Mons. Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, Chancellor, Pontifical Academy of Sciences and Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences
Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1942. He was ordained a priest in 1968 in the archdiocese of Buenos Aires. At the St. Thomas Aquinas University of Rome in 1974, he was awarded a Ph.D. in sacred theology – the highest level of Church postgraduate studies – with the maximum possible grade of summa cum laude. From 1976 to 1998, he was lecturer in the history of philosophy at the Lateran University in Rome where, from 1982 onward, he was full professor in the same discipline. He was dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at the same university for three consecutive terms from 1987 to 1996. Since 1998, he has been full professor of the history of philosophy at the Libera Università Maria SS. Assunta in Rome. In the same year, he was appointed president of the degree course in education science. In November 1998, he was appointed chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences by Pope John Paul II. In March 1999, His Holiness also appointed him secretary prelate of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. On March 19, 2001, His Holiness John Paul II consecrated him titular Bishop of Vescovìo. He also was decorated as Cavaliere di gran croce of the Italian Republic in 1999, official of honour of the Légion d’Honneur by the Republic of France in 2000, Grão Mestre da Ordem de Rio Branco by the Republic of Brazil in 2004, official of the Republic of Austria in 2004, and knight of the Republic of Chile in 2006.

Gina Kolata, Science Journalist, The New York Times
Gina Kolata is an award-winning writer. As a science and medicine reporter for The New York Times, she has written over 1,000 articles for the paper that have appeared in almost every section of the paper, including the front page. Kolata is the author of many books, including: Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss -- and the Myths and Realities of Dieting; Clone: The Road to Dolly and the Path Ahead; The Baby Doctors: Probing the Limits of Fetal Medicine; Sex in America; and Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It, which was a best-seller. She is the co-editor of The Best American Science Writing 2007. Kolata's career in journalism began when she joined Science magazine in 1971, where she selected reviewers for manuscripts. She eventually became a writer and then senior writer. She also wrote for a wide variety of newspapers and magazines, including Science, Smithsonian, GQ and Ms. Kolata earned her bachelor's degree in microbiology and her master's degree in applied mathematics from the University of Maryland, and studied molecular biology as a graduate student at M.I.T.