[In collaboration with Melon Conference (www.melonhk.com), the annual science fiction conference that brings together award-winning and emerging science fiction writers, filmmakers and industry professionals from both China and the West, as well as the Sci-Fi community to share, brainstorm and be inspired.] Lisa Nip (www.lisanip.com) Lisa Nip is a Ph.D. candidate at the MIT Media Lab's Molecular Machines group. She uses her training in biochemistry and biotechnology to translate synthetic biology into real-world applications. She spends much of her time concocting biological solutions to long-duration space travel and works to make them a reality. Nip was trained as a biochemist at Boston University, and previously did research in the Douglas Lab at UCSF and the Church Lab in the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard Medical School. Hilke Schlichting (http://web.mit.edu/hilke/www/Hilke/Welcome.html) I am an Associate Professor in Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences and in Physics and Astronomy at UCLA. In addition, I hold a visiting faculty appointment at MIT in EAPS and Physics. My research interests lie at the intersection of astrophysics and planetary sciences. In my work I combine exoplanet-research with the study of our Solar System and take advantage of this powerful synergy to develop a comprehensive understanding of planet formation. My group focuses on pioneering new theoretical models, which are motivated and guided by cutting-edge observations and geochemical measurements, with the goal of explaining the origin and diversity of exoplanets and placing the formation of our own Solar System into context. Ultimately, I would like to answer where we come from and why life evolved in the Universe where it did.

Becky Chambers (www.otherscribbles.com) Becky Chambers is the author of the science fiction novels The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, A Closed and Common Orbit, and the upcoming Record of a Spaceborn Few (July 2018). Her books have been nominated for the Hugo Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction, among others. She also writes essays and short stories, which can be found here and there around the internet. In addition to writing, Becky has a background in performing arts, and grew up in a family heavily involved in space science. She spends her free time playing video and tabletop games, keeping bees, and stomping around the woods. Having lived in Scotland and Iceland, she is currently back in her home state of California. Yoon Ha Lee (www.yoonhalee.com) A Korean-American sf/f writer who received a B.A. in math from Cornell University and an M.A. in math education from Stanford University, Yoon finds it a source of continual delight that math can be mined for story ideas. Yoon’s fiction has appeared in publications such as F&SF, Tor.com, and Clarkesworld Magazine, as well as several year’s best anthologies.