Dr. Kira Podolsky works at the interface of chemistry and biology to understand the point at which non-living matter exhibits life-like functions. As a Schmidt Science Fellow in Prof. Ronald T. Raines’ laboratory at MIT, she investigates how simple peptide catalysts could have acted as evolutionary precursors to modern enzymes. Her work appears in Nature and ACS journal, she received the inaugural Stratingh Award in Molecular Chemistry, and she is recognized for her mentorship at MIT. Dr. Podolsky’s research bridges molecular chemistry and synthetic biology to build minimal, programmable systems that probe how chemistry becomes life, with the long-term goal of translating discoveries about primitive catalysts and artificial cells into platform technologies for engineering biology.

Alex Cagan is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Genetics, Pathology, and Veterinary Medicine at the University of Cambridge, and Theme Lead for Reproduction, Development and Lifelong Health. His research investigates somatic evolution (how mutations accumulate and selection operates in healthy tissues) and what this reveals about cancer and ageing. His group focuses on three areas: ageing, cancer resistance mechanisms including Peto's Paradox, and environmental monitoring. Originally trained in Anthropology as a Cambridge undergraduate, he later moved into genetics and now conducts research at both Cambridge and the Wellcome Sanger Institute. He is also an accomplished scientific illustrator, with work featured on the cover of Nature.

Ros Rickaby is a marine biogeochemist, currently the Chair of Geology at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, having been Professor of Biogeochemistry since 2010, on the dark side (of blue!), as well as mum to two boys. She received her MA and PhD from Magdalene College, Cambridge University, finally leaving (!) in 1999 to study at Harvard for her post-doc with Dan Schrag before being appointed as faculty in Oxford in 2002 and never leaving since. Ros has pioneered an interdisciplinary blend of biology and chemistry to define the evolving role of the mineralising phytoplankton, in driving climate and the habitable environment. She had the extraordinary luck to spend a decade with R. J. P. Williams thinking about the cycle of life unwittingly poisoning its own success, resulting in the book “Evolution’s Destiny: C-evolving chemistry of the environment and life”. For her research, she has won 20 years of continuous ERC funding, and been recognised by prestigious medals including from the European Geosciences and American Geophysical Union and was appointed FRS in 2022.

Dr. Richard Stockey is an Associate Professor at the University of Southampton, specialising in Earth system evolution and its impact on planetary habitability. Following his BA and MSci degrees in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge, he received a PhD in Geological Sciences from Stanford University. Since 2022, he has been Lecturer in Palaeobiology at the University of Southampton, becoming Associate Professor in 2026. Richard’s research is primarily computational in nature, integrating Earth system, biogeochemical and ecophysiological modelling approaches. His research continues to illuminate links between atmospheric composition, ocean environments and the evolution of complex ecosystems dominated by multicellular organisms. 

Dr. Berea is a double PhD (economics and computational social sciences) and an associate professor of computational and data sciences at George Mason University. She is also a research investigator with Blue Marble Space Institute of Science and an affiliate with the SETI Post-detection Hub. Her research has focused mostly on applying computational and AI methods to astrobiology and other complex systems phenomena in space sciences (such as heliophysics), for which she received three awards of merit from Frontier Development Lab (AI Research Accelerator) and from NASA. Her current research is focused on modeling human factors for crewed space missions. 

Dr. Berea has long experience working in NASA appointed positions in astrobiology: the UAP Independent Study Group, Communicating Discoveries in The Search for Life in the Universe Group, NASA Decadal Astrobiology Research and Exploration Strategy Task Force 1 - Workforce and ECR Focus Area Lead and now she is leading a working group at the SETI Post Detection Hub focused on observing and detecting Sociosignatures. In her AI courses she is teaching AI methods based on Apollo, Kepler and TESS data. She is also the mission head for the ASPIRE One mission that created digital content for a microchip that landed on the Moon with the Firefly mission, and she is the co-PI of the GMU Grand Challenge Initiative Space Center.

Jonathan Hongtao Jiang (蒋红涛) is a Chinese-American atmospheric and space scientist and astrophysicist. He was a Senior Research Scientist and Principal Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology, where he led the Aerosol and Cloud Research Group. His work spanned climate science, atmospheric physics, satellite remote sensing, astrophysics, and space science. As of 2025, Jiang has an h-index of approximately 66.