Shawn Carlson, Ph.D. is a widely recognized leader in informal science education and is well known for his creativity, visionary leadership and passion. He has been instrumental in building the modern citizen scientist movement and has been the creative force behind a number of education and research programs and for both adults and children. Dr. Carlson did his undergraduate work at the UC Berkeley where he earned degrees in Physics and Applied Mathematics, and earned a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics from UCLA in 1989. After completing post doctoral research at the Center for Particle Astrophysics at UC Berkeley he left academia to devote himself to developing new approaches to "help ordinary people do extraordinary science." He founded the Society for Amateur Scientists (www.sas.org) in 1994 and became a columnist for Scientific American magazine one year later. In 1989 Dr. Carlson became the only person ever to win a MacArthur "genius" Fellowship for innovations in science education. Dr. Carlson is currently the Executive Director of the SciTech Hands On Museum (http://scitech.mus.il.us/) in Aurora, Illinois and is the creator of the Labrats Science Education Program.

Dr. Carlson's work has been featured on many national media outlets including Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report, the New York Times, the Washington Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Globe, Donahue, Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Science Friday and National Public Radio amongst many others. Dan Rather decided to profile Dr. Carlson in his 2001 book titled "The American Dream, Stories from the Heart of Our Nation" (William Morrow & Company).