Robert Lanza, MD is one of the most respected scientists in the world— a U. S. News & World Report cover story called him a "genius" and "renegade thinker," even likening him to Einstein. Lanza is head of Astellas Global Regenerative Medicine, Ocata Chief Scientific Officer, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He was recognized by Time magazine in 2014 on its list of the "100 Most Influential People in the World." Prospect magazine named him one of the Top 50 "World Thinkers" in 2015. He is credited with several hundred publications and inventions, and over thirty scientific books, including the definitive references in the field of stem cells and regenerative medicine. A former Fulbright Scholar, he studied with polio pioneer Jonas Salk and Nobel Laureates Gerald Edelman and Rodney Porter. He also worked closely (and coauthored a series of papers) with noted Harvard psychologist B. F. Skinner and heart transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard. Dr. Lanza received his undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was both a University Scholar and Benjamin Franklin Scholar. Lanza was part of the team that cloned the world's first human embryo, as well as the first to successfully generate stem cells from adults using somatic-cell nuclear transfer (therapeutic cloning). In 2001 he was also the first to clone an endangered species, and recently published the first-ever report of pluripotent stem cell use in humans.
Matej Pavš ic is a physicist interested in foundations of theoretical physics. During his more than 40 years of research at the Jozef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana, Slovenia, he often investigated the subjects that were not currently of wide interest, but later became hot topics. For example, in the 70s he studied higher dimensional, Kaluza-Klein theories, and in the 80s he proposed an early version of the braneworld scenario that was published, among others, in Classical and Quantum Gravity. Altogether, Pavsic has published more than one hundred scientific papers and the book The Landscape of Theoretical Physics: A Global View. He is among the pioneering authors in topics such as mirror particles, braneworld, and Clifford space, and has recently published important works explaining why negative energies in higher derivative theories are not problematic, which is crucial for quantum gravity. Pavsic studied physics at the University of Ljubljana. After obtaining his master's degree in 1975, he spent a year at the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Catania, Italy, where he collaborated with Erasmo Recami and Piero Caldirola. Under their supervision he completed his PhD thesis which he later defended at the University of Ljubljana. Pavsic has participated at many conferences as an invited speaker and regularly visited the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste.
Bob Berman
""this is a fascinating guy"" — David Letterman
""fasten your seatbelts and hold on tight"" — Astronomy magazine
Bob Berman is the most widely read astronomer in the world. Author of more than one thousand published articles, in publications such as Discover and Astronomy magazine, where he is a monthly columnist, he is also astronomy editor of The Old Farmer's Almanac and the author of four books. He is adjunct professor of astronomy at Marymount College, and writes and produces a weekly show on Northeast Public Radio, aired during NPR's Weekend Edition.
