(Partial List)
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.
Deacon Ned Berghausen is the Theology chair at Assumption High School and a permanent deacon at St. Agnes Catholic Parish in Louisville, KY. He received his M.A. in Theology from St. Meinrad School of Theology and his M.Ed. from the University of Notre Dame. He is married to Dr. Kate Bulinski, a paleontologist, and is the father of four children. He frequently teaches and preaches about the relationship between faith and science.
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. Anna Christianson is Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Bellarmine University. She received her Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry from Texas A&M University. She has conducted research on fluorescent main group compounds, including phosphines and organoantimony compounds, for applications in chemical sensing.
Dr. Paul Clark is Assistant Professor in the School of Nursing at the University of Louisville, where he teaches Pharmacology and Foundations for Professional Nursing Practice. He obtained his Ph.D. in Nursing from the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio and a Masters degree in Theology from the Washington Theological Union. Besides his teaching, Dr. Clark is a Nurse Scientist at Baptist Health – Louisville.
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.
Christopher Graney is an Adjunct Scholar at the Vatican Observatory. For some years now his research focus has been the history of astronomy, especially the late 16th and early 17th centuries. That research has resulted in two scholarly books: Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science Against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo (2015), and Mathematical Disquisitions: The Booklet of Theses Immortalized by Galileo (2017), both published by the University of Notre Dame Press. He is also co-author with Br. Guy Consolmagno of When Science Goes Wrong: The Desire and Search for Truth (2023), a book for popular audiences published by Paulist Press.
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.
Dr. Dan Kuebler is Professor of Biology at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, where he teaches courses on evolution, cell physiology, and science and faith. He is the project co-lead for the Purposeful Universe, a Templeton funded grant that focuses on examining the order and purpose inherent in the world around us. which includes the Purposeful Lab podcast that he co-hosts with Catherine Hadro. Dan is the co-author of The Evolution Controversy: A Survey of Competing Theories (Baker Academic, 2007) and another forthcoming book on Evolution and Catholicism (Word on Fire Press) and he has written both academic and popular articles on issues related to science, religion and ethics. He is Vice-President of the Society of Catholic Scientists. He has been married to his wife Nellie for 26 years and has six kids and resides in Steubenville Ohio.
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. Martha Carlson Mazur is Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky. She holds a doctorate in Natural Resource Management from University of Michigan and served as a research scientist at the US Geological Survey and a visiting professor at Boston College. In her scientific research she uses observational data and statistical analyses to study ecosystem process and function in transition zones between landscapes and aquatic ecosystems to understand human impacts and improve restoration effectiveness. In her pedagogical research, she examines the effectiveness of community engagement for enhancing student learning. In her teaching, she engages students in participatory learning and critical and creative thinking to foster effective environmental problem-solving.
Dr. Eugene Mueller is Professor of Chemistry at the University of Louisville. He received a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Illinois (Urbana) and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Harvard University. His research has focused on the enzymology of the chemical modification of RNA and currently on the detection of transient chemical modification of RNA and its physiological importance. Since 2022, he has also served as Chair of the Faculty Senate and University of Louisville Trustee.
Dr. Robert J. Scherrer is Professor of Physics at Vanderbilt since 2003. Prior to that he was on the faculty at The Ohio State University (1989-2003). He served formerly as Physics Department Chair at Vanderbilt (2004 – 2016). 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 is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and winner of the 2010 Klopsteg Award of the American Association of Physics Teachers.
Amanda Waelde is a bioengineering graduate student in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department at the University of Notre Dame. Some of her research interests are in drug delivery and diabetes research. She completed her undergraduate degree at Notre Dame in biological sciences with minors in theology and bioengineering. As an undergraduate her research was in optimizing and testing properties of a novel protease.
Dr. Gerard Williger is Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Louisville. He received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, England. After postdoctoral positions at the Cerro Tololo Interamerical Observatory in Chile and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, he did research at NASA's Gooddard Space Flight Center and Johns Hopkins University. He does research on the large-scale structure of the universe, galaxies, quasars, proto-planetary disks and other topics.