Polymathic Pizza - Us in the Universe, the Universe in Us: The Meta Questions

Dr. Vanessa Gomez Brake is the Senior Associate Dean of Religious Life at USC. She is the first humanist chaplain to serve in this capacity at any American university. In her role, Gomez Brake works to support and promote university religious and spiritual life broadly conceived, and helps oversee more than 90 student religious groups and 50 religious directors on campus. She also serves as an advisor to the USC Interfaith Council and the Secular Student Fellowship.

Gomez Brake received dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Religious Studies and Psychology from Arizona State University. She received her Master of Science degree from the Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University, with an emphasis on religion and peacemaking. She also earned a Master of Divinity degree at the Chicago Theological Seminary, and then received her Ph.D. at USC’s Rossier School of Education, where her research focused on Christian hegemony in higher education, and centered the voices of Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and other non-Christian university chaplains. 

In 2025, Gomez Brake was honored with the Chaplain of the Year Award, a nationwide honor, from the Association for Chaplaincy & Spiritual Life in Higher Education.

David Albertson is Associate Professor of Religion. After finishing degrees at Stanford University and the University of Chicago, Albertson studied at the Thomas-Institut für mittelalterliche Philosophie at the Universität zu Köln before joining the faculty of USC in 2007. Professor Alberton’s studies the history of Christian thought in medieval and early modern Europe, with an interest in transformations of Christian intellectual culture from 1100-1700, particularly the way that theological discourses have been conditioned by other modes of knowledge, including philosophy, natural science, visual culture, and contemplative practices. 

Albertson is the author of Mathematical Theologies: Nicholas of Cusa and the Legacy of Thierry of Chartres (Oxford University Press, 2014), which won the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award from the Universität Heidelberg. This examined the fifteenth-century German polymath, Nicholas of Cusa, whose writings combined mystical theology with medieval number theory.  

Albertson has two books forthcoming: an edited volume on the modern reception of Nicholas of Cusa; and a monograph, The Geometry of Christian Contemplation: Measure without Measure, which looks at the role of geometry in ancient Christian contemplation, and which also happens to be our spring 2026 selection for the Polymathic Book Club!

Luke Bouma graduated from the University of Southern California in 2015 with Bachelor’s degrees in physics and math, then completed his doctoral studies at Princeton’s Department of Astrophysical Sciences in 2021. He continued his research as a 51 Pegasi b fellow at Caltech from 2021 to 2024, and currently works as a Carnegie Fellow at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, also in Pasadena, California. Luke is a Fellow of the Harman Academy, class of 2015.

Bouma's main research topic is planets that orbit other stars — exoplanets. He is especially interested in exoplanet origins. What processes produced the exoplanets that we see today? In what stellar and galactic environments does exoplanet evolution unfold? Bouma tackles these questions using a mix of observational and theoretical tools, many of them focused on young planets and stars that are only a fraction of the Earth and Sun's age.

Bouma also teaches astronomy in prisons, through the Prison Education Project.