Janna Levin is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Barnard College of Columbia University and Director of Sciences at Pioneer Works, a centre for art and innovation in Brooklyn.

She has contributed to the understanding of black holes, the cosmology of extra dimensions and gravitational waves. She was the first scientist-in-residence at the Ruskin School of Fine Art and Drawing at Oxford University with an award from NESTA, and was a Guggenheim fellow.

Her previous books are How the Universe Got Its Spots, a novel, A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, which won the PEN/Bingham prize, and Black Hole Blues, the first book to describe the detection of gravitational waves in 2016. She has also appeared at TED and contributes to numerous radio and television programmes.