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Meet Our Contributors
Michael Burns
Dr. Michael Burns is an Assistant Professor in the Biology Department at Loyola University Chicago. He regularly publishes peer-reviewed articles on the interactions between host bacteria and cancer tissues, using next generation sequencing and computational approaches. He also works extensively on interdisciplinary projects that promote science outreach within faith communities.
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Br. Guy Consolmagno, S.J.
Brother Guy Consolmagno, S.J., is the Director of the Vatican Observatory. A native of Detroit, Michigan, he studied planetary sciences at MIT and the University of Arizona, studying meteorites and asteroids. Along with more than 200 scientific publications, he is the author of several popular books on astronomy and the relationship between faith and science. In 2014 he received the Carl Sagan Medal from the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences for excellence in public communication in planetary sciences.
David DeSteno
David DeSteno is Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, where his research focuses on how emotions guide moral, economic, and social decisions. He is also the author of several books, including How God Works: The Science Behind the Benefits of Religion, and host of a PRX podcast of the same name. In addition to his scientific writing, he is a frequent contributor to outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post.
Pamela L. Gay
As an astronomer, technologist, and creative focused on using new media to engage people in learning and doing science, Pamela Gay splits her time between communicating science and developing technology to advance science. Join her as we map our Solar System in unprecedented detail through citizen science projects at CosmoQuest.org, and learn astronomy through media productions like Astronomy Cast. Gay was inducted into the podcasting Hall of Fame in 2018 and the received the American Humanist Association's Asimov Science Award in 2019.
Susan Haarman
Dr. Susan Haarman is the associate director at Loyola University Chicago’s Center for Engaged Learning, Teaching, and Scholarship where she facilitates faculty development and the university's service-learning program. In addition to having a PhD in Cultural and Educational Policy Studies, she holds a Masters in Divinity, a Masters in Community Counseling, and is licensed therapist. Her research focuses on the intersection between social justice education, community-based learning, civic identity, and imagination. She is also an improviser and a storyteller.
Hille Haker
Hille Haker holds the Richard McCormick S.J. Endowed Chair in Catholic Ethics at Loyola University Chicago, after teaching at Goethe University Frankfurt and Harvard Divinity School. She holds a Ph.D. and Habilitation in Catholic Ethics, MA in German Literature, and BA in Philosophy from the University of Tübingen, Germany. She served on several Bioethics Committees, including the European Commission’s High Expert Group “European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies” (2005-2015). Her most recent book is Towards a Critical Political Ethics. The Renewal of Catholic Social Ethics (2020). On AI, she recently published "Experience, Identity and Moral Agency in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. In: in Artificial Intelligence and Human Enhancement: Affirmative and Critical Approaches in the Humanities, edited by Herta Nagl-Docekal and Waldemar Zacharasiewicz (Berlin: De Gruyter), 51-77. Beyond bioethics, her interests are in moral identity and questions of recognition and responsibility, critical theory and social ethics, feminist ethics, and literature and ethics.
Adam D. Hincks, S.J.
Adam D. Hincks, S.J., is a Jesuit priest and an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, where he holds the Sutton Family Chair in Science, Christianity and Cultures. Within the university he has a joint appointment to the Department of Astronomy of Astrophysics and to St. Michael’s College. His research is focussed on physical cosmology. He collaborates with international research teams that develop new observatories for studying the origins and history of the Universe, and his research group uses their data for novel cosmological and astrophysical studies. He also has a research interest in interdisciplinary approaches to the notion of creation from theological, philosophical and scientific perspectives.
Blake Lemoine
Blake Lemoine is a software engineer and AI researcher who has made headlines with his claims regarding AI sentience.
Michael P. Murphy
Michael P. Murphy is Director of Loyola’s Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage. His research interests are in Theology and Literature, Sacramental Theology, and the literary/political cultures of Catholicism—but he also thinks and writes about issues in eco-theology, Ignatian pedagogy, and social ethics. Mike’s first book, A Theology of Criticism: Balthasar, Postmodernism, and the Catholic Imagination (Oxford), was named a "Distinguished Publication" in 2008 by the American Academy of Religion. His most recent published work is a co-edited volume (with Melissa Bradshaw), this need to dance/this need to kneel: Denise Levertov and the Poetics of Faith (Wipf and Stock, 2019). He is currently at work on a monograph entitled The Humane Realists: Catholic Fiction, Poetry, and Film 1965-2020.
Joseph Vukov
Joseph Vukov is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago, where he is also an affiliate faculty member in Psychology and Catholic Studies. He is the author of Navigating Faith and Science (2022) and The Perils of Perfection: On the Limits and Possibilities of Human Enhancement (forthcoming 2023).