Mary Doria Russell is a novelist whose 1997 book The Sparrow is about first contact with intelligent aliens and the Jesuit priest who is part of an expedition to their planet. The book and its sequel, Children of God, deals with how the contact changes theology. She lives near Cleveland.

Rabbi Mark Hillel Kunis has written about Torah portions that support the idea that God created life on other worlds. He lives in Atlanta.

Michael Waltemathe is the chair of practical theology at Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Bochum, Germany. Much of his research focuses on a “religious vision” of space travel and exploration.

Kathryn Denning is an associate professor of anthropology at York University  in Toronto, Canada, where she teaches a course called “Anticipating the Alien.” Her focus is on what it means to be human in the universe and she works with SETI on studying the way scientists search for aliens.

Salman Hameed is an astronomer and associate professor of integrated science and humanities at Hampshire College. He is director of the Center for the Study of Science in Muslim Societies.  He operates the science and religion blog called Irtiqa, which emphasizes debates about science in the Islamic world.

Benjamin Blech is a rabbi and a professor of Talmud at Yeshiva University in New York City. He has written about what the discovery of intelligent alien life would mean to Judaism.

Lesley Sachs is the director of Women of the Wall, an international consortium of Jewish women who want women to be able to pray at Jerusalem’s Western Wall. She lives in Jaffa, Israel.

Faiyez Jaffer is an affiliate chaplain at the Center of Global Spiritual Life at New York University in New York City. He is an American-born Muslim and wrote about the travel ban’s consequences for Shiite Muslims.