Mark O'Connell is an author, screenwriter, feature television commentator, and university lecturer. He got his start in television, writing for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. O'Connell was Co-Executive Producer and on-camera expert on the reality show UFO Witness, a recurring guest on the TV show Fright Club, and Co-Producer of a Discovery+ documentary about best-selling author Whitley Strieber. O'Connell is the author of The Close Encounters Man: How One Man Made the World Believe in UFOS, a biography of Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the famed astrophysicist, science educator, and UFO researcher and inspiration behind Steven Spielberg's epic film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Currently, O'Connell is a featured commentator discussing the science and history of UFOs in UFOs: Investigating the Unknown, a documentary mini-series for the National Geographic Channel, now streaming on Hulu, and soon on VICE and Disney +. He is also on the screenwriting faculty of the College of Computing & Digital Media at DePaul University.