Keith Veronese earned his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2011 and is the author of Rare: The High-Stakes Race to Satisfy Our Need for the Scarcest Metals on Earth. Rare takes an in-depth look at the little-known, illusive metals that power everything from smartphones to PS4s to nuclear weapons and the extent nations and corporations will go to extract them the furthest reaches of the globe. Veronese also wrote Plugged In: Comic Book Professionals Working in the Video Game Industry, which TwoMorrows Publishing released in 2013 and wrote extensively for the Gawker Media science site io9. He currently resides outside of Birmingham, Alabama with his wife and twin daughters.