Sunita “Suni” L. Williams is a retired NASA astronaut and retired U.S. Navy captain. She was selected as an Astronaut by NASA in 1998 and flew on three long-duration space missions: Expeditions 14/15, 32/33, and 71/72. Williams has logged 608 days in space and completed 62 hours and 6 minutes of spacewalk time, the most of any woman and fourth on NASA’s all-time list. In June 2024, she launched aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft for its first crewed mission to the International Space Station. After NASA’s decision to return Starliner uncrewed, she continued serving as a member of Expeditions 71/72 and returned to Earth in March 2025 aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft on NASA’s Crew-9 mission. She became the first person to run a marathon in space on April 16, 2007, completing the Boston Marathon in 4 hours and 24 minutes while aboard the International Space Station.

Born in Euclid, Ohio, Williams considers Needham, Massachusetts her hometown. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Physical Science from the U.S. Naval Academy and a Master of Science in Engineering Management from the Florida Institute of Technology. Commissioned as a U.S. Navy officer in 1987, she became a Naval Aviator in 1989 and later graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School. Williams served in multiple operational, test, and leadership aviation roles, logging more than 3,000 flight hours in over 30 aircraft. At NASA, she held technical and management positions including work in robotics, Deputy Chief of the Astronaut Office, Flight Engineer for Expedition 32, and Commander of Expedition 33. She has received numerous military awards, including the Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit, and Navy Commendation Medal.

Dr. Sara Beery is the Homer A. Burnell Career Development Professor in the MIT Faculty of Artificial Intelligence and Decision-Making. She received her PhD in Computing and Mathematical Sciences at Caltech, where she was advised by Pietro Perona. Her research focuses on building computer vision methods that enable global-scale environmental and biodiversity monitoring across data modalities, tackling real-world challenges including geospatial and temporal domain shift, learning from imperfect data, fine-grained categories, and long-tailed distributions. Her work has been recognized with a Schmidt Sciences AI2050 Early Career Fellowship, an NSF CAREER Grant, the Amori Doctoral Prize, an Amazon AI for Science Fellowship, a PIMCO Data Science Fellowship, and an NSF GRFP. She partners with industry, nongovernmental organizations, and government agencies to deploy her methods in the wild worldwide. She works to increase access to AI skills through interdisciplinary capacity building and education, and has founded the AI for Conservation slack community, serves as the Biodiversity Community Lead for Climate Change AI, founded and directs the Workshop on Computer Vision Methods for Ecology, and co-PIs the NSF/NSERC Global Center on AI and Biodiversity Change.

Dr. Claudia Urrea is the Executive Associate Director for pK-12 at MIT Open Learning. Most recently, she helped launch the Day of Climate initiative. Over the past decade, she has played a pivotal role in various initiatives, including the Institute-wide Task Force on the Future of MIT Education, the MIT Online Education Policy Initiative, and the MIT Jameel World Education Lab (J-WEL).

Dr. Urrea is the founder of the MIT STEAM camp, which brings MIT’s innovative learning approach to middle school students and teachers worldwide. She also co-founded Full STEAM Ahead, a virtual archive and program that integrates hands-on exploration, project design, and skill-building in STEAM subjects. She previously led the creation of a STEAM laboratory school in Belize in collaboration with the Ministry of Education. Additionally, she is leading the creation of a center for early childhood education in Colombia.

With over 30 years of experience, Dr. Urrea has collaborated with numerous governments and non-governmental organizations to transform traditional teaching methods into progressive learning environments, empowering schools and communities of learners globally.

Sherry Lassiter is one of the architects of the MIT global initiative for field on-site technology development, the Fab Lab program. A Fab Lab, or as users like to call it, fabulous laboratory, is a rapid prototyping platform for technical education, innovation and personal expression. The Fab Lab network includes over 1,750 digital fabrication facilities in 100 countries. Lassiter is Director of the Fab Foundation, a non-profit organization committed to building technical capacity in a locality, improving individuals’ abilities to develop themselves and their communities and bringing access to tools and knowledge that cultivate and support innovating practices. After a two-decade career in science journalism as producer, writer and director for television series such as Scientific American Frontiers, Discover the World of Science, and The Science Times, she became a protagonist in science and technology, becoming part of the story, rather than just telling the story. As Program Manager for the NSF-funded Center for Bits & Atoms at MIT she has seen and enabled the personal fabrication movement as it has grown and evolved. Today she serves as Director of the global Fab Lab Program at MIT as well as leading the The Fab Foundation, the non-profit spinoff from MIT.

Dava Newman, Ph.D., a futurist is the MIT Apollo Program Professor of Astronautics, former director of the MIT Media Lab and the first woman engineer and scientist to have served as a NASA deputy administrator. Empowering organizations to innovate from within, she reveals creative strategies for taking advantage of the coming opportunities from breakthroughs in searching for life elsewhere in the Universe to climate and energy tech, wearable technologies, and the convergence of artificial intelligence and generative biology. Her mantra of “Love, Act, Discover, Innovate” urges audiences of business, government, and academic leaders to courageously consider how innovation can truly change the way we engage with each other and our planet.

Christopher Knittel is the Associate Dean for Climate and Sustainability, the George P. Shultz Professor and a Professor of Applied Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Prior to MIT Sloan, Knittel taught at the University of California, Davis, and at Boston University. His research focuses on industrial organization, environmental economics, and applied econometrics.

Knittel is an associate editor of The American Economic Journal— Economic Policy, The Journal of Industrial Economics, and the Journal of Energy Markets. His research has appeared in The American Economic Review, The Review of Economics and Statistics, The Journal of Industrial Economics, The Energy Journal, and other academic journals. He also is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in the Productivity, Industrial Organization, and Energy and Environmental Economics groups.

Knittel holds a BA in economics and political science from California State University, Stanislaus; an MA in economics from the University of California, Davis; and a PhD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Climate Policy Center

Ananda Santos Figueiredo is a current first-year master’s student at MIT’s Technology and Policy Program (TPP), where she studies stakeholder engagement for better mining sustainability. She got her Bachelor of Science degree from MIT in Climate Systems Science and Engineering (MIT’s newest major!) with a minor in physics. She originally got to campus to study astrophysics, but found a deep passion in studying systems and supporting sustainable development. She has worked in places such as the World Bank, the MIT Office of Sustainability, and Aegea, a basic sanitation company in her home country of Brazil. Her hometown is the easternmost point of all the Americas, and she loves theater, reading, walking around Boston, and drinking an assortment of sugary beverages in her free time.

Jacqueline Prawira is a senior majoring in Materials Science and Engineering and minoring in Environment and Sustainability. Prawira aspires to build a world where our daily lives can contribute to environmental health by researching sustainable materials and processes. At MIT, she has worked in Prof. Yet-Ming Chiang’s lab as a part of the Center of Electrification and Decarbonization of Industry to decarbonize cement production, with Prawira coinventing a patented silica subtraction process. This technology, expanded to critical mineral refining, also led to the founding of Rock Zero, where Prawira currently works to commercialize zero-waste lithium extraction for battery manufacturing. She earned the distinction of 2025 Barry Goldwater Scholar for her research as an undergraduate, was awarded the 2023 DMSE Outstanding Sophomore Award, is a 2022 Rise Global Fellow, and was named a Young Planet Leader by Heal The Planet. Outside of her work, Prawira is a member of the undergraduate Student Advisory Group for MIT’s School of Engineering and enjoys training her CrossFit skills or trying new foods with her friends.

Rylan Workman is a 17-year-old senior at Salem High School in Salem, MA. Rylan has been engaged in climate science and advocacy throughout his teen years, becoming a leader for the Massachusetts Youth Climate Coalition, co-president and statewide representative for the North Shore Youth Climate Leadership Program, and president/founder of Salem High School’s Environmental Club. He has been a strong proponent of Interdisciplinary Climate Education Bill H.560, and S.391, providing testimony at a committee hearing, and speaking for the bill on the MA Statehouse steps.

Rylan’s interest in climate stems from firsthand experiences in the Salem community, as well as from an artistic view of science. The wildfires of last year inspired Rylan–aided by his environmental science teacher Graeme Marcoux–to revive Salem High School’s Environmental Club. Also, in creating pastel-pencil pieces to explore topics such as biomimicry, indigenous land preservation, and conservation, Rylan aims to communicate these complex topics in a language we can all understand: art. When Rylan has free time, he loves reading science fiction, playing tennis, and running with his twin brother.

As Rylan looks to his future, he is very excited to have recently committed to Princeton University for Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Ellis Klein is a Strategic Initiatives Executive at MIT Open Learning, connecting industrial and Public Sector leaders with MIT’s robust Workforce Learning portfolio. The most rewarding aspect of his job is empowering individuals and teams to develop their AI capabilities through a focus on the human side of digital transformation.

Prior to joining the Open Learning team, Ellis worked as a consultant in the energy sector, re-skilling oilfield workers to build sustainable energy infrastructure. In a past life, he used to jump out of planes in the 82nd Airborne Division and served as a Test Paratrooper in the US Army Airborne Special Operations Test Directorate. In his spare time, he enjoys going for long runs, baking the occasional pie, and he always keeps a good strong coffee close at-hand.