Christine Kraus grew up in Germany and studied at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, where she completed her Ph.D on “Final Analysis of the Mainz Neutrino Mass experiment” in 2004. She moved to Canada to work on the famous SNO experiment as a Postdoc at Queen’s University. The SNO collabortion was co-recipient of the 2016 Breakthrough...

Amanda Petford-Long is an Argonne Distinguished Fellow in the Materials Science Division (MSD), Argonne National Laboratory. In addition to her own research program, she is serving as Interim Division Director of MSD. She is a Professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at Northwestern University, where she is active in graduate teaching in addition...

Stephanie Simmons is an Assistant Professor, Canada Research Chair, and CIFAR Fellow, based out of the Department of Physics at Simon Fraser University (SFU), and is the Founder and Chief Quantum Officer of Photonic Inc. At SFU, she is a group leader of the Silicon Quantum Technology research group. Dr. Stephanie Simmons earned a Ph.D....

Dr. Rowan Thomson is a Canada Research Chair and Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at Carleton University.  Prof. Thomson’s PhD research was in theoretical high-energy physics (Superstring Theory) at Perimeter Institute and the University of Waterloo, and was awarded Waterloo’s Pearson Medal.  Her post-PhD research is in Medical Physics: computational radiotherapy physics.  She...

Prof. Kim Venn is a Professor in Physics & Astronomy at the University of Victoria. She is internationally recognized for her pioneering contributions in observational stellar spectroscopy and for ground-based astronomical instrumentation and surveys.  Her scientific interests include the structure and evolution of dwarf galaxies and observational constraints on the nucleosynthesis of the elements.   She...

Dr. Liesl Folks is the Senior Vice President and Provost at the University of Arizona.  As the chief academic officer, Dr. Folks leads 19 colleges and 24 schools as well as libraries, Arizona Global, Arizona Online, Arizona Distance, and student services.  She is also a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Prior...

Dr. Gwendolyn Eadie is an Assistant Professor of astrostatistics at the University of Toronto (U of T), jointly-appointed in the David A. Dunlap Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics and the Department of Statistical Sciences. Before joining the U of T in 2019, Dr. Eadie was a Moore/Sloan and Washington Research Foundation eScience Postdoctoral Fellow and...

Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo is an internationally recognized researcher known for her pioneering contributions to the field of supermassive black holes. After obtaining a Ph. D. from the University of Cambridge in 2012, she was awarded a prestigious NASA Einstein postdoctoral fellowship which she took to Stanford University. Dr. Hlavacek-Larrondo is currently an associate professor at Université...

Dr. Brenda Matthews is an astronomer with the National Research Council of Canada, located at the Herzberg Astronomy & Astrophysics Research Centre in Victoria, BC.  Her research is focused on exoplanetary systems, particularly the cold belts of comets called debris disks because of the dust and gas that are rendered detectable through cometary collisions. Dr....

Dr. Melanie Martin graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Physics from the University of Manitoba. She then went on to obtain an MS, MPhil and a PhD in Applied Physics and Biomedical Engineering from Yale University. She was a postdoctoral scholar and an associate scientist in Biology at Caltech in Pasadena, California before she returned...