Bill T. Jones

Bill T. Jones is the Executive Artistic Director of New York Live Arts. A multi-talented artist, choreographer, dancer, theater director and writer, he has received major honors ranging from a 1994 MacArthur “Genius” Award to Kennedy Center Honors in 2010. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2009 and named “An Irreplaceable Dance Treasure” by the Dance Heritage Coalition in 2000. His ventures into Broadway theater resulted in a 2010 Tony Award for Best Choreography in the critically acclaimed Fela!, the musical co-conceived, co-written, directed and choreographed by Mr. Jones. He also earned a 2007 Tony Award for Best Choreography in Spring Awakening, as well as an Obie Award for the show’s 2006 off-Broadway run.

Oliver Sacks

Oliver Sacks, M.D. is a physician, a best-selling author, and a professor of neurology at the NYU School of Medicine. He is best known for his collections of neurological case histories, including The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat(1985), Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (2007) and The Mind’s Eye (2010). Awakenings (1973), his book about a group of patients who had survived the great encephalitis lethargica epidemic of the early twentieth century, inspired the 1990 Academy Award-nominated feature film starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams. The New York Times has referred to him as “the poet laureate of medicine.” Dr. Sacks is a frequent contributor to the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Lawrence Weschler

Lawrence Weschler, guest curator of Live Ideas: The Worlds of Oliver Sacks, currently serves as the director of the Institute for the Humanities at New York University. He is a graduate of Cowell College of the University of California at Santa Cruz (1974), and was for over twenty years (1981-2002) a staff writer at The New Yorker, where his work shuttled between political tragedies and cultural comedies. His books of political reportage include The Passion of Poland (1984); A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers (1990); and Calamities of Exile: Three Nonfiction Novellas(1998). His “Passions and Wonders” series includes the acclaimed Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder (1995), which was shortlisted for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has taught, variously, at Princeton, Columbia, UCSC, Bard, Vassar, Sarah Lawrence, and NYU. He held the position of Artistic Director of the Chicago Humanities Festival from 2006 through 2011. He is also a contributing editor to McSweeney’s and the Threepeeny Review.

Chris Adrian

Chris Adrian received his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop and his M.D. from Eastern Virginia Medical School. He completed his residency in pediatrics in San Francisco before starting a divinity degree at Harvard Divinity School. He then interrupted these studies to return to San Francisco to complete a pediatric fellowship. Adrian published Gob's Grief the same year he earned his medical degree, following that up with two other novels, The Children’s Hospital and The Great Night. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2009 and in 2010 and was named as one of The New Yorker's "20 Under 40" list of writers worth watching.

Aletta Collins

One of the UK's leading theatre, opera and dance choreographers, Aletta Collins has worked for companies including the National Theatre, Opera North and the Berlin Philharmonic. She also choreographed Awakenings for Rambert Dance Company which premiered in 2010.

Orrin Devinsky

Dr. Devinsky is Professor of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry at NYU School of Medicine. He directs the NYU Comprehensive Epilepsy Center and the Saint Barnabas Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery (INN). He received his B.S. and M.S. from Yale University, M.D. from Harvard Medical School and interned at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital. He has published widely in epilepsy and behavioral neurology, with more than 250 articles and chapters and more than 20 books and monographs. He has chaired several committees of the American Epilepsy Society and has served as a Board member. He is active in the American Academy of Neurology and the Epilepsy Foundation. He is the Co-Editor of Reviews in Neurological Diseases, Epilepsy and Behavior, and Epilepsy.com.

Susan Barry

Susan R. Barry received her PhD in biology from Princeton University and is a professor of neurobiology in the Department of Biological Sciences at Mount Holyoke College. She had been cross-eyed and stereoblind since early infancy but learned to see in three dimensions at age forty-eight by retraining her visual system with optometric vision therapy. Her story was first described by Oliver Sacks in his New Yorker article, "Stereo Sue", and then greatly expanded by Sue in her book, Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist's Journey Into Seeing in Three Dimensions.

Lynne Cox

Lynne Cox is an American long-distance open-water swimmer and writer. She has twice held the record for the fastest crossing of the English Channel and is best known for swimming the Bering Strait, and swimming more than a mile in Antarctica. Her book about the experience, Swimming to Antarctica, was praised by Oliver Sacks.

Carol Enseki

Carol Enseki is currently an independent museum and education consultant. In 2009, Ms. Enseki stepped down from her position as president of the Brooklyn Children’s Museum where she served for more than 20 years. She led the museum’s efforts to increase educational opportunities for urban children through interactive science and cultural exhibitions and programs, innovative use of collections, and strategic collaborations with both local community organizations and national partners. In 2005, she was appointed to the Accreditation Commission of the American Association of Museums and has been active in the creation of a field-wide Museums and Diversity National Initiative. Ms. Enseki has served on the boards of the American Association of Museums, the Association of Children’s Museums, the Arts & Business Council, Inc., the Brooklyn Arts Council, the Heart of Brooklyn cultural partnership, and the Cultural Institutions Group of New York City. She holds a B.A. from Tufts University and an M.A. in Environmental Design from Beacon College.

John Bennet

John Bennet has worked as associate editor of Promenade Magazine, editor at Backpacker Magazine, and copy editor and then, for the past many decades, as a senior editor at The New Yorker. Bennet graduated from the University of North Texas with a B.A.

Teresa Curtin

Teresa Curtin is an experienced attorney with twenty-five years experience in complex civil litigations at trial and appellate level.  A 1988 New York University School of Law graduate, she is admitted in the States of New York, New Jersey, and Maine, and has practiced in front of the First, Second and Ninth federal appellate courts.  She has been admitted pro hac vice in Arizona, California, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Texas.  Ms. Curtin is deaf and fluent in American Sign Language (“ASL”).  She worked as a teacher of the deaf at Governor Baxter School for the Deaf in Maine and New York School for the Deaf in White Plains prior to law school and has served on the Board of Directors of deaf schools and deaf organizations.  As well as being a consultant to Maine Center on Deafness, handling various civil matters for Deaf clients of same organization, Ms. Curtin acted as co-counsel with Legal Aid Society in the Clarkson v. Coughlin, 91 CIV 1792 (S.D.N.Y. 1995), class-action lawsuit related to access of Deaf inmates to ADA accommodations while in the custody of the New York Department of Correctional Services.  She drafted numerous amicus curiae briefs for the New York State Criminal Bar Association related to deafness including the successful People v. Rippic challenge to the alleged “confession” of Deaf defendant made through layperson “interpreters.”  She has also brought federal 1983 civil rights actions related to deaf persons who have been denied the right to sign language or accommodations in a wide variety of circumstances.   Ms. Curtin is also an  internationally published photographer and writer, whom in her free time enjoys spending time with her family and large labradoodle. 

Dan Frank

Daniel Frank works at the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, where he is editorial director of Pantheon Books and senior editor at Alfred. A. Knopf. He has been Oliver Sacks’ editor since 1994.

Dr. Jonathan Cole

Jonathan Cole, a onetime student of Oliver Sacks’, is a clinical neurophysiologist. He has written extensively about living with sensory loss, facial visible difference and paralysis from the first person perspective. Cole is a consultant in clinical neurophysiology at Poole Hospital and Salisbury Hospital’s Spinal Center, a professor at Bournemouth University and a visiting senior lecturer at Southampton University in Britain.

Natalie de Souza

Natalie de Souza is an editor at Nature Methods, a scientific journal that reports advances in methodology for basic biological research. Her doctoral research was on protein movement within cells; her post-doctoral research was on molecular and cellular aspects of animal development, which she studied in worms.

Steven Frucht

Steven Frucht, MD, an expert on dystonia, has combined his musical experience and medical expertise to found Musicians with Dystonia, a program of the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation designed to help musicians cope with this debilitating condition. Frucht studied music at the Juilliard School pre-college division, and later developed a passion for medicine, particularly for clinical diagnosis, and earned his MD from Harvard Medical School in 1993. In addition to chairing the scientific advisory board of the Musicians with Dystonia group, he treats patients with a variety of movement disorders as an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Currently, he is a professor of Neurology at Mount Sinai.

Miguel Gutierrez

Miguel Gutierrez, a dance and music artist based in New York, has been called “one of our most provocative and necessary artistic voices” by Eva Yaa Asantewaa of Dance Magazine. He makes solo and group pieces with a variety of artists under the moniker Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People. His work has toured internationally at several festivals and venues and has received support from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Art, United States Artists, Creative Capital, Jerome Foundation, Rockefeller MAP Fund, NYFA, NEA and NPN. He is the winner of three New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" awards. WHEN YOU RISE UP, a book of his performance texts, is available from 53rd State Press. He also invented DEEP AEROBICS, an absurdist workout for the radical in all of us.

Roald Hoffmann

Roald Hoffmann studied chemistry at Columbia and Harvard Universities. A professor at Cornell University since 1965, Hoffmann is currently the Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters, Emeritus. He has received many of the top honors of his profession, including the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. "Applied theoretical chemistry" characterizes Hoffmann's particular blend of computations stimulated by experiment and the construction of generalized models of frameworks for understanding. He is also a poet, a playwright (coauthor with Carl Djerassi of “Oxygen”) and the host of the monthly Entertaining Science series at the Cornelia Street Café in New York City.

Aaron Kubbey

Lowell Handler

Lowell Handler is a former Black Star contract photographer-journalist. As the star, narrator, guide, and associate producer of the Emmy-nominated PBS television documentary Twitch & Shout, Handler reached a mainstream audience and set the stage for his 1998 memoir, Twitch & Shout: A Touretter’s Tale, published by Penguin. Lowell Handler is on the faculty at Dutchess Community College.

Marsha Ivins

Ivins, born in Baltimore, Maryland, earned a degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1973 and went to work for NASA's Johnson Space Center. She worked mainly on orbiter displays and controls before being assigned as a flight engineer in 1980 and co-pilot on NASA administrative aircraft. In 1984, Ivins was selected as an astronaut candidate, going on to fly on five Space Shuttle missions. Her hair, weightless, is a pretty startling sight (see the photo on Wikipedia). Ivins retired from NASA on December 31, 2010.

Wendy Lesser

Wendy Lesser is a critic, novelist, and editor. She is the founding editor of The Threepenny Review, and author of nine books, including her latest nonfiction book Music for Silenced Voices. Lesser has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities and the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.

Roger Hanlon

Roger Hanlon, Senior Scientist at the Marine Biology Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA, investigates the behavior of cephalopods and other marine organisms with an integrative biology approach focused at the organismal level. Currently, his research focuses on the highly interdisciplinary subject of camouflage and the visual perception processes that are involved.

Jeffrey Kittay

Jeffrey Kittay researches how to design everyday environments – particularly auditory and music environments -- that are cognitively and sensuously rich for people with significant cognitive disabilities. After a stint as a professor of literature at Yale, he founded and edited a magazine devoted to the more profound and colorful aspects of leading the academic life: Lingua Franca. He went on to teach at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, and is now a developer of new products for the largest media company in Maine.

David Leventhal

David Leventhal was a member of the Mark Morris Dance Group from 1997-2010. He received a 2010 Bessie Award for his performance work with Mark Morris. David is the program manager and one of the founding teachers of Mark Morris Dance Group's Dance for PD® program, a collaboration with the Brooklyn Parkinson Group that offers weekly classes for people with Parkinson's at the company's studios in Brooklyn. The program conducts similar classes in more than 40 communities around the world, and presents regular training workshops for teachers interested in leading Dance for PD® classes.

Daniel Hay-Gordon

Daniel Hay-Gordon is a choreographer, teacher and performer. He is interested in film, theater and music videos. He has performed in works by the Rambert Dance Company, the National Dance Company of Wales, Tanztheater Wuppertal, Welsh Independent Dance, The English National Opera, The Royal House Opera House, Scenes from Salzberg, Impermanance Dance Theatre, among others.

Karen Kohlhaas

Kohlhaas recently directed the Off-Broadway world premiere of Annie Baker's play BODY AWARENESS for Atlantic, and also directed actress/comedienne Judy Gold in the Drama Desk Award nominated one woman show 25 Questions for a Jewish Mother by Kate Moira Ryan and Ms. Gold which played at the Montreal Comedy Festival, Ars Nova in NYC, ran 6 months Off-Broadway at the St. Luke's Theatre, and is now on a national tour. Other Off-Broadway and regional productions include Harold Pinter's The Hothouse (Atlantic), Keith Reddin’s Synergy (Alley Theatre, world premiere) and FRAME 312 (Atlantic, NY premiere); David Mamet's Boston Marriage (New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater, NY premiere) and The Water Engine (Atlantic); three productions of An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein in New York and Sydney; and Kate Moira Ryan's OTMA (U.S. premiere). She has also directed at Naked Angels, New Dramatists, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and other New York theaters. The current Pinter Alaska production reprises her 2010 staging of the short play with the Atlantic Theater Company at the Classic Stage Company.

Gerald Marks

Gerald Marks is an artist working along the border of art and science, specializing in stereoscopic 3-D, since 1973. He may be best known for the 3-D videos he directed for The Rolling Stones during their Steel Wheels tour. He has taught at The Cooper Union, The New School for Social Research, and the School of Visual Arts, where he currently teaches Stereoscopic 3-D within the MFA program in Computer Art. He was an artist-in-residence at San Francisco’s Exploratorium and a Visiting Scholar at the MIT Media Lab, where he worked with computer-generated holography. His Professor Pulfrich’s Universe installations are popular features in museums all over the world, including the Exploratorium, The N.Y. Hall of Science, Sony ExploraScience in Beijing & Tokyo, The American Museum of Natural History, the National Institutes of Health, and Discover Magazine. He has created a large variety of 3-D artwork for advertising, display, and pharmaceutical use, as well as broadcast organizations Fox and MTV, Public Theater, SOHO Rep, Kaatsbaan International Dance Center, and the Nashville Ballet.

Jennifer Michael Hecht

Jennifer Michael Hecht is the author of three history books and two volumes of poetry and she is currently serving as one of the five judges for the Nonfiction category of the 2010 National Book Award. Her bestseller Doubt: A History demonstrates a long, strong history of religious doubt. Hecht’s The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism, and Anthropology won the Phi Beta Kappa Society’s 2004 Ralph Waldo Emerson Award “for scholarly studies that contribute significantly to interpretations of the intellectual and cultural condition of humanity.” Her most recent book, The Happiness Myth brings a skeptical eye to modern wisdom about the good life. Hecht’s poetry books are The Next Ancient World which won three national poetry awards, and Funny which Publisher’s Weekly called “one of the most original and entertaining books of the year.” Her prose and poetry appear in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post. Hecht earned her Ph.D. in the History of Science from Columbia University in 1995 and now teaches in the MFA program of Columbia University and The Graduate Writing Program of The New School University.

Robert Krulwich

Robert Krulwich is an American radio and television journalist. Formerly and economics and now a Science Correspondent with NPR, he is also the co-host (with Jad Abumrad) of Radiolab, a nationally distributed radio and podcast series that explores new developments in science for people who are curious but not usually drawn to science shows. Radiolab won a Peabody Award in 2011. Krulwich has been awarded the Extraordinary Communicator Award by The National Cancer Institute as well as an AAAS Science Journalism Award. Krulwich earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Oberlin College and a law degree from Columbia University and was for many years a correspondent with ABC News, between his two long stints with NPR.

Colin Mcginn

Colin McGinn is a philosopher of mind. McGinn is currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami with previous posts at the University of Oxford and Rutgers University. His books include The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds In A Material World, The Making Of A Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy and Shakespeare’s Philosophy.

Lewis Merkin

For over 30 years his acting career has taken him all over the world. Broadway: original cast "Children of a Lesser God" (1979-1982); London: "Equus" (1981); 2 years with the National Theatre of the Deaf (1986-1988); Off-Broadway: "On House" WPA Theatre (1997), "Epic Family Epic" dir. Ain Gordon (2003, 2007), regional theatres and TV. He is the co-writer (with Drew Emery) of "Language of One", a journey of a Deaf, Gay, Jewish architect, which was produced initially in Seattle (1993) and subsequently produced at New York Deaf Theatre (1995) and the Australian Theatre of the Deaf (1999). As a consultant, he worked with Mary Louise Parker, Michael O’Keefe and Rosie Perez on "Reckless" MTC, “Fetes de la Nuit” “A Movement of the Soul”.

Alva Noë

Alva Noë is a writer and a philosopher whose work focuses on the nature of mind and human experience. He is the author of Action in Perception, Out of Our Heads, and Varieties of Presence. Noë is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley and philosopher-in-residence with The Forsythe Company.

Terrylene Sacchetti

The Deaf community reveres and regards Terrylene as one of their foremost celebrities, and one of their own: the actress who not only represents them truthfully in the roles she plays, but fluently and artistically preserves and celebrates their authentic native language, Ameslan: American Sign Language. Terrylene was met with overwhelming applause for her critically acclaimed, autobiographical one-woman stage play, “In The Now,” which toured nationally and has been adapted into an indie feature film, entitled “The Upper Room” currently waiting to be fully funded for the production phase. Most recently, Terrylene devoted her craft to Ameslan poetry in hope of enlightening others to this under-recognized art form. She also dedicated her time & talent in creating entertaining E-learning website for toddlers to promote healthy bilingual development by the age of five, (www.clercschildren.com.) Terrylene is grateful to NY Live Arts for taking the lead in presenting this play in Ameslan’s truest artistic form. She hopes for this play to inspire the audience in creating new cutting edge work in the Ameslan’s artistic dimension.

Luke Mitchell

Luke Mitchell is a writer and editor in Brooklyn. He was a senior editor of Harper's Magazine and the deputy editor of Popular Science. His work has also appeared in, among other publications, Bass Player, the London Review of Books, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.

Michael Nyman

Celebrated for his modular, repetitive style, minimalist composer Michael Nyman is among experimental music’s most high-profile proponents, best known in connection with his film scores for director Peter Greenaway. Also a music critic, Nyman has written for The Listener, New Statesman and The Spectator. In 1986, Nyman composed the acclaimed chamber opera The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, based on the Oliver Sacks’ title.

Dr. Daniela Schiller

Daniela Schiller is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at Mt. Sinai Hospital. She investigates the neural mechanisms underlying emotional control and flexibility. She is particularly interested in how, given that our contemporary environment is constantly changing, we need to continuously update our emotional responses. Her research team uses neuroimaging, pharmacology and psychophysiology to understand the neural mechanisms that create such emotional flexibility, and to promote new forms of treatment. Her subjects include those with normal brains as well as patients with anxiety disorders.

Robbin Moran

Robbin Moran is curator of Botany at the New York Botanical Garden, and is an expert on Ferns. He holds a PhD from The University of Illinois. He was the main writer for a volume of Flora Mesoamericana, the largest fern flora catalog ever written, containing over 1400 species. Periodically, he teaches a full-semester, graduate-level course in the study of ferns at The New York Botanical Garden. He is the President of the New York Chapter of the Fern Society (of which Sacks is also a member in fervent good standing), and serves as Associate Editor for Brittonia, the New York Botanical Garden's journal of systematic botany, and for the American Fern Journal.

Aniruddh D. Patel

Theoretical neurobiologist Aniruddh D. Patel’s work focuses on music and the brain, specifically on the cognitive and neural mechanisms of the relationship of music and language. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), Patel explores brain dynamics during the perception of musical sequences. Dr. Patel holds a PhD in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University and is a Postdoctoral Fellow at The Neurosciences Institute and teaches at Tufts.

Bassam Z. Shakhashiri

Bassam Z. Shakhashiri is the first holder of the William T. Evjue Distinguished Chair for the Wisconsin Idea at UW-Madison. The Encyclopedia Britannica sites him as the "dean of lecture demonstrators in America." His scholarly publications, including the multi-volume series, Chemical Demonstrations: A Handbook for Teachers of Chemistry, are models of learning and instruction that have been translated into several languages. He promotes the exploration and establishment of links between science, the arts and the humanities, and the elevation of discourse on significant societal issues related to science, religion, politics, the economy, and ethics. Professor Shakhashiri has just completed a term as the 2012 president of the American Chemical Society.

Bill Morrison

Over the past twenty years Bill Morrison has built a filmography of more than thirty projects that have been presented in theaters, museums, galleries and concert halls worldwide. His work often makes use of rare archival footage in which forgotten film imagery is reframed as part of our collective mythology, most notably in his epic exploration of mouldering celluloid, Decasia. Morrison's films are in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, The Nederlands Filmmuseum, and The Library of Congress. He is a Guggenheim fellow and has received the Alpert Award for the Arts, an NEA Creativity Grant, a Creative Capital grant, and a fellowship from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. His work with Ridge Theater has been recognized with two Bessie awards and an Obie Award.

Tobias Picker

Tobias Picker is a composer who studied at the Manhattan School of Music, The Juilliard School and Princeton University. Mr. Picker’s works have been performed by The New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, and most recently The Rambert Dance Company which has commissioned a large-scale ballet based on Awakenings by Oliver Sacks. Tobias Picker is Artistic Advisor of NYC’s Dicapo Opera Theatre.

Orchestra of St. Luke's

Now in its 38th season, Orchestra of St. Luke’s (OSL) is one of America’s foremost and most versatile ensembles. OSL was formed at the Caramoor International Music Festival in the summer of 1979, after evolving from St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble, which was established at The Church of St. Luke in the Fields in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1974. Dedicated to engaging audiences throughout New York City and beyond, OSL performs approximately 70 concerts each year—including an annual Chamber Music Series at The Morgan Library & Museum and Brooklyn Museum, an Orchestra Series at Carnegie Hall, and a summer residency at Caramoor International Music Festival. OSL's Principal Conductor is Pablo Heras-Casado.

Walter Murch

Walter Murch is one of the foremost sound and film editors in the world. His first role as sound editor was Francis Ford Coppola's film The Rain People. Other film credits include: American Graffiti, The Godfather: Part II, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Jarhead, and The English Patient for which Murch was awarded two of his three Oscars, for both sound and film editing. Walter coined the term "Sound Designer" for his work on the film Apocolypse Now. He was the subject of Michael Ondaatje’s The Conversations, and himself has composed the classic brief manual on editing, In the Blink of an Eye, and just published a book of adapted translations of writings by the controversial Italian mid-century journalist Curzio Malaparte, The Bird that Swallowed its Cage.

Paul Roossin

Paul is a Manhattan-based science and technology consultant. He trained as a neurobiologist at Rockefeller University where he studied the mechanisms of memory. Seduced by computers, he then worked for fifteen years at IBM's Research Division, where he and his team created the world's most accurate French-to-English machine translation system. As an entrepreneur, one of his two internet startups was successful, and recently he found himself working briefly as a venture capitalist.

Dennis Stevenson

Dennis Stevenson is the Vice President for Laboratory Research at the New York Botanical Garden and editor of the Botanical Review. He received his PhD from the University of California at Davis in 1975. His expertise is in cycads, monocots, and genomics.

Elizabeth Streb

Elizabeth Streb is a recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation 'Genius' Award (1997) and a member of the New York City Mayor's Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission. Streb is also a member of the board of the Jerome Foundation and a member of the Atlantic Center for the Arts National Council. She holds a Master of Arts in Humanities and Social Thought from New York University, a B.S. in Modern Dance from SUNY Brockport and two honorary doctorates (SUNY Brockport and Rhode Island College). She is the recipient of numerous other awards and fellowships including the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1987; a Brandeis Creative Arts Award in 1991; two New York Dance and Performance Awards (Bessie Awards), in 1988 and 1999 for her "sustained investigation of movement"; and over 20 years of on-going support from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). In 2010, Feminist Press published her book, STREB: How to Become an Extreme Action Hero.

Ian Waterman

Since the age of nineteen, Ian Waterman has lived his life without any proprioceptive sense—an awareness, that is, of where the various parts of his body are located at any given moment—due to an acute sensory neuropathy in which the necessary myelinated nerve fibers for proprioception were damaged. To complete simple tasks, he must focus all his energy to position his body in the right space. Often referred to as “The Man who Lost His Body” (the title of a documentary about his fate), he is also the subject of his doctor Jonathan Cole’s book, Pride and the Daily Marathon.

Gwen Welliver

Gwen Welliver is a Bessie Award winning dancer, a choreographer, visual artist and renowned teacher. Her movement and visual works investigate figurative and nonfigurative approaches to anatomy, gender, age and sexual orientation in both real and fantastical forms. Welliver’s work has been presented both on the stage and in gallery settings. Recent support for her process has come from a Center for Performance Research Mellon Foundation Residency, Dance Theater Workshop Studio Series Commission and Creative Residency, Museum of Arts and Design Creative Residency, Manhattan Community Arts Fund Grant, New Music USA’s 2013 Live Music For Dance Program and New York Live Arts “DTW Commissioning Fund".

Connie Tomaino

Dr. Connie Tomaino is a pioneer of music therapy for individuals suffering from brain trauma or degenerative diseases. Tomaino is the executive director and co-founder of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function and senior vice president for music therapy at CenterLight Health System. Since 1980, Tomaino has worked as Sacks’ advisor on all things musical. www.musictherapy.imnf.org

Kim Weild

Kim Weild is a theatre director based in New York who is also a choreographer, performer, writer and teacher. She specializes in new plays, re-imagined classics and devised work. Her work is ensemble based and deeply collaborative. It is thoroughly grounded in narrative, honoring text while weaving matrices of movement, sound and images. In 2010 she founded WeildWorks with the inaugural production Fêtes de la Nuit which went on to be nominated for a Drama Desk Award and seven New York Innovative Theatre Awards, including Outstanding Director. Kim is the recipient of a Kennedy Center Directing Fellowship (design program with Ming Cho Lee and Constance Hoffman), a Shubert Fellow, the 2006 Williamstown Theatre Festival Foeller Fellow, an SDC Guest Artist Initiative Award, a 2010 TCG National Conference Nominated Artist Attendee, a Women’s Project alumna, New Georges Affiliated Artist and member of SDC. She received her BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and an MFA Columbia University in the City of New York.

Jumaane Williams

New York City Concilman Jumaane Williams is a first-generation Brooklynite of West Indian parentage. He has been fighting for affordable housing for most of his career. Jumaane served as the Housing Director for the Flatbush Development Corporation, where he re-constituted a defunct housing program. Most recently, he was the Executive Director of the NYS Tenants & Neighbors, a state-wide organization that fights for tenants’ rights and affordable housing through organizing and advocacy. He is a proud product of our public school system including Brooklyn Tech and Brooklyn College.

Donna Uchizono

Donna Uchizono is the Artistic Director of Donna Uchizono Company, a New York-based company established in 1990. Since her choreographic debut in 1988, Uchizono rapidly emerged from the “downtown scene” as a choreographer known for her spicy movement, wit and rich invention. In addition to being a Guggenheim Fellow and a Bessie Award winner, Uchizono has been recognized by many awards, most recently with a 2005 Alpert Award in Dance.