Science Journalist; Author and Presenter at ABC

Moderating Deep Conversation:
Now to Next: How will Science and Technology help solve our problems? (November 28, 7.00pm-9.oopm)

Robyn Williams is a science journalist who is as prominent on radio as he is on television. He has presented Radio National’s Science Show since 1975 and narrated highly respected television programs including Catalyst and Nature of Australia. He appeared alongside David Attenborough on World Safari.

He is renowned for making the complexities of science accessible and enjoyable for almost everyone and three of the ten books he has authored are included on the Higher School Certificate list.

In 1993, he became the first journalist elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. In 1988, he received an Honorary Doctorate in Science from the Universities of Sydney, Macquarie and Deakin. That same year he was appointed AM in the 1988 Australian Bicentenary Honours list.

He has been elected a National Living Treasure by the National Trust and he even has a star named after him by the Sydney Observatory.

International business leader; Serial entrepreneur

Deep Conversation:
‘Now to Next: How will Science and Technology help solve our wicked problems?’ (November 28, 7.00-9.30pm)
Presentation:
From Industrial revolution to sustainability revolution – the business of fixing our future (November 29, 2.30pm)

Jason is an international business leader, serial entrepreneur and former CEO of a JSE listed  business. Following two heart attacks he retired early and became  an eco-entrepreneur and author. He chairs a number of organizations including www.AgriProtein.com, his latest green venture.

Born in London, Jason has studied at the European Business School and has lived and worked all over the world before moving to South Africa eight years ago.

He looks at the environment from the viewpoint of a business leader and entrepreneur – and believes that whilst capitalism may have caused many of the issues we face – it may be the only tool we have that is strong enough to fix the problems.

His insights into the realities of our environment and the ‘business’ of fixing the issues are brilliant and astounding. Some of the business solutions he has invested in from growing flies in South Africa to mosquitoes in the UK and urban wind farms in Europe are as remarkable as they are profitable.

He collects medieval English pewter and contemporary South African art. He enjoys polo, flying and fishing as well as opera and rock. He is married with two boys aged 13 and 14.

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Chief Technology Advocate, Google

Deep Conversation:
‘Now to Next: How will Science and Technology help solve our wicked problems?’ (November 28, 7.00-9.30pm)
Presentation:
The future enters by the back door: How and why learning must change with advancing technology (November 30, 9.00am)

Michael Jones is Google’s Chief Technology Advocate, charged with advancing the technology to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Michael travels the globe to meet and speak with governments, businesses, partners and customers in order to advance Google’s mission and technology. He previously was Chief Technologist of Google Maps, Earth, and Local Search——the teams responsible for providing location intelligence and information in global context to users worldwide. Before its acquisition by Google, Michael was CTO of Keyhole Corporation, the company that developed the technology used today in Google Earth. He was also CEO of Intrinsic Graphics, and earlier, was Director of Advanced Graphics at Silicon Graphics.

A prolific inventor and computer programmer since the 4th grade, he has developed scientific and interactive computer graphics software, held engineering and business executive roles, and is an avid reader, traveler and amateur photographer using a home-built 4 gigapixel camera made with parts from the U2/SR71.

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Leader in stem cell biology and regenerative medicine

Deep Conversation:
‘Now to Next: How will Science and Technology help solve our wicked problems?’ (November 28, 7.00-9.30pm)
Presentation:
How will our bodies keep up with technology and what will that mean to society? (November 29, 11.30am)

Born and raised in New York City, Nadia Rosenthal obtained her PhD in 1981 from Harvard Medical School and trained as a postdoctoral fellow at NIH, then directed a biomedical research laboratory at Harvard Medical School, and served for a decade at the New England Journal of Medicine as editor of the Molecular Medicine series.

In 2001 she moved to Europe to head the European Molecular Biology Laboratory Outstation in Rome, She is an EMBO member, with numerous awards and honors including the Ferrari-Soave Prize in Cell Biology and Doctors Honoris Causa from the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris and the University of Amsterdam. She spearheaded the election of Australia to EMBL as its first Associate Member, serving as its Scientific Head, and in 2008 she founded the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute at Monash University and Headquarters for the EMBL Australia Partner Laboratory Network. She is an NH & MRC Australia Fellow and holds a Chair in Cardiovascular Science at Imperial College London.

Professor Rosenthal’s research focuses on muscle and cardiac developmental genetics and the role of growth factors and stem cells in tissue regeneration, with over 160 primary research articles and prominent reviews in high impact international journals, including general reviews for Scientific American. She has attracted sponsored research funding from major pharmaceutical companies including Amgen, Genzyme and Novartis for her translational studies. She delivered the 2006 Howard Hughes Holiday Lectures on Potent Biology: Stem Cells, Cloning and Regeneration, co-edited the “bible” of the field, Heart Development and Regeneration and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Differentiation. She brings a unique and powerful perspective on stem cell biology and regenerative medicine at the interface of basic, biomedical and industrial life sciences. She is also an accomplished painter and illustrator, providing artwork for her books, journals and conferences.

Author: The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

Deep Conversation:
‘Now to Next: How will Science and Technology help solve our wicked problems?’ (November 28, 7.00-9.30pm)
Presentation:
Why things are not what they seem: the courage to think differently (November 30, 3.30pm)

Iain was a Research Fellow in neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. He has published original articles and research papers in a wide range of publications on topics in literature, medicine and psychiatry.  His latest book, The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, published by Yale in November 2009, explores the way in which the bihemispheric structure of the brain influences our understanding of the world.

A vast body of research reveals that the brains of birds and mammals, including humans, have evolved to enable us to apply two equally necessary, but mutually incompatible, types of attention to the world.  One is sharply focused, but narrow, certain already of what it will find; the other is broad, open, and receptive to whatever it may find, without preconception. So difficult is it to combine these types of attention in one brain that they have been sequestered to the two distinct cerebral hemispheres. It is the left hemisphere that provides instrumental attention, enabling us to get and manipulate, by focusing sharply on narrowly conceived detail.

It is the right hemisphere that provides what one might call relational attention, enabling us to see the whole picture, to form social bonds, to inhabit and belong to the world we see, rather than simply being detached from it and using it.

Over time there is a tendency for the view of the left hemisphere to entrench itself: it is simpler, more explicit, ignores what does not fit its paradigm and makes us powerful manipulators.  But the price is a baffled incredulity when the world does not seem to work the way it would predict.  The costs include widespread despoliation of the planet, empty consumerism, a belief in theory at the expense of experience and an unwarranted optimism as we shuffle like a sleepwalker towards the abyss.

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Scientist, writer, broadcaster, Director of the Institute for the Future of the Mind

Deep Conversation:
‘Now to Next: How will Science and Technology help solve our wicked problems?’ (November 28, 7.00-9.30pm)
Presentation:
The Impact of Technology: Making the Most of the 21st Century Mind (November 29, 11.30am)

The Baroness has been awarded 30 Honorary Degrees from British and foreign universities and heads a multi-disciplinary research group exploring novel brain mechanisms linked to neurodegenerative diseases such  Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. In addition, she has developed an interest in the impact of 21st Century technologies on how young people think and feel, as discussed in her book ID: The Quest for Identity in the 21st Century (2008).

In 1998 she received the Michael Faraday Medal from the Royal Society. She was awarded a CBE in the Millennium New Year’s Honours List, and was granted a non-political Life Peerage in 2001.

In 2000 she was elected to an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians and in 2007 to an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She was appointed Chancellor of Heriot Watt University in 2005.  Further recognition of her work includes L’Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur, and the American Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award, both awarded in 2003, and the Australian Medical Research Society Medal, which she received in 2010.

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