Annelien Bredenoord is a professor of the ethics of biomedical innovation at the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands. One of her areas of interest is how to ethically move medical advancements from the research to clinical care stage.

David Archard is chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, a London-based organization that explores the ethics of medical advancements. He is also an emeritus professor of philosophy at Queen’s University Belfast. In 2018, Archard co-authored a Nuffield Council report endorsing the use of germline gene editing in some circumstances.

Thomas Eich is an Islamic studies professor at the University of Hamburg in Hamburg, Germany. He has written about how to apply Islamic teachings to bioethics debates and previously led a research group titled “Bioethical issues in the context of Islamic law.”

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.

Florence Raulin Cerceau is a director at Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence and an associate professor at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. She is a historian of astrobiology and of the search for intelligent alien life.

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 […]

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.

John Littleton is a Catholic priest and director of the Priory Institute in Dublin. He is co-editor of Contemporary Catholicism in Ireland: A Critical Appraisal and Irish and Catholic?: Towards an Understanding of Identity and a frequent commenter on Irish-Catholic life and issues.