Susan Gardner has a position as a Professor and is currently at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky, USA. She holds a B.S. in Physics and Chemistry from Caltech (1982), an M.A. in Chemical Physics from Columbia University (1983), and a Ph.D. in Theoretical Nuclear Physics from M.I.T. (1988). Her research interests are nuclear physics, particle physics, and astronomy and astrophysics. She has 87 papers publications with 2361 citations and an h index of 24 (Scopus, 23 November 2023) in these areas.

Mohammadreza Zakeri serves as a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky, USA. He embarked on his academic journey at the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran, where he earned a B.Sc. in Physics (2008-2012). This was followed by a M.S. in Physics (2013) and a Ph.D. in Theoretical Particle Physics from the University of California, Riverside (2017). Zakeri's research primarily focuses on theoretical particle physics, building critical connections between particle physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM) and astrophysics. His work delves into the high-density environments of neutron star interiors, exploring how interactions within these stars might influence large-scale astrophysical phenomena, such as pulsar spin and binary system dynamics. He integrates his knowledge in BSM model building to probe new particles and symmetries, and he searches for their experimental signatures in both collider experiments and underground detectors.