Elaine Howard Ecklund is the Herbert S. Autrey Chair in Social Sciences and Professor of Sociology at Rice University, as well as founding director of the Religion and Public Life Program. Ecklund is a sociologist of religion, immigration, and science who examines how individuals bring changes to religious and scientific institutions. She is the author of four books with Oxford University Press, one book with New York University Press, and numerous research articles and op-eds. Her most recent book is Secularity and Science: What Scientists Around the World Really Think About Religion (Oxford University Press, 2019) with coauthors David R. Johnson, Brandon Vaidyanathan, Kirstin R.W. Matthews, Steven W. Lewis, Robert A. Thomson Jr., and Di Di. Her forthcoming book, Why Science and Faith Need Each Other: Eight Shared Values That Move Us Beyond Fear, will be published with Brazos Press, a division of Baker Books, in May 2020.  She has received grants from the National Science Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, John Templeton Foundation, Templeton World Charity Foundation, and Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. Her research has been cited thousands of times times by local, national, and international media. In 2013, she received Rice University’s Charles O. Duncan Award for Most Outstanding Academic Achievement and Teaching, and in 2018 she gave the Gifford Lecture in Scotland.

Greg Cootsona is Lecturer in Religious Studies and Humanities at California State University at Chico and directs Science and Theology for Emerging Adult Ministries (or STEAM), a $2 million grant funded by the John Templeton Foundation and housed at Fuller Theological Seminary. STEAM is designed to catalyze the engagement of faith and science in Christian ministries with 18-30 year olds. His books include  Creation and Last Things: At the Intersection of Theology and Science (Geneva, 2002), C. S. Lewis and the Crisis of a Christian (Westminster John Knox, 2014), Mere Science and Christian Faith: Bridging the Divide with Emerging Adults (InterVarsity, 2018), and Negotiating Science and Religion In America: Past, Present, and Future (Routledge, 2020). He is also co-director of Science for the Church, an initiative that brings the resources of science to enhance the effectiveness of Christian congregations. Greg studied comparative literature at U.C. Berkeley and theology at Princeton Theological Seminary (M. Div.), the Universities of Tübingen and Heidelberg, as well as Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union (the latter where he received his Ph.D.) He has just finished 18 years as Associate Pastor for Adult Discipleship at Bidwell Presbyterian Church in Chico and Fifth Avenue Presbyterian in New York City. Greg has written for several periodicals such as Zygon, Theology and Science, as well as the Wall Street Journal and Christianity Today. He has been interviewed by CNN and The New York Times, and has appeared on the Today Show three times. He and his wife, Laura, live in Chico, California and have two daughters (18 and 21). Besides hanging out with his family, he loves to bike, read (and write), and drink good coffee.