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Lisa M. Balbes earned her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her undergraduate degrees in chemistry and psychology from Washington University in St Louis. Since 1992, she has provided technical writing and editing services as Balbes Consultants, LLC, with clients including Washington University Medical School, Bausch and Lomb Surgical, SigmaAldrich, the US FDA, and many others. Prior to that, she spent several years as a computational chemist at Research Triangle Institute, conducting protein and small molecule modeling experiments in support of drug discovery.

She has been an American Chemical Society volunteer career consultant since 1993, providing career management advice and information to literally thousands of scientists. She is the author of the book “Nontraditional Careers for Chemists: New Formulas in Chemistry”, published by Oxford University Press, and over 350 published articles. She is an ACS certified master workshop facilitator, and an internationally invited speaker on various career topics, with over 350 presentations to date.

She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2013), the American Chemical Society (ACS) (2017), and the AAAS (2023). Dr. Balbes was elected to the national ACS Board of Directors, and served 2022 - 2024.

She shares her office with house rabbits Octavia and Cookie.

William F. Carroll, Jr. holds a PhD in Organic Chemistry from Indiana University (1978), an MS from Tulane University (1975), and a BA from DePauw University (1973). He retired from Occidental Chemical Corporation in 2015 and now heads his own company, Carroll Applied Science, LLC.

Bill has been an Adjunct Professor of Chemistry at Indiana for nearly 30 years, with activities ranging from teaching courses to department career counselor for the graduate students, his current assignment.

He served as President (2005) and later as Chair of the Board of Directors (2012-14) of the American Chemical Society (ACS), one of only two living members to hold both offices. He is a Fellow of ACS as well as the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Royal Society of Chemistry. In 2009 he was chair of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents.

Bill remains active in ACS as a member of the Committee on Committees, the Board of Trustees of the ACS Insurance Trust, as a Strategic Planning facilitator and a Career Consultant.

He holds two patents, has published seven books and has nearly 100 publications in the fields of organic electrochemistry, polymer chemistry, combustion chemistry, incineration, plastics recycling, sustainability and popular music history and analytics

Christopher Collison is a Professor of Chemistry at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). He is also the Director of the RIT Artificial Intelligence (AI) Hub, a role he assumed in September 2024, where he leads strategic initiatives to develop AI solutions for teaching and learning, promotes AI-enabled innovations across campus, and fosters interdisciplinary collaboration. His research focuses on AI-driven materials chemistry, organic photovoltaics, photoactive liquid crystal networks, and nanomorphology, with an emphasis on integrating machine learning and computational modeling.

Collison received a PhD in Chemistry and Photophysics in 2006 and a BSc and PhD in Physical Chemistry in 1996, from Imperial College, London.

His work has been featured in media outlets such as Rochester Beacon, Rochester Business Journal, and Chemical & Engineering News, discussing RIT’s AI initiatives, the impact of AI on jobs, and the university’s role in Empire AI, a consortium of public and private New York State research institutions advancing AI research for the public good.