Robert Bazell is the chief science and health correspondent for NBC News.

Bazell graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, USA, in 1967 with a B.A. in biochemistry and Phi Beta Kappa honors. As an undergraduate, he wrote a science column called "Science for the People" for the Daily Californian. Afterwards, Bazell traveled to England, where he studied biology at the University of Sussex in 1969 as part of his graduate work, before returning to Berkeley to complete his doctoral degree in immunology.

Bazell continued pursuing his dual interest in journalism and science by joining Science magazine in 1971 and writing for its News and Comment section. A year later, he left the publication to become a reporter for the New York Post. In 1976, he began his long career in broadcast journalism by joining WNBC in New York as a reporter before moving to NBC News.

At NBC, Bazell was one of the first network news correspondents to report on the emerging AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s. He continued to cover health and science issues for the network. Also in 1986, he was also a reporter and chief space correspondent during the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster when he reported about the explosion of the Space Shuttle on the January 28, 1986 episode of NBC Nightly News. In 1998, Bazell wrote and published, HER-2: The Making of Herceptin, a Revolutionary Treatment for Breast Cancer, which chronicled the creation of Herceptin, a drug used to treat breast cancer; the book received a positive review from the New York Times. The Lifetime 2008 film Living Proof, about a doctor who devotes his life's work to finding a cure for breast cancer, is based on the book.

Brian Douglas Williams (born May 5, 1959) is the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News, the evening news program of the NBC television network, a position he assumed in 2004. Williams was listed among Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2007, and in 2010, a prominent media observer dubbed him "the Walter Cronkite of the 21st century."

Williams was reared in a middle-class Irish Catholic home. His father, Gordon L. Williams, was an executive vice president of the National Retail Merchants Association, in New York. During childhood, his family moved from his birthplace, Ridgewood, New Jersey, to Elmira, New York. He lived in Elmira for ten years before moving to Middletown, New Jersey, when he was in junior high school.

He graduated from Mater Dei High School, a Roman Catholic high school in the New Monmouth section of Middletown. While in high school, he was a volunteer firefighter for three years at the Middletown Township Fire Department. His first job was as a busboy at Perkins Pancake House.

Timothy John "Tim" Russert (May 7, 1950 – June 13, 2008) was an American television journalist and lawyer who appeared for more than 16 years as the longest-serving moderator of NBC's Meet the Press. He was a senior vice president at NBC News, Washington bureau chief and also hosted an eponymous CNBC/MSNBC weekend interview program. He was a frequent correspondent and guest on NBC's The Today Show and Hardball. Russert covered several presidential elections, and he presented the NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey on the NBC Nightly News during the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Time magazine included Russert in its list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2008. Russert was posthumously revealed as a 30-year source for syndicated columnist Robert Novak.

Russert was born in Buffalo, New York to Irish American Catholic parents Elizabeth (Betty), a homemaker, and Timothy Joseph "Big Russ" Russert (November 29, 1923 – September 24, 2009), a sanitation worker. Elizabeth and Joseph were married for 30 years before separating in 1976. He was the second of four children; his sisters are Betty Ann (B.A.), Kathleen (Kathy) and Patricia (Trish). He received a Jesuit education from Canisius High School in Buffalo.