Astronomer, planetologist and entrepreneur, Franck Marchis is the founder of the SkyMapper platform which aims to revolutionize the future of citizen astronomy.

Lauren Sgro is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the SETI institute. She currently leads Unistellar’s Exoplanets Program, in which participants record transit data for both known and candidate exoplanets. Graduated with her PhD in Physics from the University of Georgia in 2022, Lauren Sgro was recently appointed the Outreach Manager for LaserSETI, the SETI Institute’s optical SETI survey, which holds a goal of making its data publicly available.

Dr. Rachel Huchmala is an exoplanet scientist and outreach specialist. Rachel runs a NASA funded program throughout Idaho called Telescopes for Teachers that has provided Unistellar telescopes to K-12 teachers throughout the state for use in the classroom and for participatory science. Combining this program and her research in Ultra Hot Jupiter exoplanets, Rachel's newest project, the SuPerPiG Observing Grid, encourages participants of Telescopes for Teachers to observe target exoplanets and host stars in support of the upcoming NASA Pandora mission.

I am an astronomer, technologist, and creative focused on using online media to engage people in learning and doing science. Join me as we map our Solar System in unprecedented detail through citizen science projects, and learn astronomy through media productions like Astronomy Cast & EVSN.tv. I received my PhD in Astronomy from the University of Texas in 2002 and today I’m a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute and spend my spare time kicking around the internet as StarStryder.

Jackie Faherty is an associate curator in the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History. She works at the forefront of brown dwarf and exoplanet atmosphere detection and characterization and strives to create more opportunities for underrepresented minorities to enter STEM fields through unique outreach endeavors. Faherty has nearly 200 peer reviewed publications, is the recipient of multiple NSF, NASA and private foundation awards and is a co-founder of the popular citizen science project Backyard Worlds.

Dr. Patrick Treuthardt is the Assistant Head of the Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Lab at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. His work deals with understanding the evolution of nearby galaxies by studying their different forms and structures. He is especially interested in spiral galaxies and how their morphology connects to some of their more elusive properties, like the size of the supermassive black hole in their nucleus. He is the leader of two citizen science projects, Spiral Graph and Spiral Graph: Cluster Buster, that are used to measure how tightly wound the arms are in thousands of spiral galaxies. 

Ariel is a Research Scientist at the SETI Institute and leads Unistellar’s comet program. She conducts all of her research in collaboration with citizen scientists around the world. Ariel earned her PhD in Geophysics and Space Physics from UCLA’s Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences department. Her work focuses on the astronomy of small bodies in the Solar System, including comets and asteroids.