Jim Funaro is an anthropology instructor at Cabrillo College in Aptos, Calif., and founder of the Contact Conference, an interdisciplinary conference on the future focused on contact with aliens. One of his main areas of interest is the cultural impacts of contact with alien life.

Albert A. Harrison is a professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of Starstruck: Cosmic Visions in Science, Religion and Folklore and After Contact: The Human Response to Extraterrestrial Life.

Douglas Vakoch is president of Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence, a San Francisco nonprofit research and educational organization dedicated to transmitting intentional signals to nearby stars. He has said that while there may be some problems for religion when intelligent aliens are discovered, they may not be as large as some people think.

Seth Shostak is the senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. He is often the public face of SETI — and therefore the public face of the scientific search for intelligent life beyond our solar system. He is the author of Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

Nathalie Cabrol is a senior research scientist and director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. She is an astrobiologist and planetary scientist. She contributed an essay on SETI for the book Aliens: The World’s Leading Leading Scientists on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

Ani Zonneveld is the founder and president of Muslims for Progressive Values and is a board member for the Alliance of Inclusive Muslims, which works to counter gender, racial and sexual bias in the Muslim community worldwide. She is based in Los Angeles.

Carlos X. Colorado is an attorney who also runs the Super Martyrio blog, promoting the canonization of Oscar Romero. He is an occasional commentator for Crux.

Imani Kai Johnson is an assistant professor of dance at the University of California, Riverside, where she founded the “Show and Prove” hip-hop studies conference, held every two years.

Matthew Harris is a scholar of African-American religion, popular culture and religion, and black studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He wrote a paper on “self-deification” in hip-hop for 2016’s “Show and Prove” hip-hop studies conference.