Who The If?

PHILIP is an award winning documentary filmmaker with over 30 years of experience. He was the Producer/Director of EINSTEIN (2008, History Channel), the Co-Director & Editor of BEING ELMO (Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival), and Editor of DANCING IN JAFFA, which had it's World Premiere at the 2013 TriBeCa Film Festival, he and Bob Eisenhardt won the Best Editing Award at Israel's prestigious DocAviv Film Festival.

At ABC News for nearly a decade, Shane edited many distinguished long form programs including TIP OF THE SPEAR with Ted Koppel (DuPont Columbia Award for Broadcast Journalism) and MARTIN LUTHER KING: Searching For The Promised Land with Peter Jennings (Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Program). With Paul McCartney, his daughter Mary, and director Alistair Donald, he made the film WINGSPAN (2001), about the McCartney family's life after The Beatles. His previous project, THE BEATLES REVOLUTION (2000) told the story of the band through the memories of musicians, artists, politicians, writers, and other celebrities. Other artists he's worked with include Carly Simon, Bruce Springsteen, and The Boston Symphony. 

MATT teaches and researches the Mattory and philosophy of science. He holds degrees in astronomy, religion, physics, and the history of science and is interested in the connections between science and the wider culture. He is the author of Einstein’s War: How Relativity Triumphed Amid the Vicious Nationalism of World War I (Dutton, 2019), the story of how pacifism and friendship led to scientific revolution.

He has also written Practical Mystic: Religion, Science, and A. S. Eddington (Chicago 2007) and Huxley’s Church and Maxwell’s Demon (Chicago 2014), which explore the complex relationships between science and religion in history. His current project is a history of scientific predictions of the end of the world.

Professor Stanley has also worked with a nationwide National Science Foundation-funded effort to use the humanities to improve science education in the college classroom. He has held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study, the British Academy, and the Max Planck Institute. He currently runs the New York City History of Science Working Group. In his spare time he co-hosts the science podcast What the If?.

Professor Stanley was awarded the 2019 NYU Distinguished Teaching Award and the 2014-2015 Gallatin Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.

GABRIELLE is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at the Rockefeller University. There, she studies two determinants of West Nile virus virulence: strain and host species. Prior to this, she worked to develop a CRISPR-Cas9 system to block gammaherpesvirus replication. An avid science communicator, Gabrielle has won recognition for her presentations at both the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS) and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Undergraduate Research Symposium. She has developed virology lessons for NYC students in conjunction with her university’s science outreach program, and has been a guest on Skype a Scientist Live. 

In addition to her scientific interests, Gabrielle has a passion for storytelling. In her undergraduate years, she served as the Editor in Chief of Spoke the Thunder, Stony Brook University’s literary magazine. Her past work can be found in Spoke the Thunder and Alluvian literary magazines. She is currently re-writing her first manuscript in what she considers a Sisyphean labor of love.