Stuart Firestein is a professor of neuroscience at Columbia University and a member of the Santa Fe Institute. He has published over one hundred scientific papers in journals such as Nature, Science, Cell, and Neuron. He is a Guggenheim fellow, a fellow and consultant for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is also the author of Ignorance and Failure. He lives in New York City.