Our Team
Below is an 81-second video that gives the genesis of our project and the relevant experiences of its founder.
The above video contains images from the feature films: Deep Astronomy and the Romantic Sciences (2020), Butterfly Stories (2012) and The American Astronaut (2001). Additional footage created by Captain Ahab’s Motorcycle Club.
OUR TEAM
CORY MCABEE: FOUNDER / DIRECTOR
Cory McAbee is a writer, director, singer, songwriter, musician, actor, animator and illustrator. His music and films have won awards worldwide. He has developed and directed an eight-year global collaborative which concluded with the completion of a feature film. He has given lectures, panel discussions, symposiums and masters classes on art, alternative media and the collaborative process at conferences and universities throughout the world. He has documented the birth of monarch butterflies, participated in collecting migration data and has traveled with the monarch butterfly migration from Chicago IL. to El Rosario, Michoacan Mexico. McAbee is currently raising and studying various species of cockroaches.
JOE SEHEE: ADVISOR / LIAISON
Joe Sehee is the founder of the Green Burial Council and CEO of the recently launched Green Burial Council International. He also provides consultancy for the purpose of creating private/family conservation burial grounds. He is a Senior Fellow with the Environmental Leadership Program and former Commissioner on the City of Santa Fe Sustainability Commission. He is currently working as the Director of the Secular Spiritual Care Network for the Humanist Society of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia.
DR. KAREN FROUD: ADVISOR
Dr. Karen Froud is a Professor of Neuroscience and Education in the Department of Bio-behavioral Sciences at the Teachers College of Columbia University where she is the director of the Neurocognition of Language Lab. Originally trained in the UK as a speech-language pathologist where she worked with adults who have severe neurological disabilities, Dr. Froud's doctoral and post-doctoral work was conducted at University College London and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She now teaches graduate courses in cognitive neuroscience at Columbia University in New York City and publishes her research widely in academic journals including Brain Sciences, the Journal of Neurolinguistics, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, and more.
PROFESSOR JOHN MODERN: ADVISOR
Professor John Modern is the and head of Religious Studies at Franklin & Marshall College where he teaches classes on American religious history, literature, technology, and aesthetics. He is the author of Secularism in Antebellum America (University of Chicago Press) and The Bop Apocalypse: The Religious Visions of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs (University of Illinois Press). He is currently working on a project that explores the end of the world through the lens of Akron, OH. His work has been funded by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Social Science Research Council. He is currently a member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study and an ACLS Frederick Burkhardt fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies.
DR. PRAKASH VERMA: ADVISOR
Dr. Verma obtained his Master of Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in integrated chemistry. He earned his PhD from the University of Florida for his work in developing analytical gradient scheme for non-variational density functional theory (DFT), developing self-consistent potential for random phase approximation, proposing consistent DFT approach framework, and showing the importance of including exchange-correlation potential in functional design. He developed computational tools for computing electron-spin resonance parameters using a two-component DFT approach at the University at Buffalo, coupled cluster linear response at Texas Tech University, and relativistic method of PSI4 program suite at Emory University. He is now developing quantum algorithms that will work on a quantum accelerator to accomplish computational chemistry tasks that are intractable on classical computers.
RICHARD COLE: ADVISOR
Mr. Cole studied Medical Physics and Physiological Measurements in the United Kingdom. After moving to the US he became a Clinical Product Manager for a leading cardiology software company. During that time he produced a live music series in the Chicago IL area. He has since left the medical field to work primarily in the arts. Today Mr. Cole lives in New Jersey where he has worked as producer and editor for the feature film “Deep Astronomy and the Romantic Sciences” (2020). He is the music manager for singer-songwriter Jeff Taylor and Digital Marketing and Social Media Specialist at 495 Digital, a boutique firm specializing in integrated digital communications and marketing.