Speakers

Angel Abbud-Madrid is the Director of the Center for Space Resources at the Colorado School of Mines, where he leads a program focused on the human and robotic exploration of space and the utilization of its resources. He has more than 35 years of experience in space projects, including experiments on low-gravity airplanes, the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station, lunar and planetary missions, and received the NASA Astronauts' Personal Achievement Award for his contributions to human spaceflight. He is the President of the Space Resources Roundtable international organization and member of the Committee on Planetary Protection of The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 

Dr. Angel Abbud-Madrid holds a B.S.E. degree from ITESM in Monterrey, México, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University and the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is also the President of the Rocky Mountain Map Society and his cartographic interests include celestial maps and the mapping of New Spain and Mexico, where he was born and raised a few miles from the US-Mexico border.

Peter Bellerby is an artisan globemaker and the owner of Bellerby and Co. - a small studio of craftspeople and artists in London, England. This magical place has its roots in Peter’s personal quest to find a suitable globe for his father’s 80th birthday. Unsatisfied with everything he found in the market he decided to make his own. Peter and his team have created hundreds of some of the most sought after globes on the planet, each one personalised and meticulously handcrafted. 

Bellerby Globemakers has been featured in numerous publications and television media worldwide and has been awarded The Queens Award for export twice in recent years.

Dr. Ved Chirayath is the Vetlesen Professor of Earth Sciences, Mechanical, and Aerospace Engineering and Director of the Aircraft Center for Earth Studies at the University of Miami. He is a National Geographic Explorer, 2024 Moore Inventor Fellow, and the founder and former director of the Laboratory for Advanced Sensing at NASA Silicon Valley. Chirayath’s research focuses on inventing, developing, and testing next-generation sensing technologies for observing the natural world. Chirayath invented NASA MiDAR, fluid lensing, NeMO-Net, and the first plasma-actuated drone. Chirayath received his BSc, MSc, and PhD in Physics, Astrophysics, and Aeronautics & Astronautics from Stanford University after five years studying theoretical physics at Moscow State University in Russia.

Juna A. Kollmeier is a theoretical astrophysicist whose research spans cosmology, the intergalactic medium, black holes, stars and planets. She is currently the Director of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey V (SDSS-V), one of the most ambitious spectroscopic sky surveys ever undertaken. She is the Founding Director of the Carnegie Theoretical Astrophysics Center and previously served as Director of the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA). 

Her scientific work combines theoretical modeling with observational data to understand the universe’s large-scale structure and the lifecycle of matter from the intergalactic medium to star-forming galaxies. Under her leadership, SDSS-V has pioneered global, multi-epoch spectroscopy, charting the time-variable universe and creating detailed, three-dimensional maps of the Milky Way and distant quasars. She has also championed infrastructure development, open data, and large-scale collaborations that expand access to the tools of modern astronomy. Her goal is to map all of the large galaxies in the Universe by the end of the century. 

Kollmeier earned her undergraduate degree in physics from the California Institute of Technology and her Ph.D. from The Ohio State University. Her work reflects a deep commitment to the scientific and institutional frameworks needed to explore and visualize the cosmos.

Markus Krisetya began creating maps as a teenager, crafting imaginary landscapes in the world of Dungeons and Dragons. He rediscovered his passion for cartography as a graduate student in a class taught by Professor Mark Monmonier at Syracuse University. Around that time, Markus also discovered one of TeleGeography’s early wall maps, which revealed to him the storytelling potential of integrating maps with information graphics. He joined TeleGeography in 1999 and subsequently played a key role in developing the company's cartographic library. These maps have gained world-wide recognition through their inclusion in various print and online publications, art exhibitions, and a number of museums.

Betsy Mason is a freelance science journalist and editor based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including National Geographic, The New York Times, Nature, and Scientific American. She is coauthor with Greg Miller of All Over the Map, an illustrated book of stories about maps and cartography for National Geographic. Betsy was senior editor at WIRED in charge of online science coverage from 2008 to 2015, and a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT in 2015-2016. Betsy has a master’s degree in geology from Stanford University and is a graduate of the UC Santa Cruz Science Communication Program. She serves as secretary of the board of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.

Johannes Mattes is a historian of knowledge and science based at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. His research explores the natural sciences — including earth sciences, geography, cartography, zoology, and physics — from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, with a particular focus on the interplay between scientific practices, visual culture, and the construction of natural spaces, especially subterranean environments. 

He has published widely in leading journals such as the British Journal for the History of Science, Journal of Historical Geography, Centaurus, Episodes, and AHY. Research stays have taken him to Edinburgh, Leipzig, Oslo, Stanford and Toronto, alongside a visiting professorship at the EHESS in Paris. His latest coedited volume, 'Earth–Knowledge: History of Earth Sciences as Histories of Knowledge' (Routledge), will be published in Autumn 2025. 

Mattes has received several prestigious fellowships and grants, including awards from the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, as well as the Bader Prize for the History of Natural Sciences. He currently serves as Secretary General of the International Union of Speleology (UIS) and as a Delegate to the International Science Council (ISC) in Paris.

Luca Scholz is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Digital Humanities and History at the University of Manchester. His work combines archival research and computational methods to study the history of weather, information, law, and freedom of movement in early and late modern Europe. His digital work develops new geospatial and data-driven methods to analyze and question data in historical and humanistic inquiry. Luca's first book 'Borders and Freedom of Movement in the Holy Roman Empire' was published by Oxford University Press in 2020 and other writing has appeared in Past & Present, the Historical Journal, Cartographica, and Quaderni Storici. He earned a PhD in History at the European University Institute in Florence and subsequently held a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stanford University.

Dustin Schroeder is an Associate Professor of Geophysics and of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, where he is a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education. His research primarily focuses on observing and understanding the role of continental ice sheets and their contribution to the rate of sea level rise. A growing secondary focus of his work is the subsurface exploration of icy moons. He also works on the development, use, and analysis of geophysical radar remote sensing systems that are optimized to observe hypothesis-specific phenomena. His research group aspires to approach problems from both an earth system science and radar system engineering perspective. He is also a science team member with the REASON instrument on NASA’s Europa Clipper Mission. 

Prior to arriving at Stanford, he was a Radar Systems Engineer with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in the Radar Concepts and Formulation Group within the Radar Science and Engineering Section. He completed his Ph.D. in Geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin as part of the UT Institute for Geophysics. He holds a BS in Electrical Engineering and a BA in Physics with minors in Mathematics and Philosophy from Bucknell University in Pennsylvania.

Robert Simmon is a cartographer and science communicator who specializes in visualizing satellite data. He has decades of experience working with remote sensing experts and entrepreneurs, helping share their research and products with the public. Along the way he’s designed some of the most widely viewed imagery of our home planet. 

His work has appeared in newspapers, magazines, and web sites; including the front page of the New York Times and the cover of National Geographic. He’s also known for creating the first global view of the Earth at Night, crafting the Blue Marble featured on the original Apple iPhone, and writing about best practices for scientific visualization.

Gregory C. Staple is a lawyer, writer and serial entrepreneur who currently lives in Marble, Colorado. 

He founded TeleGeography Inc. in 1993 and edited the company’s maps and statistical reports on global communications until 2000. Staple’s profile of TeleGeography’s first 25 years can be found on Medium. 

After leaving TeleGeography, Staple practiced communications and energy law as a partner with the Washington DC office of Vinson and Elkins; served as the CEO of a Washington clean energy nonprofit; and founded Renewable Power Direct (now part of Arcadia).

Staple earned a BA in political economy from the University of Rochester and a JD from the University of Michigan.

Laura Trethewey is an award-winning journalist and author of The Deepest Map (2023), which follows the incredible race to map the entire ocean floor by 2030. Kirkus Reviews called it “required reading for environmentalists, armchair adventure divers, and those who care about the world’s oceans.” 

Her writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Atlantic and The New York Times. In 2020, the Writers’ Trust of Canada selected Laura for a Rising Star Award. Laura currently lives in Germany with her family.