Gary Karp is the author of three — and co-editor of a fourth — definitive books on disability. His investigative articles and commentary have appeared in New Mobility magazine and on a variety of web sites, most recently disaboom.com. He is the former executive editor of SCI Life, the newspaper of the national spinal cord injury association. In 2007, NSCIA inducted Gary Karp into the Spinal Cord Injury Hall of Fame as a disability educator. He is an active keynote speaker and trainer on disability awareness, sponsored in part by the Christopher & Dana Reeve Paralysis Resource Center. Gary has lived with a T12 spinal cord injury since a fall in 1973 when he was 18. Gary also holds a graduate degree in architecture and is an accomplished musician and juggler.

Dr. John W. McDonald III completed a combined M.D./Ph.D. program in the Medical Scientists Training Program (MSTP) at the University of Michigan in 1992. He then completed a fellowship in Neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and served as visiting scientist at Eli Lilly and Co in Indianapolis, IN.

 In 1998, Dr. McDonald was named Medical Director of the Spinal Cord Neurorehabilitative Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Section Head of Spinal Cord Injury Program at Washington University.  In 2000 Dr. McDonald became the medical director of SCI Neurorehabilitation Program at the Rehabilitation Institute of St. Louis, an affiliate of Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Healthsouth.  There he spearheaded development of what is now a leading spinal cord injury neurorestoration program. It was there that he developed the "activity-based restoration" (ABR) therapies designed to help patients with long-term spinal cord injuries recover sensation, movement and independence; the therapy approached publicly acknowledged as producing the substantial and delayed recovery of actor/activist Christopher Reeve.  Dr. McDonald’s research team is acknowledged for developing the first effective treatment for recovery from chronic spinal cord injury using embryonic stem cells.  The seminal basic science and clinical trials research demonstrating the potential of ABR therapy to promote important improvement in function even in chronic spinal cord injury. 

Currently, Dr. McDonald is the Executive Vice President and Director of the International Center for Spinal Cord Injury at Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, MD.  Dr. McDonald joined Kennedy Krieger Institute in 2004 in order to launch a brand-new spinal cord rehabilitation and research program with a focus on pediatric paralysis, a program that has become the only one of its kind in the world. Dr. McDonald holds a primary appointment as Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine with co-appointments in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Neuroscience departments. 

Dr. McDonald’s current research focus is chronic spinal cord injury regeneration with an emphasis on cellular mechanisms contributing to regeneration following ABR therapy.  His research is represented in nearly 100 publications and by multiple patents in arenas of stem cell and devices.

Dr. John F. Ditunno, Jr., has devoted himself to physical medicine and rehabilitation for more than three decades, as a result, he is recognized as a leader in the field of spinal cord injury care, education and research. From 1969-1997, Dr. Ditunno was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Rehabilitation, Jefferson Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University and, in 1987, he was appointed the Michie Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine. Dr. Ditunno also served as Chairman of the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. His current role is as a researcher for Thomas Jefferson University's Spinal Cord Injury Center of the Delaware Valley (RSCICDV). He became Emeritus Project Director in 2006, after serving as Project Director of the RSCICDV since 1978.  In addition, Dr. Ditunno is currently a consultant for the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Department at Philadelphia's Magee Rehabilitation Hospital and, in the past, has been a consultant at numerous area hospitals including Lankenau Hospital, Albert Einstein Medical Center, the Medical Center of Wilmington, Delaware, Crozer-Chester Medical Center, Bryn Mawr Rehabilitation Hospital, and Wills Eye Hospital. 

Over the years, Dr. Ditunno has been co-investigator on studies involving surgical approaches for spinal cord injury patients, the neurological and functional recovery after such injury and reinnervation of muscle. Dr. Ditunno was the chairman and editor of the "International Standards for Neurological and Functional Classification of Spinal Cord Injury," which provides a universal language for classifying persons with spinal cord injury that has been accepted by rehabilitation practitioners throughout the world.  

Dr. Ditunno is a prolific author who has written hundreds of published chapters, papers, textbooks and abstracts throughout his medical career.

William B. Hurlbut is a physician and a Consulting Professor in the Neuroscience Institute at Stanford.  After receiving his undergraduate and medical training at Stanford University, he completed postdoctoral studies in theology and medical ethics, studying with Robert Hamerton-Kelly, the Dean of the Chapel at Stanford, and subsequently with the Rev. Louis Bouyer of the Institut Catholique de Paris. 

 His primary areas of interest involve the ethical issues associated with advancing biomedical technology, the biological basis of moral awareness, and studies in the integration of theology and philosophy of biology.  He was instrumental in establishing the first course in biomedical ethics at Stanford Medical Center and subsequently taught bioethics to nearly six thousand Stanford undergraduate students in the Program in Human Biology.

 Dr. Hurlbut is the author of numerous publications on science and ethics including the co-edited volume Altruism and Altruistic Love: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in Dialogue (2002, Oxford University Press), and “Science, Religion and the Human Spirit” in the Oxford Handbook of Science and Religion.  He is also co-chair of two interdisciplinary faculty projects at Stanford University, “Becoming Human: The Evolutionary Origins of Spiritual, Religious and Moral Awareness,” and “Brain Mind and Emergence.”

 Dr. Hurlbut has testified to the National Academy of Sciences Embryonic Stem Cell Research Guidelines Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education and has made presentations to UNESCO, the Pan American Health Organization and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars as well as at major medical centers and universities around the world.  He has worked with NASA on projects in Astrobiology and is a member of the Chemical and Biological Warfare working group at the Center for International Security and Cooperation.

 Since 2002 Dr. Hurlbut has served on the President’s Council on Bioethics.  He is the author of Altered Nuclear Transfer, a proposed technological solution to the moral controversy over embryonic stem cell research. This proposal was featured on the PBS program NOVA as one of the most important scientific stories of 2005.  Altered Nuclear Transfer is a central component of the President’s 2007 Executive Order on stem cell research and is included in several bipartisan legislative proposals for the federal funding of stem cell research currently pending in the United States Congress.