Dr. Kaiser is the Director of KidTalk and the Susan W. Gray Professor of Education and Human Development at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. She serves as the principal investigator for the research and demonstration grants at KidTalk. She has published more than 160 articles and chapters on early language interventions for children with language delays and developmental disabilities, and for children at risk due to poverty.

Hongkui Zeng joined the Allen Institute for Brain Science in 2006 and became Executive Vice President Director of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in 2020. From 2016 to 2020, she led the Structured Science Division to develop and operate high-throughput pipelines to generate large-scale, open-access datasets and tools to accelerate neuroscience discovery. Since joining the Allen Institute, she has also led several research programs, including the Transgenic Technology program, the Human Cortex Gene Survey project, the Allen Mouse Brain Connectivity Atlas project, and the Mouse Cell Types and Connectivity program. Zeng received her Ph.D. in molecular and cell biology from Brandeis University, where she studied the molecular mechanisms of the circadian clock in fruit flies. Then as a postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she studied the molecular and synaptic mechanisms underlying hippocampus-dependent plasticity and learning. Her current research interests are in understanding neuronal diversity and connectivity in the mouse visual cortical circuit and how different neuronal types work together to process and transform visual information. She has broad scientific experience and a keen interest in using a combined molecular, anatomical and physiological approach to unravel mechanisms of brain circuitry and potential means for treating brain diseases.

Moriah Thomason, PhD, is the Barakett Associate Professor and Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at New York University Grossman School of Medicine. She is also faculty in the Department of Population Health and in the Neuroscience Institute. She formerly served as Director of the Perinatal Neural Connectivity Unit within the intramural Perinatology Research Branch of NICHD/NIH. Her published research addresses principals of neural development beginning in utero. Her current NIH grants examine environmental factors with potential to influence functional neurocircuitry of the developing brain.