AARATHI PRASAD is a writer, broadcaster, and researcher. She is the author of In the Bonesetter's Waiting Room: Travels Through Indian Medicine (Profile, 2016) which was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and won the Popular Medicine Award at the BMA Awards 2017; and Like A Virgin: How Science is Redesigning the Rules of Sex (Oneworld, 2012), shortlisted for the Salon Prize and translated into Italian, Bulgarian and Dutch.

Born in London to an Indian mother who wore only silk saris and a Caribbean father who loved the natural world, Aarathi was educated in the West Indies and the UK. After completing a PhD in molecular genetics from Imperial College London, she later trained in bioarchaeology. She works as a Senior Research Fellow at the UCL Institute for Global Health, focussed on sustainability and urban health in Kenya, and as part of an international team excavating and analysing ancient DNA from funerary sites in Spain, Rome, and Pompeii.

Dr Anna Ploszajski is an award-winning materials scientist, writer and storyteller. She's a materials generalist, equally fascinated by metals, plastics, ceramics, glasses and substances from the natural world. A patent holder by the age of 22, Anna has packed a lot into a short space of time her career has seen her work in labs at NASA in Florida, attempt to break a land-speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, and power Glastonbury Festival using hydrogen.

Anna also works as a freelance science communicator and storyteller, regularly performing live science shows to audiences across the UK and internationally. As a stand-up comedian, Anna brings materials science to life at venues ranging from the local pub to the Edinburgh Fringe, and is on a mission to train scientists and engineers in storytelling skills. A frequent presenter on radio and TV, Anna is the host of her own podcast about materials and making (also called Handmade).

Gaia Vince is a journalist and broadcaster specialising in science, the environment, and social issues. She was awarded the 2015 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books, becoming the first solo female winner in the Prize’s history. She has been an editor at Nature Climate Change, Nature and New Scientist.

Her work has appeared in the Guardian, The Times, Science, Scientific American, the American Scholar, International New York Times, BBC online Australian Geographic and the Australian. She also devises and presents science documentaries for radio and television.

Lewis Dartnell is an astrobiology researcher and professor at the University of Westminster. He has won several awards for his science writing, and contributes to the Guardian, The Times and New Scientist. He has also written for television and appeared on BBC Horizon, Sky News, and Wonders of the Universe, as well as National Geographic and History channels. A tireless populariser of science, his previous books include the bestselling The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch.

Philip Ball writes regularly in the scientific and popular media and worked for many years as an editor for physical sciences at Nature. His books cover a wide range of scientific and cultural phenomena, and include Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads To Another (winner of the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books), The Music Instinct, Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything, Serving The Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Science Under Hitler and Invisible: The History of the Unseen from Plato to Particle Physics.

Dr Adam Rutherford is a science writer and broadcaster. He studied genetics at University College London, and during his PhD on the developing eye, he was part of a team that identified the first genetic cause of a form of childhood blindness.

He has written and presented many award-winning series and programmes for the BBC, including the flagship weekly Radio 4 programme Inside Science and The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry with Dr Hannah Fry.

He is the author Creation, which was shortlisted for the Wellcome Trust Prize, A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived, and most recently, The Book of Humans.

Jim Al-Khalili OBE is an Iraqi-born British theoretical physicist, author and broadcaster.

He is currently Professor of Theoretical Physics and Chair in the Public Engagement in Science at the University of Surrey.

He has hosted several BBC productions about science, including BBC Radio 4's The Life Scientific.