The world-class faculty for PopTech’s Science Fellows Program generously share with the Fellows their deep expertise in leadership, collaboration, communications and public engagement.
 | Jad Abumrad
WNYC/NPR’s Radiolab
Jad Abumrad is the host and producer of WNYC’s Radio Lab, an award-winning radio series that explores big ideas through conversation, sound, and storytelling. Radiolab currently reaches upwards of a million people per episode and has been called “possibly the very best thing on public radio today.” The son of a scientist and a doctor, he did most of his growing up in Tennessee, before studying creative writing and music composition at Oberlin College in Ohio. Following graduation, Abumrad wrote music for films, and reported and produced documentaries for a variety of local and national public radio programs. |
 | Philip E. Bourne
University of California San Diego
Philip E. Bourne, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California San Diego, Associate Director of the RCSB Protein Data Bank and an Adjunct Professor at the Burnham Institute. He is a Past President of the International Society for Computational Biology. He is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) and the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). He is the co-founder and inaugural and current Editor-in-Chief of the open access journal PLoS Computational Biology and a long standing member of the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and Genome Canada panels responsible for reviewing proposals relating to computational biology. |
 | David Braun
National Geographic
David Braun is editor in chief of National Geographic News, the digital news service of the National Geographic Society. He also manages National Geographic’s Science and Environment digital content (including Energy). Additionally, he directs the Society’s blogging strategy, with executive editorial responsibility for the ScienceBlogs network of 80 scientist bloggers in North America, Brazil, and Germany, and for News Watch, an international blogging network of more than 50 National Geographic journalists, scientists, explorers, and partners who focus on the issues and solutions at the intersection of the needs of people and Earth’s capacity to provide. |
 | Sean Carroll
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Sean B. Carroll is an award-winning scientist, author, and educator. He is currently Vice President for Science Education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His research has centered on the genes that control animal body patterns and play major roles in the evolution of animal diversity. Major discoveries from his laboratory have been featured in TIME, US News & World Report, The New York Times, Discover, and Natural History. Sean is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. |
 | Dennis Dimick
National Geographic
Dennis Dimick serves as Executive Editor for the Environment at National Geographic magazine, where he leads coverage of energy, climate, and sustainability issues. He guided the creation of a single-topic issue on global freshwater in April 2010, and architected a year-long 2011 series called “7 Billion,” on global population and its impact. The magazine’s climate change and energy projects have received awards from the Society of Environmental Journalists, the Overseas Press Club, and Pictures of the Year International.
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 | Peter Durand
Alphachimp Studio
Peter Durand is a designer and facilitator who uses visual learning in collaborative strategy and design situations to accelerate change. Peter is co-founder and creative director of Alphachimp Studio, an information graphics and facilitation firm. He lives in Nashville with his wife (and Alphachimp Studio co-founder) Diane and their two daughters. Alphachimp Studio serves clients across North America, Europe and Asia.
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 | Thomas A. Kalil
White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
Thomas Kalil is Deputy Director for Policy for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and serves as Senior Advisor for Science, Technology and Innovation for the National Economic Council. He was formerly the Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Science and Technology at UC Berkeley. He has served as chair of the Global Health Working Group for the Clinton Global Initiative; as a Senior Fellow with the Center for American Progress, where he co-authored A National Innovation Agenda; and as the Deputy Assistant to President Clinton for Technology and Economic Policy. |
 | Sarah Laskin
National Geographic
Sarah Laskin is Vice President and COO for Mission Programs at the National Geographic Society. Through the Mission Programs Special Projects group, she oversees the Explorers Program, including the Society’s relationships with the Explorers-in-Residence, the NG Fellows, and the Emerging Explorers, and key program initiatives such as the Enduring Voices Project and Genographic. She is also a member of the Society’s Conservation Trust, a grant-making committee which supports conservation of the world’s biological and cultural diversity.
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 | Peter Lee
Microsoft Research
Peter Lee serves Microsoft as a Distinguished Scientist and managing director of Microsoft Research Redmond (MSR-R). MSR-R drives scientific and engineering advances in computer science and engineering and related areas, many in cross-collaboration among Microsoft’s worldwide labs. Lee came to Microsoft from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) where he served as the founding director of the Transformational Convergence Technology Office, and was previously a professor and head of the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon University. |
 | Jeff Nesbit
Climate Nexus
Jeff Nesbit is Executive Director of Climate Nexus, a new, national initiative focusing on climate and clean energy communications. A senior communications strategist with 25 years of experience, Jeff most recently served as director of the Office of Legislative and Public Affairs at the National Science Foundation, where he oversaw the agency’s communication activities with the public, Congress, the news media, states and governors and various scientific, engineering and education organizations.
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 | Cameron Neylon
Science and Technology Facilities Council
Cameron Neylon is a biophysicist who has always worked in interdisciplinary areas and is an advocate of open research practice and improved data management. He currently works as Senior Scientist in Biomolecular Sciences at the ISIS Neutron Scattering facility at the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). Along with his work in structural biology and biophysics, his research and writing focuses on the interface of web technology with science and the successful (and unsuccessful) application of generic and specially designed tools in the academic research environment.
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 | Christie Nicholson
Scientific American
Christie Nicholson is a multimedia science journalist based in New York. She is a contributing editor at Scientific American, where she developed and launched an online community and helped launch two video series and two audio podcasts. Currently she produces and hosts the weekly podcast, 60-Second Mind and produces 60-Second Earth. She is an on-air contributor to multiple Web and TV shows that have appeared on Slate, Discovery Channel, Scientific American and the Science Channel. A graduate of Columbia University’s School of Journalism, she co-created the “Science of Sex,” a Web site that won two Webby Awards. This year she spoke at the Stanford/MIT VLAB and SXSW Interactive about brain-machine interface, and she speaks frequently about the current upheaval in traditional communication due to the Web. She is a faculty member at the Banff Centre for the Arts where every August she teaches an intensive two-week seminar in science communication. |
 | Joe Palca
National Public Radio
Joe Palca is a science correspondent for NPR. Since joining NPR in 1992, Palca has covered a range of science topics — everything from biomedical research to astronomy. In addition to his science reporting, Palca is backup host for Talk of the Nation Science Friday. Palca began his journalism career in television in 1982, working as a health producer for the CBS affiliate in Washington, DC. In 1986, he left television for a seven-year stint as a print journalist, first as the Washington news editor for Nature, and then as a senior correspondent for Science Magazine. Palca has won numerous awards, including the National Academies Communications Award, the Science-in-Society Award of the National Association of Science Writers, the American Chemical Society James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public, the American Association for the Advancement of Science Journalism Prize, and the Ohio State Award. Palca was president of the National Association of Science Writers from 1999-2000. |
 | Lisa Witter
Fenton
Lisa Witter is chief strategy officer at Fenton, the largest public interest communications firm in the country, where she heads up the firm’s work in innovation and co-leads the practices in women’s issues, health, social entrepreneurship and global affairs for clients including Women for Women International, Nobel Peace Prize Winner Wangari Maathai, MoveOn.org, International Criminal Court, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies, The American Medical Association, David and Lucille Packard Foundation, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Stonyfield Yogurt. She is a co-founder of the award-winning SheSource.org, an online brain trust of women experts to help close the gender gap among commentators in the news media. She has appeared on NPR, MSNBC, FOX News, CBS Early Show, O, the Oprah Magazine and has been published in Newsday, The New York Times, The Seattle Times, Anderson Cooper 360, Huffington Post, AlterNet and Blogher, among others. |
 | Andrew Zolli
PopTech
As the curator and executive director of PopTech, Andrew Zolli is an expert in global foresight and innovation, studying the complex trends at the intersection of technology, sustainability and global society that are shaping our future. He also serves as a fellow of the National Geographic Society, where he leads development of initiatives to envision new scenarios for a sustainable world in 2030 and beyond, and as the first Business and Society Fellow of the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship. Zolli has previously served as Futurist-in-Residence at publications including Popular Science and American Demographics magazines, as well as Public Radio’s Marketplace. He is also a visiting fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. Zolli was recently named to Vanity Fair’s “Next Establishment” list of emerging global leaders, and his work, writings and ideas have appeared in a wide array of media outlets, including PBS, National Public Radio, The New York Times, Wired, BusinessWeek, ID, Fast Company, The History Channel and many others. |
