Kristan Uhlenbrock is the Executive Director of the Institute for Science & Policy, a project of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, where she works to ensure science has a respected role in public discourse and policymaking. She is motivated by life’s interesting people, places, problems, and potential for advancing our understanding of the world and the solutions we need to sustain it.  

For the past two decades, she’s worked at the intersection of science, policy, community engagement, and communication for organizations like the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, the Center for American Progress, the American Geophysical Union, the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the White House. In 2023, she was the recipient of the National Academies Eric & Wendy Schmidt Excellence in Science Communication Award.  

Kristan values giving back through leadership and volunteer roles, including serving on boards and committees for the AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion, the American Meteorological Society, the Association of Science & Technology Centers, and the Science Writers Association of the Rocky Mountains Board, as well as being a mentor for the Morgridge Acceleration Program and the Promoting Geoscience Research, Education, and Success Program. She was a CIVIC DNA Fellow and an ASTC Deliberation & Dialogue Fellow.  

Sayash Kapoor is a Laurance S. Rockefeller Graduate Prize Fellow in the University Center for Human Values and a computer science Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy. He is a coauthor of AI Snake Oil, a book that provides a critical analysis of artificial intelligence, separating the hype from the true advances. His research examines the societal impacts of AI, with a focus on reproducibility, transparency, and accountability in AI systems. He is especially interested in the interaction between AI and policy. He has previously worked on AI in various institutions in academia and the industry, including at Facebook, Columbia University, and EPFL Switzerland. Kapoor has been recognized with various awards, including a best paper award at ACM FAccT, an impact recognition award at ACM CSCW, and inclusion in TIME’s inaugural list of the 100 most influential people in AI.

Merve Hickok is the founder of AIethicist.org. She is a globally renowned, award-winning expert on AI policy, ethics and governance. Her contributions and perspective have featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, CNN, Forbes, Bloomberg, Wired, Scientific American, The Atlantic, Politico, Protocol, Vox, The Economist and MIT Technology Review.  She is a distinguished educator, consultant and keynote speaker. Her work focuses on impact of AI systems on individuals and society - particularly the impact on fundamental rights, democratic values, and social justice. At University of Michigan, she is the data ethics lecturer at School of Information. 

Merve is the President and Policy Director at Center for AI & Digital Policy (CAIDP), deeply engaged in global AI policy and regulatory work. CAIDP educates AI policy practitioners and advocates across 80+ countries, and advises international organizations (such as European Commission, UNESCO, the Council of Europe, OECD). Merve is a policy expert, with testimony to the US Congress, State of California, New York City and Detroit City councils. She provides expert input to the Council of Europe Committee on AI for the upcoming AI convention, as well as EU AI Act.

Merve has been recognized by a number of organizations - most recently with Lifetime Achievement Award - Women in AI of the Year - 2023 , Top AI Leaders in Retail (Ethics & Compliance) - 2024 , Runner-up for Responsible AI Leader of the Year - 2022 (Women in AI) and as one of the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics™ – 2021.

As executive director of APHA since 2002, Georges C. Benjamin, MD is leading the Association’s push to make America the healthiest nation. He came to APHA from his position as secretary of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. 

Benjamin is a graduate of the Illinois Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois College of Medicine. He is board-certified in internal medicine and a master of the American College of Physicians, a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, a fellow emeritus of the American College of Emergency Physicians, an honorary fellow of the Faculty of Public Health and an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health.

Sandro Galea is Dean and Robert A. Knox Professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. He has been named an epidemiology innovator by Time, a top voice in healthcare by LinkedIn, and is one of the most cited social scientists in the world. His writing and work are featured regularly in national and global public media. A native of Malta, he has served as a field physician for Doctors Without Borders and has held academic positions at Columbia University, University of Michigan, and the New York Academy of Medicine. In 2025, Galea will become the inaugural Margaret C Ryan Dean of the School of Public Health and the Eugene S and Constance Kahn Distinguished Professor in Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis.

Cathy J. Bradley, PhD, is the Dean of the Colorado School of Public Health and the Deputy Director of the University of Colorado Cancer Center. Dr. Bradley is a health economist and holds the Paul A. Bunn, Jr. Endowed Chair in Cancer Research. Prior to joining the University of Colorado, she was the founding Chair of the Department of Healthcare Policy and Research, at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine.

Dr. Bradley’s research focuses on decisions made at the intersection of work, health insurance, and cancer, and seeks to explain how when faced with a serious and expensive path to treat illness such as cancer, many workers remain employed to keep employer-based health insurance, despite needs for treatment and convalescence. She is also an expert in Medicaid and using administrative datasets to explore research questions related to health disparities. Since 1998, she has been continuously funded as a principal investigator by the National Institutes of Health, and has received funding from the American Cancer Society, the Commonwealth Fund, and other state and international agencies.

Dr. Bradley served on national advisory committees including the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine National Cancer Policy Forum and formerly served on the National Advisory Committee to the Agency for Healthcare Quality & Research. 

Dr. Bradley received a Bachelor’s degree from Old Dominion University and a Master’s of Public Administration and PhD in Health Policy and Administration from the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Public Health.

Kate Marvel is a senior climate scientist at Project Drawdown, the world’s leading resource for climate solutions. Dr. Marvel spent seven years as a research scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University; before that she held positions at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Stanford University. A former cosmologist, Dr. Marvel received a PhD in theoretical physics from Cambridge University where she was a Gates Scholar. 

She serves on the chapter leadership team of the US Fifth National Climate Assessment, has given a TED talk, appeared on Meet the Press and The Ezra Klein Show, and testified before the US Congress. She’s written for Scientific American, Nautilus Magazine, and the On Being Project. Dr. Marvel’s book Human Nature will be published by Ecco Press in 2023. Prior to Columbia University, Dr. Marvel worked at Stanford University, the Carnegie Institution, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Her work has identified human influences on present-day cloud cover, rainfall patterns, and drought risk. She is also interested in future climate changes, particularly climate feedback processes and the planet’s sensitivity to increased carbon dioxide. Dr. Marvel’s research centers on climate modeling to better predict how much the Earth’s temperature will rise in the future.  

Leaf Van Boven is Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder. He directs the Environment, Decision, Judgment, and Identity (EDJI) lab and is Co-Director of the Center for Creative Climate Communication and Behavior Change (C3BC). He earned a B.S. from the University of Washington and a Ph.D. from Cornell University. He is a distinguished fellow of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Van Boven’s research integrates social, environmental, and political psychology. Professor Van Boven has published more than 100 papers and has been continuously funded by the National Science Foundation.

Ana Unruh Cohen is the Senior Director for NEPA, Infrastructure and Clean Energy at the White House Council on Environmental Quality where she works to make federal permitting more effective and efficient to help meet President Biden’s climate and clean energy goals. In 2023, she was chosen by Time for their inaugural list of the 100 most influential climate leaders in business. 

Dr. Unruh Cohen has spent more than two decades working on U.S. federal climate and energy policy in Washington, DC. From 2019 through 2022, she served as the majority Staff Director of the House Select Committee on the Climates Crisis, supporting the passage of the historic set of energy and climate laws in the 117th Congress that has since unleashed a wave of investment in clean energy. In addition to other staff positions in the House and the Senate, Dr. Unruh Cohen was a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Center for Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and has worked at the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for American Progress. Dr. Unruh Cohen has a B.S. in Chemistry from Trinity University and received her D.Phil. in Earth Sciences from the University of Oxford. 

Through her company Siting Clean, Dahvi currently co-leads an initiative called the Siting Clean Collaborative, helping to advise and connect members of the non-profit, academic, renewables industry, and philanthropic sectors who are working to tackle the local challenges associated with siting and permitting clean energy infrastructure. She also advises clean energy companies on strategies for integrating public acceptance risk assessment into their businesses and building out new community engagement functions within their teams.

​Prior to founding Siting Clean, Dahvi served as the Vice President of Public Affairs for Apex Clean Energy, where she built and directed an industry-leading public affairs team, focused on preserving and enhancing clean energy’s license to operate in statehouses and communities across the nation. Prior to joining Apex, Dahvi served in leadership roles with numerous community, government, and nonprofit organizations, specializing in strategic development, community relations, and communications.

​Dahvi is a board member of the Colorado Energy and Water Institute and Counterspark, an Advisory Board Member of the Institute for Science and Policy at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and a member of the City of Lafayette Planning Commission. She holds a Master of Environmental Management degree from Yale University and a BA from Brown University.

George Sparks has been the President/CEO of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science since November 2004. He spent 24 years in the electronics measurement business at Hewlett-Packard and Agilent Technologies. His career included marketing, sales, and general management of global businesses in software, systems, and services.

Prior to joining Hewlett-Packard, George spent 9 years in the Air Force as a pilot and as an Assistant Professor of Aeronautics at the USAF Academy (1976-1978). He is a Distinguished Graduate of the USAF Academy with a BS in Aeronautical Engineering and holds an MS in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT.

George's passion is public policy, particularly around science and education. He is a member of the Colorado Forum, Colorado Concern, and is on the Boards of Colorado Education Initiative, Colorado Business Round Table, Colorado Music Hall of Fame, Denver Council of Foreign Relations, and Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce.

George is the founder of the Institute for Science & Policy, a program of the Museum.