Dr. Gary A. Laursen is an adjunct Research Professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, was instrumental in maintaining the state's largest and longest-running outreach program for secondary STEM research, now directs the UAF Honors Program, and faculty advises Golden Key. He has written and published over 375 pieces while also serving twenty years as a high school teacher concomitant with his thirty-five years of university instruction and research. He is the coauthor of the book Common Interior Alaska Cryptogams: Fungi, Lichenicolous Fungi, Lichenized Fungi, Slime Molds, Mosses, and Liverworts, University of Alaska Press, (2009).

Neil McArthur grew up in Scotland, Quebec, and western New York, earned a B.Sc. in forestry from Syracuse in 1962, and ran away to Alaska. He worked as naturalist, forester, game biologist, cartographer, greenhouseman, carpenter, and museum facility manager. Neil helped his wife, Harriette Parker, author the 1994 Alaska's Mushrooms, and provided most of its photos.