Juan Antonio Belmonte is a Research Professor of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), where he lectures and investigates in exoplanetology and cultural astronomy. He holds a degree in Physics from the University of Barcelona and a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the University of La Laguna, where he has also studied Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Prof. Belmonte has been Director of the Science and Cosmos Museum of Tenerife (MCC, 1995–2000), President of the European Society for Astronomy in Culture (SEAC, 2005–2011), the International Society for Archaeoastronomy and Astronomy in Culture (ISAAC, 2017–2020) and the Time Allocation Committee (CAT) of the Canary Islands Observatories (2003–2012). He received in 2012 the “Carlos Jaschek” Award in Cultural Astronomy for his contribution to the field. He is Advisory Editor of the Journal for the History of Astronomy.

He is author or co-author or more than 200 scientific papers and author or editor or more than 20 books on these topics, among them In Search of Cosmic Order: Selected Essays on Egyptian Archaeoastronomy (2009), with Mosalam Shaltout, and Pirámides, Templos y Estrellas: Arqueología y Astronomía en el Egipto Antiguo (2012, in Spanish). And just published in April of 2023, with José Lull, Astronomy of Ancient Egypt: a Cultural Perspective (click to download 50 excerpted pages).

For over a decade, he has been deeply involved in the development of the “Astronomy and World Heritage” initiative within UNESCO and the IAU. Since August 2021, he has been President of the IAU Commission C4 “World Heritage and Astronomy”. A tireless field researcher, he has carried out cultural astronomy fieldwork in the Megalithism of the Atlantic Façade, the Indian temples, Caral in Peru, Nabataean Petra, Hattusha in Turkey, Easter Island, and the Amazigh World from his base in the Canary Islands, among many other places.

Prof. Belmonte has been coordinator of the Egyptian-Spanish Mission for Archaeoastronomy of ancient Egypt and a member of the Spanish Archaeological Mission in Heracleopolis Magna. For 20 years, he has performed research fieldwork searching for and documenting astronomical relationships in more than one hundred archaeological sites in Egypt, from Nubia to the Delta, and from Siwa Oasis to Sherabit el Khadim, in the Sinai.
 

Diana McDonald is an art historian and lecturer specializing in Ancient Near Eastern Art, and Ancient American Art. She is retired from the History of Art Faculty of Boston College, where she taught Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Greek art and archaeology, as well as Ancient American art.

Dr. McDonald started out as a 16 year-old intern in the Egyptian Department of the Metropolitan Museum, and subsequently worked in the Ancient Near Eastern and other departments at the Metropolitan. She wrote her undergraduate thesis at Harvard on Egyptian art: Theban Tomb Painting of the 18th Dynasty — and received her Harvard A.B. magna cum laude in the History of Art. She received her M.A., M.Phil, and Ph.D from Columbia University, in Ancient Near Eastern Art and Archaeology, where she was a Presidential Scholar and taught Art and Humanities.

Dr. McDonald is a Great Courses Professor, the author and lecturer on the DVD 30 Masterpieces of the Ancient World, and author of numerous articles. She is one of the authors of the books Aphrodite and the Gods of Love, (Boston Museum of Fine Arts) and The Looting of the Baghdad Museum.

She received a Henry Luce Fellowship and worked at the National Museum in Jakarta, Indonesia. She also worked and lectured at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Arthur Sackler Collection, The Michael C. Carlos Museum, the Albuquerque Museum of Art, The National Hispanic Cultural Center, and other venues.

She now lives in New Mexico, and lectures on Ancient Art, for Insight Cruises &mdassh; for the New York Times, Scientific American, and Great Courses — and for the Albuquerque International Association.

Dr. McDonald is a Board Member of the The Ancient Egyptian Heritage and Archaeology Fund, a past judge for the National Endowment for the Humanities, current President of the Harvard and Columbia University Clubs of New Mexico, and formerly a member of the Collections Committee of the Harvard Art Museums. She has traveled extensively in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Central and South America.
 

Stephen Ressler is Professor Emeritus at the United States Military Academy at West Point and a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). A registered Professional Engineer in Virginia, he earned a B.S. from West Point, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Civil Engineering from Lehigh University, and a Master of Strategic Studies from the U.S. Army War College. He served for 34 years as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and retired at the rank of Brigadier General in 2013. While on active duty, he served in a variety of military engineering assignments around the world. In 2007, he deployed to Afghanistan to create a civil engineering program for the newly created National Military Academy of Afghanistan in Kabul.

Dr. Ressler is passionate about communicating the joys of engineering to inquiring minds of all ages. His three video lecture series — Understanding the World’s Greatest Structures, Understanding Greek and Roman Technology, and Everyday Engineering — are among the most highly-rated offerings in The Great Courses’ 600-course catalog. He served as an on-screen expert for the Discovery Channel documentary Superweapons of the Ancient World: The Ram and Blink Films’ The Real Trojan Horse, which aired on PBS in 2015. His award-winning Bridge Designer software has been used by over two million middle-school and high-school students worldwide. He is also a developer and principal instructor for the ASCE Excellence in Civil Engineering Education Teaching Workshop, which has provided teacher training to more than 500 civil engineering faculty members from over 200 colleges and universities.

Dr. Ressler has received numerous national-level awards from the ASCE and the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), including the 2011 ASCE Outstanding Projects and Leaders Award — the society’s highest honor.