Xavier Portillo is a postdoctoral Research and Teaching Fellow at Harvard University, where he is a Kavli-Laukien Fellow with the Origins of Life Initiative and works with Harvard Medical School. He holds a PhD in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from Yale University and a Bachelor of Science from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has received national research fellowships from the National Science Foundation and NASA and has over a decade of experience mentoring students, including founding Yale’s Graduate Undergraduate Mentorship Initiative.

Arria is a Brown University graduate with a B.A. in International Relations and Education Studies and extensive experience in university counselling. They have guided students to top institutions, including Stanford, Cornell, Brown, UC Berkeley, McGill, the University of Waterloo, and the University of Toronto. She has also overseen the IB Creativity, Activity, Service (CAS) program, where student projects received international recognition. Notably, three of her students were awarded the prestigious International Leader of Tomorrow (ILOT) fully funded scholarship at the University of British Columbia.