Wired. Drake was awarded the 2016 Jonathan Eberhart Planetary Sciences Journalism Award for her essay “Scientists in Flying Telescope Race to Intercept Pluto’s Shadow” and the 2017 David N. Schramm Award for her piece “Found! Gravitational Waves, or a Wrinkle in Spacetime“. More recent works include “Dear Kepler: How you wrung worlds from the cosmos and changed my life” and “How Old Are Saturn’s Rings? The Debate Rages On”.
Jacob Margolis
Jacob Margolis is a science Reporter at KPCC – Southern California Public Radio. He is the host of the carefully researched and influential podcast “The Big One: Your Survival Guide“, which forecasts the impact of a large earthquake on Los Angeles and provides information on how to prepare for the disaster.
Deborah Netburn
Deborah Netburn is a science reporter for the Los Angeles Times. After graduating from Wesleyan University and interning at New York Magazine, she began her career at The New York Observer where she covered a variety of subjects in and around Manhattan. Netburn has worked at the Los Angeles Times since 2006, where she has written engaging science stories such as “Ancient eclipse records show that days on Earth are getting just a little longer”, “After discovering more than 2,600 planets, NASA’s Kepler space telescope is headed for retirement”, and “Here it is, the first-ever image of a black hole”.
David Saltzberg
David Saltzberg is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at UCLA. He has been the science consultant for The Big Bang Theory since its pilot episode. He helped out by checking scripts and meeting with the producers, writers, set decorators, prop masters, and more to ensure scientific accuracy on the show. He subsequently consulted on a number of television programs including “Manhattan”, “The Leftovers”, “Scijinks”, “The Watchmen”, and “Young Sheldon”. Saltzberg received a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1989 from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1994, where he contributed to the discovery of the top quark. His research interests include high-energy neutrino astronomy and the Large Hadron Collider. Saltzberg is the recipient of a Sloan Fellowship, NSF Career Award, DOE Outstanding Junior Investigator Award, and Antarctica Service Medal. The asteroid “8628 Davidsaltzberg” is named after him.