People
Executive Leadership
Garry Nolan
Co-Founder & Executive Director of the Board
Dr. Nolan is the Rachford and Carlota A. Harris Professor in the Department of Pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine. He trained with Leonard Herzenberg (for his Ph.D.) and Nobelist Dr. David Baltimore (for [...]
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Peter Skafish
Co-Founder & Executive Director
Dr. Peter Skafish is a sociocultural anthropologist who works between his discipline and philosophy on how ideas, cosmologies, and translation shape the diversity of human thought and experience. He is currently engaged in research that [...]
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Aneil Mallavarapu
Independent Board Member
Dr. Mallavarapu is a scientist, inventor, entrepreneur and investor and holds a PhD from the University of California, San Francisco. He serves as an advisor on technology, investment, and governance, and as Acting Treasurer. His [...]
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Jennifer Preston
Chief Operating Officer
Jennifer Preston is Chief Operating Officer of The Sol Foundation, where she leads day-to-day operations and execution; building the systems, rhythms, and cross-functional infrastructure that enable Sol’s research, policy, and public education work. Jennifer is [...]
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Matt Mason
Chief Marketing Officer
Matt Mason is a marketing executive, entrepreneur, and author with 20 years of C-level experience at the frontier of consumer tech, AI and blockchain. He was the first CMO at Kraken, head of marketing at [...]
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Lou Grossi
Chief Information Officer
Lou Grossi is a founder, principal engineer, and technology leader with more than two decades of experience designing, building, and operating software platforms, cloud infrastructure, and technology organizations. His career has spanned software engineering, systems [...]
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Christian Peters
Associate Director of Research
Dr. Christian Peters is a political scientist and research strategist whose work examines the intersections of institutional governance, scientific uncertainty, and the politics of knowledge. As the Managing Director of the Bremen International Graduate School [...]
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Kirk McConnell
Senior Legislative Affairs Officer
Mr. McConnell retired from Congress in March of 2024, after 37 years serving on the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and both Intelligence Committees in the House and Senate. His direct involvement in [...]
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Advisory Board
Eric Davis
Dr. Eric W. Davis is a leading expert in advanced aerospace propulsion concepts and applications, with approximately four decades of combined aerospace industry and academic experience in astronomy, astrophysics, advanced/breakthrough space propulsion and power engineering-physics; [...]
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Timothy Gallaudet
Natural Sciences Advisory Board, US Government Advisory Board
The Honorable Tim Gallaudet, PhD, Rear Admiral, U.S. Navy (ret) is a career oceanographer and technology consultant. Formerly, he served as the acting Undersecretary and Assistant Secretary of Commerce, acting and Deputy Administrator of the National Oceanic and [...]
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Jeffrey J. Kripal
Social Sciences Advisory Board
Jeffrey J. Kripal is the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University. He also helps direct the Center for Theory and Research at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California [...]
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Avi Loeb
Natural Sciences Advisory Board
Abraham (Avi) Loeb is the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard University and a bestselling author (in lists of the New York Times,Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, L’Express and more). He received a PhD [...]
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Jacob Haqq Misra
Jacob Haqq Misra is the director and senior research investigator at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science. He is also the Chief Operating Officer and co-founder of the 501(c)(3) organization Blue Marble Space. His [...]
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Diana Pasulka
Social Sciences Advisory Board
Dr. Diana Walsh Pasulka is a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Her scholarship primarily centers on Catholic history, with a special emphasis on the intersection of new religious movements. Her [...]
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Jim Semivan
James “Jim” Semivan is a former career US intelligence official who served for 25 years with the Central Intelligence Agency’s National Clandestine Service and was at his retirement a member of the CIA’s Senior Intelligence [...]
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Jacques Vallée
Emeritus Advisor
Dr. Jacques Fabrice Vallée is an Internet pioneer, computer scientist, venture capitalist, author, ufologist, and astronomer residing in San Francisco, California and Paris, France. His scientific career began as a professional astronomer at the Paris [...]
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Beatriz Villarroel
Natural Sciences Advisory Board
Dr. Beatriz Villarroel is a researcher in astronomy at the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics (Nordita) in Stockholm. She leads the Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations (VASCO) project (www.vascoproject.org) and the [...]
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Alexander Wendt
Alexander Wendt is Mershon Professor of International Security and Professor of Political Science at The Ohio State University. He received his PhD from the University of Minnesota in political science in 1989, and before coming [...]
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Fellows & Researchers
Eli Karetny
Senior Fellow
Dr. Eli Karetny is the deputy director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. Dr. Karetny directs the Institute’s Project on UAP Studies and International [...]
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David Dominguez Hooper
Fellow
David Dominguez Hooper is a classically trained engineer with a bachelor’s degree in EECS (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) from the University of California, Berkeley. He founded a UAV research organization at UC Berkeley and [...]
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Kyle McDonald
Fellow and Artist in Residence
Kyle McDonald is a Los Angeles–based multidisciplinary artist, researcher, and educator who creates participatory experiences with technology. Through installations, performances, interventions, websites, and open-source tools, he explores how technical systems shape relationships among people, communities, [...]
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Gretchen Stahlman
Fellow
Dr. Gretchen Stahlman is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information at Florida State University, where her research focuses on data curation, scholarly and science communication, knowledge organization, and the information infrastructures that support [...]
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