Mary Posatko is an LA-based filmmaker originally from Delaware. Mary was the co-director of All Fall Down, which was Executive Produced by Bona Fide Productions and Chicken & Egg Pictures, and had its US premiere at the Maryland Film Festival and its international premiere in competition at CPH:DOX in 2014. All Fall Down was invited to IFP Spotlight on Documentaries and Good Pitch - SF in 2012, and received funding from the International Documentary Association's Pare Lorentz Award and the San Francisco Film Society, among others. She produced the critically-acclaimed Ain't in It for My Health: a Film about Levon Helm, which world premiered at the SXSW Film Festival was theatrically released by Kino Lorber in 2013. Previously, she was a producer on KCRW and PRI's To The Point and Which Way, LA?, as well as several award-winning short films including PITSTOP (2008 BAFTA and Student Academy Award).
Mary received her BA in history from Brown University and her MFA from the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts. She is currently a on the faculty of San Diego State University.
Helen M. Berman is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and Research Professor of Quantitative and Computational Biology at the University of Southern California.
She was a co-founder of the Protein Data Bank(PDB) that is an archive of information about the structures of proteins, nucleic acids, and complex assemblies and was the Director of the Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics Protein Data Bank (RCSB PDB) from 1998-2014. As a structural biologist, she has always been fascinated by the architectures and functions of biological molecules and has also been inspired by their beauty. However, over the years she realized how difficult it is to communicate this to a broader audience. In 2015, she embarked on a new project to use film in order to educate others about the integral role played by molecules in health and disease. Target Zero is the first product of a collaboration among scientists, physicians, patients, animators and film makers to show examples of compassionate care and at the same time explain the molecular basis of HIV prevention and treatment.
Helen is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy for Arts and Sciences, Biophysical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Crystallographic Association, and the International Society for Computational Biology. She is the recipient of several awards including the Benjamin Franklin Award for Open Access in the Life Sciences, the DeLano Award for Computational Biosciences, the ACA Martin Buerger and David Rognlie Awards, the Distinguished Service Award from the Biophysical Society, and the Carl Brändén Award from the Protein Society.
Jed Dannenbaum (1947-2021) was a story consultant and nonfiction filmmaker and Professor of Practice Emeritus at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. He co-authored the Simon & Schuster book Creative Filmmaking From the Inside Out and has dozens of nonfiction film writing, producing and directing credits for HBO, Showtime and PBS, as well as projects for the National Science Foundation and in the fields of medical and legal education. He has served as a story consultant for the Getty Conservation Institute and on numerous feature films, both fiction and nonfiction.
Jed has given academic presentations on “Story,” “Non-fiction Storytelling,” “Vote for My Story,” “The Point of the Story,” and “Paleolithic Storytelling in the 21st Century.” Among the USC film students he has worked closely with are Ryan Coogler (writer-director, Creed), Chris Terrio (Academy Award-winning screenwriter, Argo), Meera Menon (director, Equity) and Ransom Riggs (best-selling author of the Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children series of novels that are the source for the movie directed by Tim Burton). The dozens of luminaries he has interviewed for his work include Sean Connery, Geena Davis, Robert De Niro, Carole King, John Lasseter, George Lucas, Paul Newman, Mike Nichols, Itzhak Perlman, Rob Reiner, Steven Spielberg, Twyla Tharp and John Williams.
Colleen holds her MFA from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts in film production and a BA in writing/journalism from Georgetown University. She is a filmmaker with a deep passion for human rights, youth and health advocacy, and strong female characters. She has produced, written, directed and production designed several feature length films in the past ten years.
Heyjin Jun was born and raised in a part of the Korean countryside where there wasn't a single movie theater. Beginning in third grade, she would spend weekends with her parents volunteering at facilities for the destitute and neglected, playing the violin for people who had never heard Western classical music, and giving the elderly massages to ease their pain. While spending time with these people, they would often tell her their unique and personal stories, often of suffering and struggle. When she came to America at age 21, she was quickly struck by the social impact a single film can have, and started dreaming of telling the stories of people who have been forgotten by the rest of the world.
She recently graduated USC with an MFA degree in the Film/Television Program. Her ultimate goal is to become a stepping-stone, linking people in need to the rest of the world through her films.
Antonia is a filmmaker based in LA. She studied at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts Film & Television grad program then transitioned into her career in post-production on projects such as Star Trek Beyond and How To Be Single. She is currently working as an Assistant VFX Editor on the Netflix drama Stranger Things.
David Butler is a dialogue and ADR editor for feature films and television. Target Zero marks the third time he has collaborated with documentary filmmaker Mary Posatko (Ain’t in It for My Health: a Film about Levon Helm and All Fall Down). He has also worked on numerous small, independent films such as The Fate of the Furious, American Sniper, and Godzilla. He recently completed work on the Netflix series Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later. In his spare time, he enjoys cooking, coaching youth sports, and sighing deeply when he checks the score to the San Diego Padres game.
Alexis Marsh and Samuel Jones began collaborating as film composers in 2010 after graduation from USC's Thornton School. Sharing a background in jazz, pop, and avant-garde music along with a passion for cinematic storytelling, the two multi-instrumentalists joined their instrument collections and DIY aesthetics to form a studio that has since contributed scores and songs to feature films, TV shows, documentaries, art installations, games, and advertising campaigns.
Alexis & Sam's film work has been heard at major festivals around the world including Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca, Slamdance, Edinburgh Film Festival, Los Angeles Film Festival, AFI Fest, and the Champs Ellysees Film Festival. As collaborators with Los Angeles visual artists Alex Israel and Morrisa Maltz, their music has been featured in gallery exhibitions worldwide, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santa Barbara, Peres Projects in Berlin, and Reena Spaulings Fine Art in New York City. In the television realm, Alexis & Sam's credits include commissions by HBO's Sesame Street and Nickelodeon's Ninja Turtles franchise, and most recently TNT’s Animal Kingdom, returning in 2018 for its third season. In 2016 Alexis & Sam launched the indie band project DYAN, which has toured North America and released the debut album “Looking For Knives” to critical acclaim.
Maria Voigt is an Outreach Coordinator at the RCSB Protein Data Bank. Her work focuses on visual aspects of educational outreach including illustration, animation, and graphic design. Her illustrations Clathrin and The Enzymes of HIV were recognized with the Wellcome Image Award and BioArt Award respectively. She also coordinates events aiming to educate audiences about the structure and function of proteins.
Janet Iwasa is a research assistant professor in the Biochemistry Department at the University of Utah. Her broad goal is to create accurate and compelling molecular and cellular visualizations that will support research, learning and scientific communication. Janet's award-winning illustrations and animations have appeared in scientific journals including Nature, Science and Cell, as well as in the New York Times. Her work has also been featured on television and in museum exhibits. Janet was named a 2017 TED senior fellow and recognized as one of the "100 Leading Global Thinkers" of 2014 by Foreign Policy magazine and one of the “100 Most Creative People” of 2012 by Fast Company magazine. As a postdoctoral fellow, she created a multimedia exhibit with Nobel Laureate Jack Szostak (Harvard University) and the Museum of Science, Boston, and later worked on biological visualizations as a faculty member at Harvard Medical School.
She received her Ph.D. in 2006 from the University of California, San Francisco for her work on the actin cytoskeleton in the laboratory of Dyche Mullins, and completed 3D animation training at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects later that same summer.
David S. Goodsell holds joint appointments as Associate Professor of Molecular Biology at the Scripps Research Institute and Research Professor at Rutgers University. His research uses computer graphics and simulation to explore structure/function relationships in key biological systems. Current projects include design of compounds to fight drug resistance in HIV and development of methods for computational docking of molecules to proteins and DNA.
Science education and outreach is also a strong focus of his laboratory. He is author of the Molecule of the Month, a feature at the RCSB Protein Data Bank that presents the structure and function of a new molecule each month, and several illustrated books on biological molecules, their diverse roles within living cells, and the growing connections between biology and nanotechnology. More information may be found at: mgl.scripps.edu/people/goodsell
The staff and patients of the MCA and the Rand Schrader Clinics at LAC+USC
The staff of the RCSB Protein Data Bank at Rutgers University
The Bridge Institute at the University of Southern California
