Heart of the Comet
From inside front cover:

EXILES from a world devastated by fear and political strife.  HEROES who first must conquer their own conflicts before the greater goal can be won.  PIONEERS, hundreds of men and women chosen to seek a new future, to chart a new destiny.  They soared to the heart of a comet, led by three remarkable and very human people:

CARD OSBORN:
The troubled leader of an increasingly improbable mission.  Silently, he calls upon his bottomless strength to carry the weight of hundreds of frightened, tormented lives.

SAUL LINTZ:
The brilliant biologist who works feverishly to heal the stricken crew.  Ultimately, he undertakes a desperate experiment to delve into the very essence of life -- and death.

VIRGINIA HERBERT:
The gifted cybernetics technician, the woman both men love.  She breaks the barrier of artificial intelligence and must now ho one step beyond into a melding of mind and machine.
Science fiction, Fiction, science fiction, general
Gregory Benford, David Brin, Gabrielle de Cuir, P J Ochlan, Cassandra De Cuir
Gregory Benford (Gregory Albert Benford) is an astrophysicist and science fiction author who is on the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine.  He is also a contributing editor of Reason magazine.  Benford is best known for the Galactic Center Saga novels, a series that postulates a galaxy in which sentient organic life is in constant warfare with sentient electromechanical life.

Greg was born in Mobile, Alabama.  He received his Bachelor of Science in Physics from the University of Oklahoma, followed by his Masters and then his Doctorate from the University of California, San Diego.  Having published more than 200 scientific papers, his research encompasses both theory and experiments in the fields of astrophysics and plasma physics.

Greg is a two-time winner of the Nebula Award and has also won the John W. Campbell Award, the Australian Ditmar Award, the Lord Foundation Prize, and the 1990 United Nations Medal in Literature.  

Source: Secular Policy Institute