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Dr. Christopher Baglow serves as the Director of the Science & Religion Initiative at the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame, creating programs, courses, talks and publications that bring the Catholic faith and modern science into dialogue. His work is the culmination of 18 years of faith and science scholarship and educational program creation, as well as a lengthy career in Catholic theological education spanning high-school, undergraduate, graduate and seminary teaching. In his five years as Director, SRI has seen major growth, reaching over 2700 Catholic leaders and educators from diocesan offices and parishes, but above all science and religion teachers from Catholic high schools, supported by three successive grants from the John Templeton Foundation. For this work, he was co-recipient of an Expanded Reason Award in Teaching from the Universidad Francisco de Vitoria (Madrid) and the Vatican Joseph Ratzinger Foundation (Rome).
Dr. Stephen M. Barr is President of the Society of Catholic Scientists and Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Particle Physics at the University of Delaware. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1978. His research has centered mainly on “grand unified theories” and the cosmology of the early universe. In 2011, he was elected to be a Fellow of the American Physical Society “for his original contributions to grand unification, CP violation, and baryogenesis.” He writes and lectures extensively on the relation of science and religion. He is the author of Modern Physics and Ancient Faith (Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 2003) and The Believing Scientist: essays on science and religion (Eerdmans, 2016). He was elected in 2010 to the Academy of Catholic Theology and was awarded the Benemerenti Medal by Pope Benedict XVI.
Dr. David Brown, S.J., is a Jesuit priest and an astrophysicist at the Vatican Observatory, where he does research on the evolution of stars. He received his Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the University of Oxford in 2008, and holds masters degrees in both philosophy and theology. Fr. Brown’s research interests in the field of stellar evolution are primarily concerned with the study of horizontal branch stars, including so-called “subdwarf B" (or sdB) stars, seeking to understand the formation mechanisms of such stars in different environments, including in the galactic field, open and globular clusters, and elliptical galaxies. More recently, he has begun to study pulsating sdB stars from an observational standpoint using the VATT in Tucson. Future plans include the study of the role of stellar rotation in how Horizontal Branch stars evolve. In addition to his research, Fr. Brown is caretaker of the telescopes of the Vatican Observatory in Castel Gandolfo.
Dr. Kate Bulinski is an Associate Professor of Geosciences in the Department of Environmental Studies at Bellarmine University. She received her B.S. in Geoscience from The Pennsylvania State University and her Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Bulinski’s current research efforts are focused on exploring the paleoecological relationships of Paleozoic coral ecosystems at the Falls of the Ohio State Park in Clarksville, Indiana. Kate is the 2017 recipient of the Excellence in Science Education and Outreach from the Kentucky Academy of Science, the 2017 recipient of the William T. Miles Memorial Award for Community Service and received the Doris A. Tegart Teaching Excellence Award in 2023.
Dr. Maria Camarca Is a postdoctoral researcher in Planetary Science at Caltech, having received her Ph.D. there in 2025. Her thesis work was on interferometric imaging of Jupiter’s second largest moon, Callisto, using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). She is interested in using big telescopes on the ground and in space to access and interpret the fascinating geology encoded on the surfaces of icy moons in the Solar System. She also has expertise in high-resolution near-infrared spectroscopy of comets.
Dr. Ruben Michael Ceballos is Associate Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Merced. His laboratory is dedicated to studying (1) the evolution and ecology of microbes with focus on thermophilic archaea, micro-algae, cyanobacteria, and their viruses; (2) the common mechanisms underlying double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) virus-host dynamics across domains of life; (3) the impact of viral infection on cell function and cell-cell signaling (i.e., in neuronal systems); and, (4) the development microbial-based biotechnologies from extremophile microbe systems.
Heather Foucault-Camm is Project Director at the McGrath Institute for Church LIfe at the University of Notre Dame. She received an M.Sc. in Physical Chemistry from University of Ottawa in Canada and a PSGC in Science Education from University of Leeds in the UK, has completed the program for the National Certificate in Health Care Ethics from the NCBC, and is working towards an M.A. in Theology at the University of Notre Dame. A veteran science teacher and curriculum expert, she has created and implemented a high school course with a two-part focus on the Church’s historic relationship with science and bioethics.
Dr. Cory Hayes is the Dean of Discipline and teaches Humanities and Theology at John Paul the Great Academy in Lafayette, LA. He holds a Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. His research and teaching interests include: Byzantine and Eastern Christian theology, Philosophy of Nature, and the relation between Catholic theology, philosophy, and empirical science. He and his wife Jennifer reside in Lafayette, LA and they have 8 children.
Max Hirsch is a third-year graduate student and PhD Candidate in Applied Mathematics at UC Berkeley. His mathematical research interests include numerical methods for solving partial differential equations, optimization, machine learning for scientific computing, reduced order models, and applications to liquid crystals and fluids.
Dr. Kieran McNulty is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, where he was awarded the McKnight Land-Grant Fellowship 2008, named Scholar of the College in 2017, and has received multiple teaching awards. His principal interests are in the evolution of apes and humans, pursued through paleontological fieldwork in eastern Africa. Kieran conceived of and directs the NSF-funded REACHE project, a collaborative network that coordinates field research at all of the Early Miocene fossil ape sites in eastern Africa, working in close association with the National Museum of Kenya and Uganda National Museum. His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, Wenner-Gren Foundation, and Leakey Foundation. He is a member of the Society of Catholic Scientists and was received the Leading with Faith award from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
Dr. Robert J. Scherrer is Professor of Physics at Vanderbilt University and was from 2004 to 2016 served Chair of the Physics Depart there. Prior to that he was a professor at The Ohio State University. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from University of Chicago in 1986. He has published over 120 research papers does on cosmology, dark matter, dark energy, and the physics of the early universe. In addition to his research publications, he is the author of a quantum mechanics textbook and numerous popular science articles and science fiction short stories. He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2001 and in 2010 was given the Klopsteg Award of the American Association of Physics Teachers.
Dr. Andrea Schreier is Director of the Genomic Variation Laboratory in the Department of Animal Science at UC Davis. She received her Ph.D. in Conservation Ecology from UC Davis in 2012. In her research, she applies genetic and genomic tools to improve management and conservation of fish and wildlife species, understand the role of polyploidy in vertebrate evolution, and improve aquaculture sustainability to protect fisheries resources. She has been working with sturgeon species for over a decade and is particularly interested in their conservation, ecology, and evolution.
Esteban Veliz is currently completing a doctorate in the Plant Biology Department at UC Davis, where he investigates how root microbiomes assemble from agricultural soils through microbe-microbe and plant-microbe interactions. With support from an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, he developed experimental methods to explore these dynamic relationships using reproducible models that can capture distinct facets of their complexity. Esteban earned a Bachelor of Science from UCLA, where his work on rhizobia-legume symbioses and root nodule microbial synergies shaped his current research.
Dr. John Voss is Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine at UC Davis. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota Medical School. His research interests are in observing molecular switching in proteins, as well as protein folding and assembly. This work is carried out in large part through the use electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR — a.k.a. ESR) spectroscopy. He uses this approach to address problems in several biological systems, including those related to cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases. He is the recipient of the 1998 Charles E. Culpeper Biomedical Initiative Award and the , American Heart Association's 2000 Scientist Development Award.
Dr. Waterhouse is Professor of Chemistry at UC Davis in the Department of Viticulture and Enology. He received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. Dr. Waterhouse is a well-known wine chemist. His research activity focuses on the chemistry of a class of natural phytochemicals called “phenolic compounds”, addressing two types of effects: those that are important to the taste of wine and those that relate to health effects on wine consumers. In both cases, his laboratory collaborates with others who can help utilize the data and assist in our understanding of these compounds.