Carolyn Collins Petersen is CEO of Loch Ness Productions (www.lochnessproductions.com), a fulldome production company and organizer of ScienceFest. She is an award-winning science writer, with more than three dozen documentaries to her credit. Her latest book is "The Discovery of the Universe: A History of Astronomy and Observatories". She has written or co-written a number of books, including ""Space Exploration: Past, Present, Future", as well as"Astronomy 101: From the Sun and Moon to Wormholes and Warp Drive." She was the senior author for major exhibits at Griffith Observatory, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the California Academy of Sciences, and worked with the Science and Technology Museum in Shanghai, China, developing their new exhibit program. Carolyn writes regularly about astronomy on her own blog, TheSpacewriter’s Ramblings (http://www.thespacewriter.com). She studied education and astronomy at the University of Colorado and earned a graduate degree in mass communications (science emphasis, and minor in telecommunications engineering) in 1996 from CU, where she also worked on a Hubble Space Telescope instrument team. She spent several years as an editor and writer at Sky Publishing, and has been a speaker for Smithsonian Travels. She is a member of the American Astronomical Society and on the board of directors for IMERSA, an organization dedicated to promoting immersive and fulldome content. 
In addition to introducing our science speakers and offering her own talk, Carolyn will appear at the Meet and Greet and also at the "Ask a Scientist" table.