David Gruber is a National Geographic Explorer and the Founder & President of Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative), a nonprofit organization and interdisciplinary scientific and conservation initiative that is applying advanced machine learning and state-of-the-art robotics to translate the communication of sperm whales. CETI has made pioneering scientific discoveries including the first whale phonetic alphabet characterized in a non-human species; as well as the discovery of sperm whale vowels. He is a Distinguished Professor of Biology and Environmental Sciences at the City University of New York. His research bridges animal communication, climate science, marine biology, microbiology, and molecular biology, and his inventions include technologies to perceive the underwater world from the perspective of marine animals. His long-standing collaboration with the Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory has led to the engineering of some of the most gentle robots ever created to better understand and interact with life in the ocean. Gruber actively collaborates with artists, such as Joan Jonas, and he co-curated the exhibition “Who Speaks for the Oceans?” at the Mishkin Gallery. Gruber holds the Lagrange Prize in complex systems science for his advancements “focused on the conservation of biodiversity, protection of resources and the safeguarding of ecosystems.”