Michael West, PhD (Yale University, 1987) has nearly thirty years of experience as a professional astronomer, many of them spent abroad. He held research, teaching and management positions in Canada, Chile, the Gambia (western Africa) and the Netherlands, as well as the United States. As ESO’s Head of Science in Chile for six years,  West supervised an international staff of astronomers, postdocs and students comprised of more than two-dozen different nationalities. As a Professor of Astronomy at the University of Hawaii, West was actively involved with the international community of observatories on Mauna Kea, including authoring a new book titled A Sky Wonderful with Stars: 50 Years of Modern Astronomy on Maunakea, published in 2015.

Deana Weibel, PhD (UC San Diego, 2001) is a cultural anthropologist whose work focuses primarily on religion, especially the topics of pilgrimage, sacred space, the mutual influence of scientific and religious ideas on each other, and religion and space exploration. Her early fieldwork took place in France at pilgrimage sites like Rocamadour and Montségur. She has also conducted research at the pilgrimage center of Chimayó, New Mexico. More recent work focuses on religion as a motivation for and influence on space travel and outer space-based sciences, with field visits taking place at “space sites” throughout the U.S., including the Johnson and Kennedy Space Centers, the Mojave Air and Spaceport, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the JHU Applied Physics Lab, and Spaceport America. Weibel spent a month in 2019 at the Vatican Observatory, studying “the Pope’s Astronomers.” She has also studied the history of anthropology, particularly the overlap of her own family’s role and the role of anthropology in the exhibition of Philippine Igorot people in fairs and expositions during the early 1900s. She is the co-founder and co-organizer of Roger That! A Celebration of Space Exploration in Honor of Roger B. Chaffee, a two-day conference that has been an annual Grand Rapids, Michigan event since 2017. She served as chair for GVSU’s Anthropology Department from 2012-2018 and as interim chair for GVSU’s Interdisciplinary, Religious, and Intercultural Studies Department from 2021-2022.

Dr. Shannon Schmoll is the director of the Abrams Planetarium at Michigan State University where she has been working to expand both astronomy programming and learning of other subjects under the dome.

She earned a joint PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics and Education from the University of Michigan in 2013. Her research has focused on extending learning beyond the dome planetarium shows. She was a member of the first cohorts of the Astronomy in Chile Educator Ambassadors program and of Mission Patagonia to learn about major observatories and conservation efforts in Chile, respectively. She currently serves as president-elect of the International Planetarium Society where her goals include building capacity for planetarium education research.

Geoff began planetarium work as a middle school science teacher in a school district which had three Starlab mobile planetariums. This led him to pursue his first master’s degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill while serving as an intern at the Morehead Planetarium. Moving back to his home state of Wisconsin, Geoff served as the planetarium director of the Madison Metropolitan School District for twenty-eight years. He now enjoys his retirement roles as a grandfather, emergency medical technician, firefighter, and co-facilitator of a master’s degree program focused on experiential education.