Bernard Goffinet is a professor in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut. His research interests focus on the diversity and evolution of mosses and lichens based on field work in the Americas, Asia, and Africa. He also engages in enhancing awareness of these lesser-known organisms through walks, books, and exhibits. He completed his BS and MS at the University of Liège, with a thesis focused on epiphytes in old growth forests, and earned his PhD at the University of Alberta for his study on the evolution of mosses. He has edited and written several books and is currently the president of the International Association of Bryologists. You can learn more about his work here.

Alain Smette has been an operations staff astronomer at the European Southern Observatory since 2004. He received his PhD from the University of Liège, Belgium, in 1994. After a postdoc at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, Groningen, he became a research associate at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, then returned to Liège in 2001. His research interests include the study of absorption lines in the spectra of quasars and gamma-ray burst optical afterglows, gravitational lensing, and active galactic nuclei. As a member of the Science Operations department at Paranal, he was successively the instrument scientist for the VISIR then CRIRES instruments, and instrument operations team coordinator. He is currently a system scientist in the system engineering group at the Paranal Observatory.