Cresten B. Mansfeldt is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he leads research at the intersection of synthetic biology, environmental microbiology, and wastewater surveillance and management. His work focuses on tracking and mitigating emerging contaminants, including synthetic biology products, within urban water systems. Prof. Mansfeldt has published extensively on microbial ecology, biotechnological risk, and post-fire water impacts, and actively bridges academic, regulatory, and community sectors to advance environmental resilience.

Vaughn Cooper, Ph.D. is an evolutionary biologist and microbiologist. He is currently Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, and Computational and Systems Biology, at the University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine. He co-founded and until recently was Director of the Center for Evolutionary Biology and Medicine (CEBaM), which works to catalyze research and education at the interface of these disciplines. He’s also a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, an elected Board member of the American Society of Microbiology (ASM), and is President-Elect of ASM in 2025-6. The Cooper laboratory studies how potential pathogens evolve to adapt to new hosts and environments, including by forming biofilm or gaining antimicrobial resistance. Recently, Dr. Cooper joined a team of scientists considering the potential risks of mirror life and is a board member of the Mirror Biology Dialogue Fund. We are proud to have founded EvolvingSTEM (http://evolvingstem.org), a comprehensive educational program that provides authentic classroom research experiences for thousands of middle and high school students in which they conduct a microbiology experiment that demonstrates evolution in action. The major goal of EvolvingSTEM is to help students see themselves as scientists and join the STEM workforce.

Dr. Cooper is also a co-founder and scientific advisor of SeqCoast Genomics, LLC and Middle Author Bioinformatics, LLC.