Lauren A. O’Connell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at Stanford University where she has won many awards for teaching, service, and research. She believes students learn science best by doing genuine science, and thus, she teaches many hands-on laboratory experiences for undergraduate students, both in the classroom and in her own laboratory. The long-term goal of her research program is to combine principles from evolution and ecology with animal behavior and physiology to understand how animal traits evolve and diversify. Most recently, her work has focused on the neurobiology of social behavior and the physiology of chemical defenses in amphibians and reptiles. She is also passionate about diversifying who has access to and who participates in the scientific process with the belief that diversifying the scientific workforce is critical to solving the most pressing planetary and biomedical challenges of our time.

David E. Sadava is the Pritzker Family Foundation Professor of Biology, Emeritus, at the Keck Science Center of Claremont McKenna, Pitzer, and Scripps, three of The Claremont Colleges. In addition, he is Adjunct Professor of Cancer Cell Biology at the City of Hope Medical Center. Twice winner of the Huntoon Award for superior teaching, Dr. Sadava has taught courses on introductory biology, biotechnology, biochemistry, cell biology, molecular biology, plant biology, and cancer biology. In addition to Life: The Science of Biology, he is the author or coauthor of books on cell biology and on plants, genes, and crop biotechnology. His research has resulted in many papers coauthored with his students, on topics ranging from plant biochemistry to pharmacology of narcotic analgesics to human genetic diseases. For the past 15 years, he has investigated multi-drug resistance in human small-cell lung carcinoma cells with a view to understanding and overcoming this clinical challenge. At the City of Hope, his current work focuses on new anti-cancer agents from plants.