The Rev. David J. Collins is a Catholic priest, a Jesuit and an associate professor of history at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., with an interest in science, religion and space. He sometimes teaches a course on outer space, science and religion.

James Matthew Ashley is an associate professor of the history of Christianity and systematic theology at the John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values at the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Ind. One of his areas of study is science and theology.

Wiliam Storrar is the director of the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, N.J., an ecumenical institute for interdisciplinary research in religion. The center designates several topics to study for a year or more and has, to date, focused on religion and violence, law and religious freedom, evolution and moral identity, among others.

Josh Larsen is the editor of Think Christian, a website that looks at religion and popular culture from the Reformed tradition. Think Christian is based in Palos Heights, Ill.

Peter Harrison is a former professor of science and religion at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England, and an expert on the dialogue and tensions between science and religion. He is the author of The Territories of Science and Religion. He is now director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at […]

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.

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.

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 […]