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.  

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.

The Honorable Sethuraman Panchanathan is a computer scientist and engineer. From 2020-2025, he served as the 15th Director of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), an independent federal agency with the mission of advancing all fields of scientific discovery, technological innovation, and STEM education. He is a leader in the fields of science, engineering, and education, with more than three decades of experience in higher education and government. Throughout his career, he has designed and built knowledge enterprises, aimed at advancing research innovation, strategic partnerships, entrepreneurship, global development, and economic growth.

During his tenureas director of NSF, he established the first new directorate in 31 years, the Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships, aimed at delivering "Innovation Everywhere for Everyone" by accelerating the translation of science and technology for economic progress, national security, and societal impact. He also pioneered the GRANTED program to democratize participation and access to research and education investments from the NSF.

Panchanathan currently serves as the University Professor of Technology and Innovation and Foundation Chair in Computing and Augmented Intelligence at Arizona State University, where he has held a faculty appointment since 1997. His previous roles at ASU include leading the university's research portfolio as the executive vice president of the ASU Knowledge Enterprise and the chief research and innovation officer. Under his leadership, ASU increased its research performance fivefold, earning recognition as the fastest growing and most innovative research university in the U.S.

Panchanathan has received numerous recognitions for his scientific work during his career; in 2025, he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of the highest civilian awards bestowed by the Government of India, in recognition of his distinguished contributions to science. Panchanathan received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computing Engineering from the University of Ottawa. 

Scott Shigeoka is an internationally recognized curiosity expert, TED speaker, and the award-winning author of Seek: How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World. His work focuses on how we can strengthen our well-being and relationships, including as a Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center and as the Head of Curiosity Cultivation at the Eames Institute. He is also a playwright and artist.

Vanessa Otero is the Founder and CEO of Ad Fontes Media, the company that rates news for bias and reliability. Otero founded Ad Fontes in 2018 with a mission to rate all the news to positively transform society. She created the original Media Bias Chart in 2016, which was the seed idea for creating the company. She is passionate about bringing people together and overcoming the challenges of political polarization in our present environment. Prior to starting Ad Fontes, she practiced as a patent attorney specializing in software. Vanessa holds a B.A. in English from UCLA and a J.D. from the University of Denver. 

Massimo Ruzzene, Senior Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation and Dean of the Institutes at the University of Colorado, Boulder, has led the campus research enterprise since 2022, initially in an acting capacity before being formally appointed in March 2023.

Previously, Ruzzene was associate dean for research in the College of Engineering and Applied Science at CU Boulder. Ruzzene is the Slade Professor of Mechanical Engineering and holds a joint appointment in the Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences Department.

He joined CU Boulder in the summer of 2019, after serving as the Pratt and Whitney Professor in the Schools of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology.  Ruzzene received a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the Politecnico di Torino (Italy) in 1999 and is author of 2 books, more than 200 journal papers and 280 conference papers.  Most of his current and past research work has focused on solid mechanics, structural dynamics and wave propagation with application to structural health monitoring, metamaterials, and vibration and noise control. 

Ruzzene is a Fellow of ASME and SES, an Associate Fellow of AIAA, and a member of AHS, and ASA.

Lu’s background spans government, industry, and nonprofit work throughout her career. In government, she works with Colorado Governor Jared Polis on Strategic Planning and Projects, currently heading the Global Energy Business Park. Formerly, she headed the Colorado Department of Revenue and was a finance advisor to the Governor of Wyoming. She was Chairman of our district Federal Reserve Bank and was appointed and served for three terms on the Business Research Advisory Council of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In industry, she’s a five-time CEO/President, navigating companies through start-up phase to maturity and international scope. Since 2000, she has been the CEO of Corlund Industries, a diversified international holding company. She also serves on public company boards, most recently the Kansas City Southern Railroad which just completed a $31B merger, the largest in transportation history, with Canadian Pacific Railroad. She also served on the Board of Euronet Worldwide, an international payments company. She was CEO of Acteva, and has held C-level roles at @Home Network (Excite@Home), McGraw-Hill Standard & Poors, and Money Market Services International.

Her nonprofit work includes chairing CTEK, a global nonprofit breaking down barriers to entrepreneurship worldwide. She serves on the Research Advisory Council for CU Boulder, and has served on multiple local and international entrepreneurship foundation boards. She completed both undergraduate and graduate work in economics at Berkeley.

Kelly Brough has deep expertise in the public, private and non-profit sectors with specific expertise in economic development, workforce development, life sciences, healthcare, housing, public policy/regulation, and energy. She currently serves as the President and CEO of Fitzsimons Innovation Community in Aurora, Colorado, a campus where innovative health and life sciences companies conduct research to cure diseases, save lives, and improve care.

In prior roles, Kelly served as the President and CEO of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce with almost 3,000 members. She also served as Chief of Staff to Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, where she was responsible for over 12,000 employees and over $2 billion in budgets.

She currently serves as a director on the boards for History Colorado, The Denver Foundation and the Colorado Bioscience Association. In her career, she has served on a number of boards including: Delta Dental of Colorado, the US Chamber of Commerce, Habitat for Humanity of Metro Denver, Haselden Construction, The Denver Zoo, and Colorado Mesa University board of trustees.

Kelly holds an MBA from the University of Colorado - Denver. She attended Harvard Business School programs on the Role of Directors on Public Traded Boards and Making Corporate Boards More Effective. She has been a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) for more than 10 years.

Waleed Abdalati is Director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), a joint institute of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of Colorado, Boulder (CU-Boulder). He is also a Professor in CU-Boulder’s Geography Department. Dr. Abdalati's research focuses on the use of satellites and aircraft to understand how Earth's glaciers, ice sheets, and sea ice are changing and the implications of those changes for the Earth System. He has extensive experience with NASA, having served as a research scientist, program manager, branch head, and most recently as NASA Chief Scientist. Prior to his years with NASA, Dr. Abdalati worked as an engineer in the aerospace industry.

Bina Venkataraman is an editorial leader, journalist, and science & innovation policy expert whose leadership roles have spanned The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Broad Institute of Harvard & MIT, and the White House. She is the author of The Optimist’s Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age, named a top business book by The Financial Times and a best book of the year by National Public Radio.

Bina served as Editorial Page Editor of The Boston Globe from 2019-2022. During her tenure, the Globe penned two Pulitzer finalist series in editorial writing and forged a historic partnership with Boston University. She then became The Washington Post's inaugural columnist of the future and the first Editor-at-Large for strategy and innovation on the Post’s masthead, roles she held until August 2025.

Bina formerly served as Senior Advisor for Climate Change Innovation in the executive office of President Obama, supporting community resilience efforts and bringing problem-solvers together from across the public and private sectors. She also built cross-sector partnerships on issues from disease outbreak response to K-12 education as the former Director of Global Policy Initiatives at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and as a policy advisor to President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science & Technology.

Bina is a frequent public speaker whose appearances have included the TED mainstage, NPR, Aspen Ideas, CNN, and university campuses around the world. An alumna of Brown University and Harvard’s Kennedy School, Bina teaches courses for undergraduates in the program on science, technology, and society at MIT and has also taught graduate student classes at the Harvard Kennedy School.

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.  

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.