Jim Al-Khalili is a professor of physics at the University of Surrey in Guildford, England, and a frequent presenter of television programs about science for the BBC and Britain’s Channel 4. He is the editor of Aliens: The World’s Leading Scientists on the Search for Extraterrestrial Life.

Sarah Scoles is a science journalist and former associate editor of Astronomy magazine. She is the author of Making Contact: Jill Tarter and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. She is based in Denver.

The Rev. Michael Heller is a Catholic priest, philosopher and cosmologist at the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow, Poland. He has written numerous books and articles — mostly in Polish — about the nature of the universe, its origins and something he calls a “theology of science.” He received the 2008 Templeton […]

The Rev. Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti is an Opus Dei priest and a professor of fundamental theology at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome. He previously was an astronomer and researcher at the Observatory of Turin in Turin, Italy. He is editor of The Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science, where he tackled the […]

The Rev. David Wilkinson is a professor of theology and religion at Durham University in Durham, England. He is also an ordained Methodist minister with a doctorate in the study of star formation and the evolution of galaxies. He is the author of Science, Religion and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

Dirk Schulze-Makuch is a professor at the Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Technical University in Berlin and the author or co-author of five books on the possibility of extraterrestrial life, including The Cosmic Zoo: Complex Life on Many Worlds.

Clément Vidal describes himself as a “big questions philosopher.” He is a researcher and an assistant professor at the Free University of Brussels in Belgium. Among his areas of study is the potential impact the discovery of intelligent alien life would have on society.

Steven Dick is an astrobiologist and editor of The Impact of Discovering Life Beyond Earth  and Many Worlds: The New Universe, Extraterrestrial Life and Theological Implications. In 2013, he gave a joint lecture on the same subject at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion.

Stephen Freeland is an evolutionary biologist and director of interdisciplinary studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He studies the interface of science and religion and gave a joint lecture in exoplanets for the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion.