Speaker Lineup

Leonardo Angulo is the manager and coordinator for the Office of Student Recruitment and Outreach in the College of Natural Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin. He earned a B.S.A. in biochemistry (’19), with a minor in psychology and a health-care certificate. During his time as a student, Angulo was part of a variety of on-campus organizations, such as Camp Kesem and THON, and off-campus opportunities as well, such as volunteering and working for Dell Children’s and Seton Medical Centers. He also conducted research on pancreatic cancer and genetic mutations at MD Anderson for a year. He is a resource for prospective students in the college, serving as an ambassador for Texas Science.

Speaker Engagement

• Recruitment, Outreach and Student Life in Texas Science at Texas Science Festival, March 4, 2025 at 4:00 p.m.

John Antonelli traded in his CPA (certified public accountant) initials for those of CCP — a Certified Cheese Professional — years ago when he opened Antonelli’s Cheese Shop. Antonelli has shared insights on the TEDx stage and been a spokesperson for Capital One’s small business campaign, generating over 10 billion impressions. Celebrating and acknowledging the challenges of entrepreneurship, he is also an advocate for and has spoken publicly about mental health awareness and his personal journey through depression. Incorporating service into his initial business plan, he has served as president to both the American Cheese Society and Austin children’s museum Thinkery, in addition to serving on the advisory board of the Local Business Institute and nonprofit accelerator Philanthropitch. Antonelli has been honored as an Austin Under 40 award recipient, Best Small Business CEO and Top Individuals Impacting the Industry, as well as an inducted member of the Guilde Internationale des Fromagers. 

Speaker Engagement

• Science on Screen Presents: Shelf Life at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 21, 2025 at 7:00 p.m.

Jared F. Benge, Ph.D., ABPP, is a board-certified clinical neuropsychologist and associate professor with the Department of Neurology at Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin and UT Health Austin’s Comprehensive Memory Center within the Mulva Clinic for the Neurosciences. He earned his Ph.D. in clinical psychology with a major area of study in neuropsychology at the University of Houston, completing an internship in clinical psychology and fellowship in clinical neuropsychology at the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center. As a clinician, he specializes in assessment of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias/neurodegenerative disorders. He has had over 70 peer-reviewed publications and numerous international and national conference presentations focusing on technology in cognitive impairment, early detection of cognitive decline and understanding real-world functioning in older adults with dementia/neurodegenerative disease. His work is supported by the National Institutes of Aging, Alzheimer's Association, Texas Alzheimer's Research and Care Consortium, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Parkinson’s Foundation and other organizations. Benge mentors students across a variety of disciplines and serves as the director of the Adult Neuropsychology Post-Doctoral Fellowship at UT Austin.

Speaker Engagement

• The Aging Brain & Digital Technologies at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 28, 2025 at 11:30 a.m.

Violinist David Bernat leads a multifaceted career as a performer, educator and artistic director. Bernat’s recent engagements include performances at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Tanglewood and Marlboro Music Festival. He has appeared as a soloist with the Brookline Symphony, Fort Dodge Symphony and Waterloo Cedar Falls Symphony and given recitals throughout the United States, Europe and China. He holds the 2023-2025 Ensemble Connect Fellowship from Carnegie Hall/the Juilliard School. Bernat received his bachelor’s degree from the New England Conservatory and master’s degree from the Juilliard School where he is currently a C.V. Starr Doctoral Fellow. Bernat recently joined the Formosa Quartet, serving as faculty in residence at University of Houston’s Moores School of Music and the National Youth Orchestra of Canada.

Performance Engagement

• Musical Memories: An Evening of Music & Science at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 27, 2025 at 6:30 p.m.

Mark Bernat has led an active career as a soloist, chamber musician and orchestral player. Trained at the Juilliard School, Mr. Bernat held positions with the Israel Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta and the Jerusalem Symphony under Lukas Foss. He has served as a faculty member at the Oberlin Conservatory and The University of Texas at Austin. He won first prize in the Juilliard Double Bass Competition and the Bloch Competition and has performed in recital at venues including Carnegie Recital Hall and London’s Purcell Room. His transcriptions of major works for the double bass, published by International Music Company, have greatly expanded the solo repertoire for double bass. In 2021, he was recruited back to UT Austin to establish a music program at Dell Seton Medical Center and currently serves as music program coordinator in the College of Natural Sciences.

Performance Engagement

• Musical Memories: An Evening of Music & Science at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 27, 2025 at 6:30 p.m.

Rodney Brooks, Panasonic Professor Emeritus of Robotics at MIT, is a robotics entrepreneur and currently the CTO and co-founder of Robust AI. He is also a founder, former board member and former CTO of iRobot Corp. and the former director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and then the MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He received degrees in pure mathematics from the Flinders University of South Australia and a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University. He held research positions at Carnegie Mellon University and MIT, and a faculty position at Stanford before joining the faculty of MIT. He has published many papers in computer vision, artificial intelligence, robotics, and artificial life and served on numerous advisory bodies in industry and government. Dr. Brooks is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a founding fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (AAAS), among many other distinctions.

Speaker Engagement

• AI x Robotics Research Symposium Keynote Presentation at Texas Science Festival, March 4, 2025 at 9:45 a.m.

Audrey Brumback obtained her M.D. and Ph.D. at the University of Colorado. Dr. Brumback is interested in understanding how abnormal neuronal electrophysiology contributes to the cognitive symptoms of neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism. She uses in vivo and ex vivo electrophysiology combined with tools for manipulating neuronal activity such as optogenetics to investigate how the activity of specific populations of neurons contributes to behavior.

Speaker Engagement

• Memory Matters: Learning Throughout the Lifespan at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 27, 2025 at 5:30 p.m.

Kimberly S. Budil sets the strategic vision for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and exercises broad delegated powers to ensure successful execution of programs and operations to enhance national security through application of cutting-edge science and technology and to maintain an outstanding and diverse workforce. She leads the development and implementation of the laboratory’s scientific vision, goals and objectives and serves as the laboratory’s highest-level liaison with the Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, the LLNS Board of Governors, the University of California and other government, public and private organizations. Budil leads a workforce of approximately 8,700 employees and manages an annual operating budget of approximately $3 billion. Along with the directors of Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories, she shares the responsibility of providing the United States government with an annual institutional assessment of the safety, security and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile and enterprise. She is the 13_^th director of the laboratory and serves as president of Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC. Budil has held roles of increasing management responsibility at the laboratory, most recently serving as principal associate director for Weapons and Complex Integration. Budil served as a detailee twice in Washington, D.C. and was Vice President for National Labs at the University of California Office of the President. She currently serves on several boards and participates in numerous professional and community outreach activities. Budil holds a Ph.D. in engineering and applied science from the University of California, Davis, where she was a Hertz Fellow, and a B.S. in physics from the University of Illinois at Chicago. 

Speaker Engagement

• Shattering Barriers with a Laser Focus: Three World-Changing Women in Physics at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 25, 2025 at 5:30 p.m.

Born and raised in Austin, Justin Camp grew up exploring local Little Bear and Bear Creek in his own backyard. With a deep connection to the Central Texas landscape, he developed a passion for enjoying, studying and protecting the region’s critical natural resources. Camp joined the District team in 2015 after graduating from Texas State University with a B.S. in physical geography, minor in geology and working for seven years with the City of Austin’s Watershed Protection Department. He is an avid caver, exploring and mapping the underground in Texas and Mexico. When he’s not in the water or caving, Camp also enjoys playing guitar and tennis.

Speaker Engagement

• Guardians of Our Water at Texas Science Festival, March 3, 2025 at 6:00 p.m.

Rosemary Candelario writes about and makes dances engaged with Asian and Asian American dance, butoh, ecology and site-related performance. She was awarded the 2018 Oscar G. Brockett Book Prize for Dance Research for her book “Flowers Cracking Concrete: Eiko & Koma's Asian/American Choreographies” and received the 2022 Mid-Career Award from the Dance Studies Association. Candelario is the co-editor with Bruce Baird of “The Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance” and with Matthew Henley of “Dance Research Methodologies: Ethics, Orientations, Practices.” Recent choreographic premieres include aqueous and 100 Ways to Kiss the Trees. Candelario is the Dance Studies Association Vice President for Publications and Research and an associate professor at The University of Texas at Austin Department of Theatre and Dance, who holds a Ph.D. in Culture and Performance from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Performance Engagement

• aqueous at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 24, 2025 at 5:30 p.m.

Praised for her “lyricism of dramatic intensity” and “longevity of phrasing,” cellist Audrey Chen has performed around the world in venues including Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert Hall and the Kennedy Center. Chen is currently the cellist of the prize-winning Terra String Quartet, based in New York City. Chen’s festival appearances include performing at Music@Menlo, Ravinia Steans Music Institute, Perlman Music Program and Tanglewood Music Center. She received her B.A. from Harvard University and an M.M. from the New England Conservatory, where her teachers included Laurence Lesser and Lluís Claret. Currently, she is pursuing a D.M.A. at the CUNY Graduate Center under Marcy Rosen while teaching chamber music at CUNY Hunter College. She was named a 2022 recipient of the prestigious Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. 

Performance  Engagement

• Musical Memories: An Evening of Music & Science at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 27, 2025 at 6:30 p.m.

Ian Cheney is an Emmy-nominated and Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker. He has completed 11 feature documentaries, including King Corn (2007), The Greening of Southie (2008), The City Dark (2011), The Search for General Tso (2014), Bluespace (2015), The Most Unknown (2018), The Emoji Story (2019), Thirteen Ways (2019), Picture a Scientist (2020), The Long Coast (2020) and The Arc of Oblivion (2023). His short films include Two Buckets (2006), Truck Farm (2010), The Melungeons (2013), The Smog of the Sea (2016) and The Measure of a Fog (2017). He received bachelor’s & master’s degrees from Yale University and an MFA in Film from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. A former MacDowell Fellow & Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, he lives in midcoast Maine.

Speaker Engagement

• Science on Screen Presents: Shelf Life at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 21, 2025 at 7:00 p.m.

Isabelle Clark is a graduate student at The University of Texas at Austin and an emerging primatologist. She researches chimpanzee behavior and ecology, focusing on social structures and physiology. In Kibale National Park, Uganda, Clark studied nearly 200 free-ranging chimpanzees, recording behaviors and group dynamics and collecting biological samples for analysis. Her work advances understanding of our closest relatives and contributes to the field of primatology.

Speaker Engagement

• Love and War: What We Can Learn from Chimpanzees at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 28, 2025 at 5:30 p.m.

Laura Colgin received her Ph.D. in mathematical behavioral sciences from the University of California, Irvine. Colgin studies how brain rhythms, electrical waves generated by synchronized activity across neurons, are involved in cognitive processing. She uses multi-site electrophysiological recordings from freely behaving rodents to investigate how brain rhythms in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex affect mnemonic operations and behavior.

Speaker Engagement

• Memory Matters: Learning Throughout the Lifespan at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 27, 2025 at 5:30 p.m.

Katie Dawson uses the arts to increase equity, access and belonging in education. She is an associate professor at The University of Texas in Austin and heads the MFA in Drama and Theatre for Youth and Communities program. At UT, Katie serves as a Provost’s Teaching Fellow and head of Creative Collaborations for the Project Texas 2050 Climate Resiliency interdisciplinary research project. Currently, Katie partners with universities, the U.S. Embassy System and non-governmental organizations in Australia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia, Poland and Bosnia and Herzegovina to improve critical and creative thinking in education. Katie’s award-winning co-authored books include “The Reflexive Teaching Artist and Drama-Based Pedagogy: Activating Learning Across the Curriculum.”

Speaker Engagement

• Creating Constellations of Change with Students and Teachers: The Climate Justice with Youth Project at Ann Richards School, a PT2050 event at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 27, 2025 at noon

JR DeShazo is dean of the LBJ School of Public Affairs at UT Austin. He previously served as the founding director of the Luskin Center for Innovation at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), one of the nation’s leading environmental policy research centers. He is a distinguished scholar focusing on clean technology policies, policy design to enhance environmental equity, methods for valuing changes in environmental quality and the performance of public agencies. Through his research and appointments, he has served as a policy adviser to international organizations such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the United Nations, as well as federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency. Dr. DeShazo earned a doctorate in Urban Planning from Harvard University, a master's in Development Economics from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and a bachelor's degree from the College of William & Mary.

Speaker Engagement

•  The Climate-Driven Home Insurance Crisis: A PT2050 Discussion at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 25, 2025 at 4 p.m.

Todd Ditmire is professor of physics at The University of Texas at Austin, where he directs the Center for High Energy Density Science. He presently works on experimental studies of high intensity laser interactions with matter—including intense laser pulse interactions with atomic clusters, the study of hot, dense plasma properties and the laboratory simulation of astrophysical phenomena. His research involves the development of ultra-high peak power lasers, including the project to build the Texas Petawatt laser at UT Austin, one of the highest power lasers in the United States. Ditmire is a fellow of the American Physical Society. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard in 1991 in physics and art history. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis in 1995 from the Department of Applied Science in Livermore. His Ph.D. research, which focused on high intensity laser technology and laser-plasma interactions, was conducted at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. After a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at Imperial College in London, he returned to Lawrence Livermore to join the staff there in the National Ignition Facility directorate. In 2000, he joined the physics department faculty of UT Austin.

Speaker Engagement

• Shattering Barriers with a Laser Focus: Three World-Changing Women in Physics at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 25, 2025 at 5:30 p.m.

Dr. Dominguez’s scientific accomplishments are evidenced in over 50 publications, numerous research grants, including those from the National Institutes of Health, and several awards related to his research on the brain’s regulation of motivated behaviors and associated disorders, such as addiction. His love of science carries over into his love of teaching, which has been recognized by several teaching awards, including the Ann Repp Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Texas 10 Award distinction of “most inspiring professor,” and, more recently, the President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Award. As vice provost, Dr. Dominguez aims to develop innovative strategies to enhance the quality and impact of education at UT. This includes working with various stakeholders to promote innovative approaches to undergraduate curricula and enhancing interdisciplinary studies and undergraduate research. He aims to work collaboratively with faculty, staff, and students across the University to promote a culture of academic excellence, innovation and engagement in undergraduate education and success.

Speaker Engagement

TEDxUTAustin 2025: What Now? at the Texas Science Festival on March 1, 2025, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.

Michael Drew received his Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia University and currently serves as the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education in the College of Natural Sciences. Drew is interested in understanding the functional significance of adult hippocampal neurogenesis, which is the birth of new neurons in the hippocampus of the adult brain. He uses inducible genetic manipulations and behavioral testing in mice to reveal underlying cognitive and emotional processes that are modulated by neurogenesis.

Speaker Engagement

• Memory Matters: Learning Throughout the Lifespan at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 27, 2025 at 5:30 p.m.

Sandy Eapen is an ESG (Environmental, social and governance), sustainability and social impact strategist with over 20 years of global experience. She holds an MBA and Master of International Affairs from Columbia University, as well as a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from UT Austin. Eapen is the founder of a consultancy, Success Coach for the Sustainability Leadership Program at UT Austin and ESG Instructor at UT Arlington. She was the first Head of ESG & Sustainability at Coupa Software and also served as Director at American Express, where she helped launch a sustainable business committee.

Speaker Engagement

• A.I. and the Clean Energy Revolution: A PT2050 Panel and Networking Event at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 26, 2025 at 5:00 p.m.

Toni Feder is a senior science writer and editor at Physics Today magazine, where she covers the news around physics—people, policy, trends, education, money, facilities and more. Her first area of research was in atmospheric physics, with a focus on the aurora borealis. She earned her Ph.D. in physics at Cornell University for research on lipid and protein diffusion in cell membranes. In parallel with a postdoctoral fellowship in Munich, Germany, she began exploring science writing. She has been at Physics Today for 28+ years.

Speaker Engagement

• Shattering Barriers with a Laser Focus: Three World-Changing Women in Physics at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 25, 2025 at 5:30 p.m.

Anna Hardy Finger, LCSW, is co-director of the Gerontology Resources and the Aging Community in Education (GRACE) Scholars Program, which prepares students to work with older adults, at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work. She is a clinical social worker and educator with extensive experience in health care and aging services. Finger received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Kansas and her master’s in social work from The University of Texas at Austin, where she was a Hartford Partnership Program scholar. With over 12 years at UT Austin, she has worked in clinical roles and has developed programs to improve outcomes for older adults and advance social work education.

Speaker Engagement

• Science on Screen Presents: Shelf Life at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 21, 2025 at 7 p.m.

Karen Fingerman is the Wilson Professor of Human Ecology, Director of the Texas Aging & Longevity Consortium and Director of Research for the UT Austin Center on Aging and Population Sciences. She has over 175 publications addressing social and emotional aging including older adults’ intergenerational family ties, social relationships and physical and cognitive functioning. She received the Distinguished Mentor in Gerontology Award from the BSS section of GSA in 2020, the Baltes Distinguished Research Award in Psychology of Aging from the American Psychological Association in 2022, and took second place in the Great Blanton Bakeoff.

Speaker Engagements

• Science on Screen Presents: Shelf Life at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 21, 2025 at 7 p.m.

Kenneth R. Fleischmann is a professor in the School of Information at UT Austin. He is also the founding chair of the executive team for Good Systems — Ethical AI at UT Austin, and the Founding Director of Undergraduate Studies for the iSchool’s B.A./B.S. in Informatics. His research and teaching focus on the ethics of AI and more broadly on the role of human values in the design and use of information technologies. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), Microsoft Research, Cisco Research Center, Micron Foundation and the Public Interest Technology University Network. His research has been recognized by the iConference Best Paper Award, the ASIS&T SIG-USE Best Information Behavior Conference Paper Award, the ALA Library Instruction Round Table Top Twenty Articles, the ASIS&T SIG-SI Social Informatics Best Paper Award, the Civic Futures Award for Designing for the 100% and the MetroLab Innovation of the Month Award. He currently serves at the editor-in-chief of the ACM Journal on Responsible Computing.

Speaker Engagement

• Teaching AI Literacy: AI and AI Ethics Across Disciplines at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 25, 2025 at 11:00 a.m.

Phyllis Friello is the project manager for the Exploration Medical Integrated Product Team at the NASA Johnson Space Center. She earned a bachelor's of science degree in biology and environmental science from The George Washington University, Washington, D.C., and a master of science degree in biology from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. 

Prior to her current position, she was the manager of science and research at Space Center Houston, overseeing the on-site research and ISS science payloads of the Applied Research Collaborative. 

Her extensive research experience includes studies in risk assessment, and environmental toxicology. She served as chief scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Northeast monitoring program.

Her clinical research includes ophthalmology and neuroimaging at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, the National Institutes of Health and Harvard University, Harvard Medical School where she served as a Senior Research Manager and Scientist. 

Speaker Engagement

• Mars Livestream at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 26, 2025 at 7:30 p.m.

Karl Gebhardt’s research focuses on two main areas: black holes and dark energy. His work on black holes has helped build the case that a class of medium-mass black holes exists in between the stellar-mass black holes that result when massive stars explode as supernovae and the supermassive black holes that lie at the hearts of galaxies. Karl is also one of the architects of HETDEX, the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment. This McDonald Observatory project seeks to understand dark energy, that enigmatic force causing the universe's expansion to speed up. Dark energy has been called the most important puzzle in all of science today. Karl received his Ph.D. in Physics and Astronomy from Rutgers University. He holds the Herman and Joan Suit Professorship in Astrophysics.

Speaker Engagement

• Black Holes: The Edge of All We Know at Texas Science Festival, March 1, 2025 at 7 p.m.

Marci Gleason, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Human Development & Family Sciences and the Associate Chair for the School of Human Ecology. Her research examines how close relationships impact mental, physical and relationship health during major life transitions, with a focus on cancer treatment and personality development. Gleason holds a Ph.D. from New York University and has published in Personal Relationships and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Speaker Engagements

• Nerd Night: Relatable! at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 27 at 7:30 p.m.

Ansh Gupta is a Ph.D. student in astronomy at The University of Texas at Austin. He is currently researching the earliest galaxies and black holes in the universe, studying how they grew and impacted each other over billions of years. He has experience leading public-facing outreach events for almost a decade and currently serves as an organizer for Astronomy on Tap ATX.

Speaker Engagement

• Unlocking Mysteries of Space: Astronomy’s Biggest Discoveries at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 24, 2025 at 7:30 p.m.

Lindsay Hamm Havekost is the assistant director for collections at Landmarks, the public art program of The University of Texas at Austin. In this role, Lindsay works with artists, UT’s Planning, Design and Construction team and other stakeholders to realize Landmarks’ public art projects. She manages the care and conservation of the collection and oversees Landmarks Preservation Guild. Lindsay specializes in managing Post-War and Contemporary Art. With international experience spanning top auction houses, commercial galleries, art fairs and museums, she has worked at institutions such as Christie’s New York, Bonhams Fine Art Auctioneers London, Frieze London and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Before joining Landmarks, she led curation, programming and collection management for a contemporary art gallery with exhibition space across New York and Austin totaling over 10,000 square feet. Her formal background includes two degrees in art conservation, culminating in a master’s from University College London. For her master’s dissertation, she focused on Landmarks and its pioneering partnership with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, building on her time as a member of the Landmarks Preservation Guild. Additionally, she is a candidate for membership with the Appraisers Association of America and is a USPAP-compliant appraiser specializing in post-war, contemporary and emerging art. 

Speaker Engagement

• The Science of Modern and Contemporary Public Art Preservation: A Walking Tour at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 28, 2025 at 4:00 p.m.

David Hillis directs UT Austin’s Biodiversity Center and is the Alfred W. Roark Centennial Professor in Natural Sciences in the Department of Integrative Biology. A recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, he researches the development of evolutionary theory and is the owner of the Double Helix Ranch, which specializes in the genetics and breeding of Texas Longhorn cattle. Hillis is also the author of “Armadillos to Ziziphus,” a celebration of life in the Texas Hill Country which won the 2024 Hamilton Book Award.

Speaker Engagement

• Guardians of Our Water at Texas Science Festival, March 3, 2025 at 6:00 p.m.

Lynn Hoare (she/her) is an applied theatre artist working at the intersection of community needs and big questions. She devises original work using theatre as a tool to imagine justice, build community and foster critical conversations. Lynn’s work is based in participatory performance and theatre of the oppressed, and her most recent project explores curiosity as a way to bridge difference. Lynn is part of the Center for Imagining and Performing Justice, which uses arts-based methods to foster connection and belonging. Lynn is a co-founder of the Performing Justice Project which creates original theatre with young people about gender and racial justice.

Speaker Engagement

• Creating Constellations of Change with Students and Teachers: The Climate Justice with Youth Project at Ann Richards School, a PT2050 event at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 27, 2025 at noon

Megan Kimble is a freelance journalist who writes for publications including The New York Times, Texas Monthly, Houston Chronicle and Bloomberg CityLab, covering housing, transportation and urban development. She is the author of two nonfiction books, City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America’s Highways and Unprocessed: My City-Dwelling Year of Reclaiming Real Food. As political economy reporter for the Hearst Texas Bureau, she has led investigative reporting into the intersection of home insurance and extreme weather in Texas.

Speaker Engagement

•  The Climate-Driven Home Insurance Crisis: A PT2050 Discussion at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 25, 2025 at 4 p.m.

Adam Kraus received bachelor’s degrees in physics, astronomy and mathematics from the University of Kansas in 2003, and a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the California Institute of Technology in 2009. From 2009-2012 he was a Hubble prize postdoctoral fellow at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and from 2012-2013 he was a Clay prize postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Kraus’s research focuses on the formation and evolution of planetary systems, including programs to directly image gas giant planets as they form in orbit around other stars. He also studies the process of star formation, which sets the stage upon which planet formation occurs. His research uses observations from the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, as well as large ground-based telescopes like the twin 10-meter Keck telescopes. He makes extensive use of UT’s McDonald Observatory, especially the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, and will use the future Giant Magellan Telescope that UT and its partners are constructing in South America.

Speaker Engagement

• The Evolution of Planetary Systems Across Time and Space at Texas Science Festival, March 1, 2025 at 2:00 p.m.

Gabrielle Lewis is a teaching artist, dramaturg and performer originally from Round Rock, Texas. She graduated with a B.A. in theatre from Augsburg University, and recently earned her M.F.A. in drama and theatre for youth and communities at UT Austin. Her work as a teaching artist and educator includes activating drama-based pedagogy and devising theatre with K-12 students in school and community settings, guiding K-12 educators in arts integration strategies with Drama for Schools and teaching undergraduate courses on arts integration and acting. Her MFA thesis, titled “Days of Change: Developing a Healing-Centered Devising Practice with Youth,” explored the relationship between healing-centered engagement and youth theatre devising practices, and she continues to explore how her teaching, artistry and scholarship embody a healing-centered approach to working with learners of all ages.

Speaker Engagement

• Creating Constellations of Change with Students and Teachers: The Climate Justice with Youth Project at Ann Richards School, a PT2050 event at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 27, 2025 at noon

Jarrod Lewis-Peacock is director of the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program at UT Austin. He received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His research combines behavioral methods, functional neuroimaging and computational approaches to explore the interplay between attention, learning and memory in healthy adult brains.

Speaker Engagement

• Memory Matters: Learning Throughout the Lifespan at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 27, 2025 at 5:30 p.m.

Elaine Li is the Jack S. Josey Welch Foundation Chair in Science and the director of the new Texas Quantum Institute. An experimentalist, Li’s research focuses on studies of the quantum dynamics of electrons. To meet the technical and societal challenges of the new millennium, scientists must learn how to control material properties at the level of electrons. In this regard, Li studies ultrafast nonlinear spectroscopy in condensed matter and quantum dynamics and control in nanostructures, as well as spintronics, light scattering and optical wave mixing techniques, semiconductor quantum dots, mesoscopic quantum systems, laser physics, optoelectronic devices, ultrafast lasers, quantum interference effects in semiconductors, femtosecond comb technology, multidimensional spectroscopy and quantum information science. She is the winner of numerous awards, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, a Sloan Research Fellowship, an NSF CAREER Award and TAMEST’s Peter O’Donnell Award. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, OPTICA (formerly Optical Society of America) and the American Physics Society.

Speaker Engagement

• Shattering Barriers with a Laser Focus: Three World-Changing Women in Physics at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 25, 2025 at 5:30 p.m.

Jiarong Li is an active chamber musician based in New York City and currently serves as a Collaborative Piano Fellow at the Yale School of Music. She has won prizes at competitions including first prize in the Oxford Philomusica Piano Festival and Summer Academy Competition, the Distinction Award of the Hong Kong-Asia Piano Open Competition and being named a finalist at the New England Conservatory Piano Concerto Competition and semi-finalist at the Foundation for Chinese Performing Arts International Concerto Competition. Li holds a master’s of music in piano performance from New England Conservatory and a bachelor’s degree from Central Conservatory in Beijing. She is currently pursuing her doctorate in collaborative piano with an assistantship at Manhattan School of Music. 

Performance Engagement

• Musical Memories: An Evening of Music & Science at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 27, 2025 at 6:30 p.m.

Yuchen Lu has garnered international recognition for his unique artistry and virtuosity and for his passionate and musically compelling performances. Lu recently won the George and Elizabeth Gregory concerto competition at Mannes and won first prize in the 2021 Irving M. Klein International String Competition and second prize in the 2019 Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition. He was a fellow at the Marlboro Music Festival, performing with artists such as Nobuko Imai, Mitsuko Uchida, Peter Wiley and Joseph Lin. He holds a bachelor’s of music degree from the New England Conservatory as a student of Kim Kashkashian and a master’s of music degree from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Carol Rodland. Lu is currently studying with Milan Milisavljević at the Mannes School of Music for his professional studies diploma. 

Performance Engagement

• Musical Memories: An Evening of Music & Science at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 27, 2025 at 6:30 p.m.

Brian Mulligan is an adjunct professor of astronomy and physics at Austin Community College and St. Edward’s University. His current research focuses on understanding the cause of Type Ia supernovae (exploding white dwarfs). He has over a decade of experience bringing astronomy to the public and is an organizer of Astronomy on Tap ATX and Austin Community College Hands-On Science (ACCHaoS), a hands-on traveling science program.

Speaker Engagement

• Cataclysms to Cosmos: Supernovae, the Universe & Extreme Physics at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 27, 2025 at 6:30 p.m.

Meaghan Perry is the owner and principal conservator of Momentum Art Conservation in Austin, Texas. She holds a B.A. in studio art from The University of Texas and an M.A., C.A.S. from the State University of New York College at Buffalo, where she completed a year of advanced study at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, focusing on the conservation of video, audio and performance-based artworks. Meaghan was previously the assistant objects conservator at The Menil Collection, where she worked extensively with the Menil and Whitney Museum of American Art’s Artists Documentation Program. She has contributed to projects at leading institutions, including SFMOMA, the Brooklyn Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, the Archaeological Institute at Stobi, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Kimbell Museum and the Harry Ransom Center. Meaghan has served on the American Institute for Conservation’s Education and Training Committee and the Electronic Media Group Publication Committee as co-editor of the Electronic Media Group Review. Presently, she is a member of the Texas Collections Emergency Resource Alliance (TX-CERA) and acts as the consulting objects and variable media conservator for the many special collections at The University of Texas at Austin.

Speaker Engagement

• The Science of Modern and Contemporary Public Art Preservation: A Walking Tour at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 28, 2025 at 4:00 p.m.

Dr. Alison Preston received her Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University.  She uses a combination of behavioral and brain imaging techniques to explore how we form new memories, how we remember past experiences and how our memory of the past influences what we learn in the present. Dr. Preston is also interested in the neurocognitive development of memory and reasoning in childhood and adolescence.

Speaker Engagement

• Memory Matters: Learning Throughout the Lifespan at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 27, 2025 at 5:30 p.m.

Laura Rice is the managing producer of “The Texas Standard,” the nationally renowned daily news show of Texas. Rice also produces special projects that have included the National Edward R. Murrow Award-winning documentary “Out Of The Blue: 50 Years After The UT Tower Shooting” and “The Long Haul: Texas And The Pandemic.” Rice previously worked in the local KUT Newsroom as the station’s Morning Edition producer. Laura found radio after a start in television news. She worked as an anchor, reporter and producer at stations in Austin, Amarillo and Toledo, Ohio. She graduated from journalism school at the University of Missouri-Columbia and earned an M.A. from The University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Radio-Television-Film.

Speaker Engagement

• Memory Matters: Learning Throughout the Lifespan at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 27, 2025 at 5:30 p.m.

Leeah Richardson received her bachelor of science in entomology with minors in cognitive science and education from Cornell University. Richardson is currently a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate studying bees in the Department of Integrative Biology at UT Austin.

Speaker Engagement

• Buzzworthy Behaviors & the Sting of Human Stressors at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 27, 2025 at 7:00 p.m.

Saul Rivera graduated from The University of Texas at Austin in 2018 with a bachelor's degree in astronomy and a minor in Spanish. He joined the McDonald Observatory's Visitors Center team in July 2019, where he works as a public programs specialist and assists in teaching astronomy to the general public, both in person and virtually.

Speaker Engagement

• Mars Livestream at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 26, 2025 at 7:30 p.m.

Aaron Sandel is a primatologist whose research explores the social bonds and emotions of our closest ape relatives. Since 2012, Sandel has studied chimpanzees in Uganda, including a rare and violent intergroup conflict at the Ngogo site. His current work expands to include mountain gorillas and humans, furthering the comparative understanding of social behavior and emotions across species.

Sandel is the co-director of the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project and directs the Primate Ethology & Endocrinology (PEE) Lab in the Department of Anthropology at UT Austin. His research focuses on the scientific study of emotions, addressing questions such as: What are emotions, and how can they be studied across species? He employs innovative methods, combining physiological metrics (e.g., urinary metabolites and vital signs) with machine learning to analyze micro-movements and behavior from video data.

Speaker Engagement

• Love and War: What We Can Learn from Chimpanzees at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 28, 2025 at 5:30 p.m.

Peter Stone holds the Truchard Foundation Chair in Computer Science at UT Austin. He is the associate chair of the Department of Computer Science, as well as director of Texas Robotics. In 2013 he was awarded the University of Texas System Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award and in 2014 he was inducted into the UT Austin Academy of Distinguished Teachers, earning him the title of University Distinguished Teaching Professor. Stone’s research interests in artificial intelligence include machine learning (especially reinforcement learning), multiagent systems, and robotics. He received his Ph.D. in computer science in 1998 from Carnegie Mellon University. From 1999 to 2002, he was a senior technical staff member in the Artificial Intelligence Principles Research Department at AT&T Labs — Research. He is an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, Guggenheim Fellow, AAAI Fellow, IEEE Fellow, AAAS Fellow, ACM Fellow, Fulbright Scholar and 2004 ONR Young Investigator. In 2007, he received the prestigious IJCAI Computers and Thought Award, given biannually to the top AI researcher under the age of 35, and in 2016 he was awarded the ACM/SIGAI Autonomous Agents Research Award. Stone co-founded Cogitai, Inc., a startup company focused on continual learning, in 2015, and currently serves as chief scientist of Sony AI.

Speaker Engagements

• Teaching AI Literacy: AI and AI Ethics Across Disciplines at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 25, 2025 at 11:00 a.m.
• AI x Robotics Research Symposium: Opening Remarks and Panel at Texas Science Festival, March 4, 2025 at 9:30 a.m. and 11:15 a.m.

Donna Strickland is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo and is one of the recipients of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics for developing chirped pulse amplification with Gérard Mourou, her Ph.D. supervisor at the time. They published this research in 1985 when Strickland was a Ph.D. student at the University of Rochester in New York. Together they paved the way toward the most intense laser pulses ever created. The research has several applications today in industry and medicine — including the cutting of a patient’s cornea in laser eye surgery and the machining of small glass parts for use in cell phones. Strickland was a research associate at the National Research Council Canada, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a member of the technical staff at Princeton University. In 1997, she joined the University of Waterloo, where her ultrafast laser group develops high-intensity laser systems for nonlinear optics investigations. She is a recipient of a Sloan Research Fellowship, a Premier’s Research Excellence Award and a Cottrell Scholar Award. She served as the president of the Optical Society (OSA) in 2013 and is a fellow of OSA, the Royal Society of Canada and SPIE (International Society for Optics and Photonics). Strickland is an honorary fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering as well as the Institute of Physics. She received the Golden Plate Award from the Academy of Achievement and holds numerous honorary doctorates. 

Speaker Engagement

• Shattering Barriers with a Laser Focus: Three World-Changing Women in Physics at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 25, 2025 at 5:30 p.m.

Nancy Turner is an ethnobotanist, distinguished professor emerita, 2015 Fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and former Hakai Professor in Ethnoecology with the School of Environmental Studies, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. She has worked with First Nations elders and cultural specialists in northwestern North America for over 50 years, helping to document, retain and promote their traditional knowledge of plants and environments, including Indigenous foods, materials and traditional medicines. She has been formally adopted into Haida, Kwakwaka’wakw, Songhees and Nisga’a families. Her two-volume book, “Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge: Ethnobotany and Ecological Wisdom of Indigenous Peoples of Northwestern North America” was winner of The Canada Prize from the Federation of the Humanities and Social Sciences and represents an integration of her long-term research. She has authored or been involved with 30 other books, including “Plants of Haida Gwaii,” “The Earth’s Blanket” “‘Keeping it Living’: Traditions of Plant Use and Cultivation on the Northwest Coast of North America” “Saanich Ethnobotany: Culturally Important Plants of the WSÁNEC’ People” and “Food Plants of Coastal First Peoples,” as well as over 150 book chapters and papers. Her recent edited volume, “Plants, People, and Places: the Roles of Ethnobotany and Ethnoecology in Indigenous Peoples’ Land Rights in Canada and Beyond,” was awarded the Daniel Austin Book award by the American Botanical Council. Her latest book is coauthored with Quwut’sun Elder Dr. Luschiim Arvid Charlie: “Luschiim's Plants: Traditional Indigenous Foods, Materials and Medicines.” She has received a number of awards for her work, including membership in Order of British Columbia and the Order of Canada, honorary degrees from Vancouver Island University, University of British Columbia, University of Northerm British Columbia and Simon Fraser University; the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences’ Canada Prize in the Social Sciences for Ancient Pathways, The Royal Society of Canada’s Innis-Gérin medal and the Neil Towers Award from Natural Health Products Research Society of Canada.

Speaker Engagement

• Learning, Sharing, Adapting with Plants at Texas Science Festival on March 2, 2025

Alexandra van den Berg is a professor in Behavioral Science and Health Promotion at the UT Health Houston School of Public Health in Austin. She is also the associate director of the Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living. Over the past 25 years, Dr. van den Berg has built a research program focused on health disparities related to limited access to healthful foods. More specifically, her research focuses on the development and evaluation of environmental and policy strategies targeting different aspects of food systems to create sustainable changes that impact individuals’ dietary patterns. Recent research studies focus on food as medicine, school gardens and food insecurity. Most recently, this research has evolved to focus on sustainable food systems, climate change and future food security. Her research is informed by both community-based participatory research (CBPR) and team science, and her studies involve extensive collaborations among many different partners, including community organizations, faculty from other universities, community residents and local health workers. 

Speaker Engagement

• Growing a Healthy Future in School Gardens at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 21, 2025 at 12:00 p.m.

Vauhini Vara is a writer — a journalist, editor, fiction writer, essayist and playwright — in Colorado. She began her journalism career as a technology reporter at The Wall Street Journal and later launched, edited and wrote for the business section of The New Yorker’s website. Since then, her writing has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Wired and elsewhere. She is a Businessweek contributing writer and can sometimes be found working as a story editor at The New York Times Magazine. Her debut novel, The Immortal King Rao (Norton, 2022), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Publications that named it a notable book of the year include NPR and The New York Times, where Justin Taylor called it “a monumental achievement.” Her story collection, This is Salvaged (Norton, 2023), was longlisted for The Story Prize and the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, and named by The New Yorker, Publisher’s Weekly and others as a notable book of the year. Her third book, a work of nonfiction called Searches — an examination of how technology companies are both serving and exploiting the human desire for connection and understanding, most recently with artificial intelligence — will publish in 2025. Vara is also the author of a play, Ghost Variations — a stage adaptation of her essay “Ghosts” — which was selected to be performed as part of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts’s 2024 Colorado New Play Summit. Vara has given lectures and readings at the Chautauqua Institute, the New York State Writers Institute and the Jaipur Literature Festival, as well as at Stanford University, Princeton University, the Ohio State University and many other institutions.  Her journalism has been honored by the Asian American Journalists Association, the South Asian Journalists Association, the International Center for Journalists, the McGraw Center for Business Journalism, the International Journalists’ Programmes and the National Association of Real Estate Editors. Her fiction has received an O. Henry Award, as well as honors from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, MacDowell, Yaddo and Hedgebrook. Her creative nonfiction has been honored by the Best American Essays series and the Canada Council for the Arts. She is a mentor at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop’s Book Project and was a founding mentor for Periplus, a collective mentoring writers of color. She sits on the board of the Krishna D. Vara Foundation, which awards an annual scholarship to a graduating high-school student at Mercer Island High School in memory of her sister, Krishna Vara. Vara was born in Saskatchewan, Canada, as a child of Indian immigrants and grew up there and in Oklahoma and the Seattle suburbs. She lives in Colorado with her husband, the writer Andrew Altschul, and their son.

Speaker Engagement

• If AI Can Write, Why Should We? at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 26, 2025 at 4:30 p.m.

Dr. Ed Viesturs is widely regarded as this country’s foremost high-altitude mountaineer. He is familiar to many from the 1996 IMAX Everest Expedition documentary. In 2002, he was awarded the historic Lowell Thomas Award by the Explorer’s Club for outstanding achievement in the field of mountaineering. He has also received the American Alpine Club Sowles Awards for his participation in two rescues on K-2 and National Geographic’s Adventurer of the Year recognition.

After earning his doctorate in Veterinary Medicine in 1987 while also serving as a guide on Mount Ranier, Dr. Viesturs decided to embrace his passion for climbing the highest peaks of the world full-time. Viesturs has successfully reached the summits of all of the world’s fourteen 8000-meter peaks without supplemental oxygen, an 18-year project he christened Endeavor 8000. He is one of only a handful of climbers in history (and the only American) to accomplish this. His books about his experiences include “No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks,” “K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain” and “The Mountain: My Time on Everest.”  

Speaker Engagement

• No Shortcuts to the Top at the Texas Science Festival, Feb. 27, 2025 at 7 p.m.

S. Craig Watkins, Ph.D., is the Ernest A. Sharpe Centennial Professor in Communication and the executive director of the IC2 Institute at UT Austin. His research focuses on the technical, social and ethical implications of artificial intelligence, exploring the challenges — and opportunities — we face in deploying AI in high-stakes contexts like health care.

Speaker Engagement

• If AI Can Write, Why Should We? at Texas Science Festival, Feb. 26, 2025 at 4:30 p.m.