Cocktail Party Physics

Jennifer Ouellette is the author of four popular science books for the general public: the forthcoming Me, Myself and Why: Searching for the Science of Self (Winter 2014); The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Outbreak, Black Bodies and Quantum Cats: Tales from the Annals of Physics and The Physics of the Buffyverse, all published by Penguin. Her work has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, New Scientist, Discover, Slate, Salon, Symmetry, and Physics World, among other publications. For two years, Jennifer served as the director of the Science and Entertainment Exchange, an LA-based initiative of the National Academy of Sciences to foster creative collaborations between industry professionals in Hollywood and scientists. Jennifer holds a black belt in jujitsu, and has been known to draw upon that expertise to demonstrate the fundamentals of Newtonian mechanics. She is married to Caltech physicist Sean (M.) Carroll, a.k.a., the "Time Lord."

Jen-Luc Piquant is a faux-French avatar with a penchant for gourmet cuisine, high fashion, existential angst, and dabbling in amateur scientific research of questionable import. She is created by Lee Kottner using templates provided by Portrait Illustration maker -- with a little extra help from Photoshop.