Joel Salatin is a third generation beyond organic farmer and author whose family owns and operates Polyface Farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. The farm produces salad bar beef, pigaerator pork, pastured poultry, forage-based rabbits and direct markets everything to 4,000 families, 40 restaurants, and 10 retail outlets.
Jon R. Cohen, M.D., is Senior Vice President, Chief Medical Officer, and Director of Hospital Services for Quest Diagnostics. Quest Diagnostics, with annual revenues of over $7.5 billion, is the world’s leading provider of diagnostic testing, information and services.
Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. is the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In that role he oversees the work of the largest supporter of biomedical research in the world, spanning the spectrum from basic to clinical research.
Diane A. Kelly is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research interests include the evolution of copulatory systems and sexual differentiation in the nervous system. She is best known for her original work on the anatomy and function of vertebrate penises, but has also written children’s books, created exhibits for science museums, helped exhume a mastodon, and designed and published a pair of quirky science card games.
Edward Osborne Wilson is generally recognized as one of the leading biologists in the world. He is also recognized as one of the foremost naturalists in both science and literature, as well as synthesizer in works stretching from pure biology to the social sciences and humanities. Wilson is acknowledged as the creator of two scientific disciplines (island biogeography and sociobiology), three unifying concepts for science and the humanities jointly (biophilia, biodiversity studies, and consilience), and one major technological advance in the study of global biodiversity (the Encyclopedia of Life).
In his day job, Ed Gavagan is the owner of PraxisNYC, a design/build firm practicing across a broad spectrum but specializing in boutique residences. Ed creates homes and furniture for fancy people and humble folk the world over. His work on four continents has been featured in newspapers, magazines, books and even the Internet.
Atul Butte, M.D., Ph.D. is Chief of the Division of Systems Medicine and Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Medicine, and by courtesy, Computer Science, at Stanford University and Lucile Packard Childrens Hospital.
Originally from San Francisco, Basil is a third generation puppeteer who lives and works in New York City, and is the sole American graduate of the Ecole Superieure Nationale des Arts de la Marionnette in France. Original creations include The Araneidae Show, Symphonie Fantastique, Petrushka, Master Peter’s Puppet Show, Dogugaeshi, and La Bella Dormente nel Bosco.
Cookie Monster is a frenzied-but-cuddly monster from Sesame Street who preschoolers can identify with, specifically with his efforts to master words and phrases, and learn basic problem-solving skills from his eternal quest to find more food.
An award-winning writer and broadcaster, Ben Goldacre was trained in medicine at Oxford and London and now works full time as a physician. Since 2003, he has written the weekly Bad Science column in The Guardian, where he debunks any and all unfounded scientific claims made by parties from government to journalists and pharmaceutical companies.