Mark Bedau (Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Reed College; Adjunct Professor of Systems Science at Portland State University) has extensively published and lectured on philosophical and scientific issues concerning emergence, evolution, life, mind, and the social and ethical implications of new and emerging technologies. He combines training in analytical philosophy with over three decades of experience in artificial life, and he has co-authored or co-edited 7 books, including Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science (MIT Press), Protocells: Bridging Nonliving and Living Matter (MIT Press), and The Ethics of Protocells: Moral and Social Implications of Creating Life in the Laboratory (MIT Press), and The nature of life: classical and contemporary perspectives from philosophy and science (Cambridge University Press). For the past twenty years he has been Editor-in-Chief of the journal Artificial Life (published by MIT Press), and he was the founding President of the International Society for Artificial Life.

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Jenna Bednar is professor of political science at the University of Michigan and a member of the external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute.  Her research focuses on how collective action builds social goods and the role that government plays in that collaboration. Current work includes: robust system design, especially of federalism; states as innovators in federal systems; out of district campaign contributions; how culture affects the way people respond to laws and norms; transboundary water system governance; and governance to support human flourishing.  Her book The Robust Federation: Principles of Design was awarded the APSA Martha Derthick Best Book Award in recognition of its enduring contribution to the study of federalism.  She earned her B.A. from the University of Michigan and M.A. and PhD from Stanford University.

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Eric Beinhocker is a Professor of Public Policy Practice at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. He is also the Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the University’s Oxford Martin School. INET Oxford is a research center devoted to applying leading-edge interdisciplinary approaches to economic theory and public policy practice. INET Oxford researchers are working on issues ranging from financial system stability, to innovation and growth, economic inequality, and environmental sustainability. Beinhocker is also an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Prior to joining Oxford, Beinhocker had an 18-year career at McKinsey & Company where he was a partner and held leadership roles in McKinsey’s Strategy Practice, its Climate Change and Sustainability Practice, and the McKinsey Global Institute.

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Ben Bernhard was born in Constance and found his passion as a cameraman and cinematographer. The list of his documentaries, commercials and feature films is now long. That of his awards too. Among other things, camera award for “Homework” and winner of Berlin film festivals with “Lost Reactor”, with which he was also nominated for the German Camera Award in 2019. "Aquarela", which he shot with Victor Kossakovsky, is now on the shortlist for an Oscar, and recently Netflix knocked on his door. His recipe for success: not only entertaining, but delivering unique, unforgettable moments.

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Johan Bollen is a professor at the Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing. He was formerly a staff scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 2005-2009, and an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science of Old Dominion University from 2002 to 2005. He obtained his PhD in Experimental Psychology from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in 2001. He has published more than 75 articles on computational social science, social media analytics, infometrics, and digital libraries. His research has been funded by the NSF, DARPA, IARPA, EDA, NASA, and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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Robert Boyd is an evolutionary anthropologist whose research is focused on the evolutionary psychology of the mechanisms that give rise to, and shape human culture, and how these mechanisms interact with population dynamic processes to shape human cultural variation. Prior to his current position as Professor of the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University, Boyd taught at Duke University, Emory University, and the University of California, Los Angeles. He is considered a forerunner in the field of cultural evolution and uses a combination of mathematical modelling, laboratory experiments, and ethnographic fieldwork in his research.

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David Christian is by training a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union, but since the 1980s he has become interested in world history on very large scales. He has written on the social and material history of the 19th-century Russian peasantry, in particular on aspects of diet and the role of alcohol. In 1989, he began teaching courses on "Big History," surveying the past on the largest possible scales, including those of biology and astronomy.

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John Clippinger is an Advisor to Bancor, Evident, Decentralized Pictures, Atonomi, SkyCoin, Cashaa, and the CryptoAsset Design Group. Previously, he was CEO of ID3 (The Institute for Data Driven Design) and Co-Director of The Law Lab at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard Law School. Dr. Clippinger is a contributor and co-editor From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond; The Quest for Identity and Autonomy in Digital Society, (2014), the author of A Crowd of One: The Future of Individual Identity (Perseus, Public Affairs, 2007, and The Biology of Business, Natural Laws of Enterprise Josey Bass, 1998). Previously, he was Director of Intellectual Capital, Coopers & Lybrand, advisor to DOD CCRP (Command and Control Research Program (CCRP), DARPA, and the founder of four artificial intelligence software companies. He has been a member of the World Economic Forum Global Advisory Council, Santa Fe Institute, Aspen Institute, Highlands Forum, Yale CEO Summit, Dubai Futures Forum, Aspen Italia, TII/Vanguard, and others. He is a graduate of Yale University and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

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Molly Crockett is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Yale University, where she is director of the Crockett Lab. Her team takes as a starting point Blaise Pascal's description of human beings as “the glory and scum of the universe”. The Crockett Lab seeks to understand this paradox by studying the cognitive building blocks of human morality, including social learning, impression formation, empathy, moral judgment and decision-making. Their approach integrates methods and insights from social psychology, behavioral economics, computational neuroscience and philosophy. They use behavioral experiments, computational modeling, functional brain imaging and field studies to investigate the social mind.

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Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino is an author, consultant, public speaker and entrepreneur with a background in industrial and interaction design. She was the first UK distributor of the Arduino and is the founder of the Good Night Lamp which is in the permanent collection of the London Design Museum. Her projects are also part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She wrote ‘Smarter Homes: how technology will change your home life’ (Apress, 2018). She is writing ‘Creating a Culture of Innovation’ (Apress, 2020). She was named 1st in a list of 100 Internet of Things Influencers (Postscapes, 2016), 2nd in Top 100 Internet of Things Thought Leaders (Onalytica, 2014) and in the Top 100 Influencial Tech Women on Twitter (Business Insider, 2014). She’s been included in the longlist of Computer Weekly’s Most Influential Women in Tech in the UK (2017, 2018 & 2019).

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Esther Dyson is a Swiss-born American journalist, author, businesswoman, investor, commentator and philanthropist. She is a leading angel investor focused on healthcare, open government, digital technology and outer space. Dyson’s career focuses on health and continues to invest in health and technology startups.

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Brian Eno is an English musician, record producer, visual artist, and theorist best known for his pioneering work in Ambient music and contributions to rock, pop, and electronica.  He has been described as one of popular music's most influential and innovative figures, introducing unique conceptual approaches and recording techniques to contemporary music. Eno has produced critically revered albums by the Talking Heads, Devo, Coldplay and U2, and collaborated widely with artists such as David Bowie, John Cale and Karl Hyde. Dating back to his time as a student, Eno has also worked in other media, including light and sound installations. His Oblique Strategies (1975), a widely used deck of cards featuring cryptic aphorisms intended to spur creative thinking, are still widely used. From the '70s onwards, Eno's 200-plus installations have included the sails of the Sydney Opera House in 2009 and the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank in 2016. An advocate of a range of humanitarian causes, Eno writes and lectures on a variety of subjects and is a founding member of the Long Now Foundation. In 2019, Eno was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall ofFame as a co-founder of Roxy Music and awarded the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication.

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Doyne Farmer is Director of Complexity Economics at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, and is the Baillie Gifford Professor at Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford, as well as an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute.  His current research is in economics, including financial stability, sustainability, technological change and economic simulation.  He was a founder of Prediction Company, a quantitative automated trading firm that was sold to the United Bank of Switzerland in 2006. His past research spans complex systems, dynamical systems, time series analysis and theoretical biology.  He founded the Complex Systems Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and while a graduate student in the 70’s he build the first wearable digital computer, which was successfully used to predict the game of roulette.

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Carl Frey is Oxford Martin Citi Fellow at Oxford University where he directs the programme on the Future of Work at the Oxford Martin School. After studying economics, history and management at Lund University, Frey completed his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in 2011. He subsequently joined the Oxford Martin School where he founded the programme on the Future of Work with support from Citigroup. Between 2012 and 2014, he was teaching at the Department of Economic History at Lund University. In 2012, Frey became an Economics Associate of Nuffield College and Senior Fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, both University of Oxford. He remains a Senior Fellow of the Department of Economic History at Lund University, and a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA). In 2019, he joined the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on the New Economic Agenda, as well as the Bretton Woods Committee. His most recent book, The Technology Trap, was selected a Financial Times Best Books of the Year in 2019.

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Pernille Rose Grønkjær is an award winning director, an Oscar nominated executive producer and founder of the female-lead production company Danish Documentary Production. She is focused on existential as well as science related stories, and her films are focused around human intelligence. Her film THE MONASTERY won the Joris Ivens Award at IDFA and 11 additional awards in 2007. In 2019 Pernille premiered "HUNTING FOR HEDONIA" on the story and science of Deep Brain Stimulation working with Academy award winning actress Tilda Swinton on the narration of the film. Pernille is the Executive Producer of more films including THE CAVE, a film about the work of a heroic Syrian female doctor, which was nominated for an Academy Award 2020. 

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Nick Hanauer is one of the most successful entrepreneurs, investors, and business executives in Washington State. Hanauer is a co-founder of the Seattle-based venture capital firm Second Avenue Partners. An influential civic and political activist, Hanauer founded Civic Ventures, an organization devoted to ideas, policies, and actions that catalyze significant social change, in 2015. Hanauer has managed, founded, or financed 37 companies across a broad range of industries, creating an aggregate market value of tens of billions of dollars. He was the first non-family investor in Amazon.com and served at Amazon as a board advisor for 5 years. He also founded Aquantive Inc., a global leader in digital advertising (purchased by Microsoft in 2007 for $6.4 billion.) Other companies he’s launched, funded, or managed include Insitu (purchased by Boeing for $400 million), Market Leader (purchased by Trulia in 2013 for $350 million), Marchex, Newsvine, Real Self, Modumetal Inc., Seeq Corp, Flexe, Juno Therapeutics, and Seattle Bank. Hanauer got his start in the family business, Pacific Coast Feather Company, a national leader in home textiles. Today, Hanauer devotes a majority of his time to a broad portfolio of civic and philanthropic activities. As a national leader on policy issues related to income inequality and the future of capitalism, his advocacy and policy initiatives have helped shape the global economic conversation.

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Ricardo Hausmann is Director of Harvard's Center for International Development and Professor of the Practice of Economic Development at the Kennedy School of Government. He also teaches a capstone course on the MPAID program. Previously, he served as the first Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank (1994-2000), where he created the Research Department. He has served as Minister of Planning of Venezuela (1992-1993) and as a member of the Board of the Central Bank of Venezuela. He also served as Chair of the IMF-World Bank Development Committee. He was Professor of Economics at the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administracion (IESA) (1985-1991) in Caracas, where he founded the Center for Public Policy. His research interests include issues of growth, macroeconomic stability, international finance, and the social dimensions of development. He holds a PhD in economics from Cornell University.

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Paul Honeybone's research focusses on questions of progressing governance and policy making for better urban development. His PhD research is funded within the Liveable Cities programme. Paul undertook a research project at the CLL in 2017 focussing on the governability of UK city infrastructures. This was part of the ‘Water Energy Food: WEFWEBs’ project funded by the EPSRC. Paul's previous work experiences span public policy and programme management to not-for profit sustainability consulting. His prior role was Housing Policy Development Manager, leading a team on city development under growth pressure (Auckland housing supply and affordability) and post-disaster housing recovery (Christchurch housing market), based in New Zealand's Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. 

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Larry Kramer has been President of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation since 2012. Under his leadership, the foundation has maintained its commitment to areas of enduring concern, while adapting its approaches and strategies to meet changing circumstances and seize new opportunities. He has, at the same time, been instrumental in launching new efforts to respond to pressing and timely problems, such as challenges related to political polarization and cybersecurity. Since joining the Hewlett Foundation, he has written and spoken about issues related to effective philanthropy, including the importance of collaboration among funders and the need to provide grantees with long-term support. He frequently lectures and writes about broad societal issues, from global climate change to the challenge of maintaining democratic government in the 21st century. Before joining the foundation, Larry served from 2004 to 2012 as Richard E. Lang Professor of Law and Dean of Stanford Law School. During his tenure, he spearheaded significant educational reforms, pioneering a new model of multidisciplinary legal studies while enlarging the clinical education program and incorporating a public service ethos. His teaching and scholarly interests include American legal history, constitutional law, federalism, separation of powers, the federal courts, conflict of laws, and civil procedure.

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Kristina Korsholm is known for her work as an actress, author and international model. She received her theatrical training in Copenhagen, at Ophelia Acting Studio and later with The William Esper Studio in NYC. She has a degree in Film & Media from Copenhagen University, a journalism degree from University of Stockholm and she spent a semester studying directing and acting at UCLA.

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Klaus Lackner is the director of the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions and Professor at the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, Arizona State University. Lackner’s research interests include closing the carbon cycle by capturing carbon dioxide from the air, carbon sequestration, carbon foot-printing, innovative energy and infrastructure systems and their scaling properties, the role of automation, robotics and mass-manufacturing in downscaling infrastructure systems, and energy and environmental policy. His work includes more than 200 publications and 30 patents,, commercially licensed IP in Carbon Capture and Life Cycle Analysis. He is a Fellow of the American Association of the Advancement of Science. As Ewing Worzel Professor, he directed the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy at Columbia University. He co-founded two-startup companies, and led the zero emission coal Alliance in the late 1990s. At the time, he also was the Acting Associated Director of Strategic and Supporting Research at Los Alamos National Laboratory, which comprises all of basic Science at the Laboratory.

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Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School. Prior to rejoining the Harvard faculty, Lessig was a professor at Stanford Law School, where he founded the school's Center for Internet and Society, and at the University of Chicago. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court. Lessig serves on the Board of the AXA Research Fund, and on the advisory boards of Creative Commons and the Sunlight Foundation. He is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Association, and has received numerous awards, including the Free Software Foundation's Freedom Award, Fastcase 50 Award and being named one of Scientific American's Top 50 Visionaries.

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Fotini Markopoulou is a quantum gravity physicist and design engineer. Markopoulou is CEO and co-founder at Empathic Technologies, a wearable tech company that uses research in embodied cognition science and haptics to create our emotional second skin, technology that changes how a user perceives, feels and behaves. She was founding faculty at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. She earned her PhD in Theoretical Physics from Imperial College London and a Double Masters in Innovation Design Engineering from the Royal College of Art and Imperial College.

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Penny Mealy is a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of New Economic Thinking and the School of Geography and the Environment and is currently working on the Oxford Martin School Programme on the Post-Carbon Transition. She is also leading a project on 'Practical Wisdom in a Complex World' at the Bennett Institute of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. Penny’s PhD at Oxford was on quantitative approaches for analysing productive capabilities. She applied these methods to provide insights into long-run development, the division of labour and the transition to the green economy. Her broader research interests include economic complexity, technological evolution, transformational change, network science and agent-based modelling. Previously, Penny worked as an economist in Australia, where she predominantly focused on issues relating to energy, resources and climate change.

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Leif Rasmussen serves as the general counsel to the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, and interim counsel to the New Mexico Livestock Board. Previously, Leif respectively clerked for judges and a justice on the New Mexico Court of Appeals and Supreme Court. Before returning home to New Mexico, Leif worked at the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development, the American Chamber of Commerce-China (AmCham China) in Beijing, and the U.S. Court of International Trade. Leif is a graduate of the University of Southern Denmark, where he received a bachelor degree in Commercial Law and Business Administration and received credit toward a master’s degree in International Security and Law.  He completed his Juris Doctor at Vermont Law School.

Steen Rasmussen is a professor in physics and a director of the center for Fundamental Living Technology at University of Southern Denmark and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. His main scientific focus is to explore, understand and construct minimal living processes through bottom up assembly of protocells in the lab and to explore the relationships between living processes and evolutionary learning in different systems. Another line of research is to explore how living and intelligent technologies increasingly transform society and what it means to be human. Due to these activities he has frequently consulted on science and technology issues for the European Commission, the Danish Parliament, the German Reichstag, and the US Congress.

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Andrew Shreve is a Regents Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of New Mexico. Andy holds a PhD in Physical Chemistry from Cornell University. Following postdoctoral training at UC Berkeley, he worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory for 18 years and served in various scientific and technical leadership positions, most recently within the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT), a Department of Energy (DOE) Nanoscience Research Center. His research interests include development and applications of thin-film nanostructured self-assembled materials and biomimetic membrane architectures, self-assembled and bio-inspired materials, materials for alternative energy applications, biosensor technology, experimental and theoretical topics in spectroscopy, and quantitative modeling of biological systems.

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Piper Stover is currently CEO of BINC Technologies, an R&D firm with operations in New York and Denmark developing intelligent and living technologies leveraging the convergence of biotechnology, information technology, nanotechnology and the cognitive technologies. Previously, Piper was a corporate executive director for United Technologies (NYSE:UTX) and head of its operation in China, where she led teams to create and implement forward looking strategies to capture multi-million dollar infrastructure projects, and in turn, delivered solutions to complex business challenges throughout China.  She also served on the Board of Governors for the American Chamber of Commerce - China in 2015 and 2016. Piper has held various leadership roles in high-tech industries, including at The Boeing Company, China Greentech Initiative (an international clean technology start-up acquired by The Paulson Institute) and the U.S.- China Business Council, where she was Vice President of China Operations. She has enjoyed over 20 years of experience delivering operational and programming support to both early-stage and multinational companies. Piper is currently a board member of the American Mandarin Society and a member of the National Committee on U.S.–China Relations.  After spending several years in Asia, she returned to the U.S. in 2017 and continues to advise a portfolio of start-ups at The Tech Garden in Syracuse, New York.  Piper graduated from Middlebury College, received her MBA from Norwich University, and attended INSEAD in France.  She is highly proficient in Mandarin.

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Joseph Tainter is Professor of Sustainability in the Department of Environment and Society, Utah State University, having previously served as Department Head. Dr. Tainter worked on issues of sustainability before the term became common, including his acclaimed book The Collapse of Complex Societies (Cambridge University Press, 1988). He is co-editor of The Way the Wind Blows: Climate, History, and Human Action (Columbia University Press, 2000), a work exploring past human responses to climate change. With T. F. H. Allen and T. W. Hoekstra he wrote Supply-Side Sustainability (Columbia University Press, 2003), the first comprehensive approach to sustainability to integrate ecological and social science. His most recent book is Drilling Down: The Gulf Oil Debacle and Our Energy Dilemma, with Tadeusz Patzek (Copernicus Books, 2012). Dr. Tainter’s research has been used in more than 40 countries, and in many scientific and applied fields. Among other institutions, his work has been consulted in the United Nations Environment Programme, UNESCO, the World Bank, the Rand Corporation, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, the Earth Policy Institute, Technology Transfer Institute/Vanguard, and the Highlands Forum. His research has been applied in numerous fields, including economic development, energy, environmental conservation, health care, information technology, urban studies, and the challenges of security in response to terrorism. Joseph Tainter appears in the film The 11th Hour, produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, and in other documentaries. Dr. Tainter’s current research focuses on complexity, sustainability, energy, and innovation.

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Geoffrey West is the Shannan Distinguished Professor and former President of the Santa Fe Institute and Associate Senior Fellow of Oxford University’s Green- Templeton College. West is a theoretical physicist whose primary interests are in fundamental questions across physics, biology and the social sciences, motivated by the search for unifying principles and simplicity underlying complexity. His research includes metabolism, growth, aging, death, sleep, cancer and ecosystems, cities and companies, rates of growth and innovation, and the accelerating pace of life. Recently he has been developing a quantitative science of cities, companies, and the challenge of long-term global sustainability. West has lectured at many high profile events including TED and the World Economic Forum at Davos. Among his awards are the Mercer Prize from the Ecological Society of America, the Weldon Prize for Mathematical Biology, the Glenn Award for Aging research and the Szilard Award from the American Physical Society. He has been featured in many publications, television productions, and podcasts world-wide, and is the author of the best-selling book Scale. His work was selected in 2006 as a breakthrough idea by the Harvard Business Review and he was named to Time magazine’s list of “100 Most Influential People in the World” in 2007.

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