Rolf-Dieter Heuer

 CERN Director General

Professor Rolf-Dieter Heuer has been CERN Director General since January 2009. He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Heidelberg in 1977. Most of his scientific work has focused on the study of electron-positron reactions, the development of experimental techniques, as well as the construction and operation of large detector systems.

From 1984 to 1998, Prof. Heuer was a staff member at CERN, working for the OPAL experiment at the electron-positron storage ring LEP. During his 15 years at CERN Prof. Heuer occupied the highest managerial positions in the OPAL experiment and was the OPAL’s spokesperson in 1994-1998.

In 1998, Rolf-Dieter Heuer was appointed to a chair at the University of Hamburg. Then, he set up a working group to prepare experiments at an electron-positron Linear Collider that quickly became one of the leading groups in this field worldwide.

From 2004 to 2008, Prof. Heuer was research director for particle and astroparticle physics at the DESY laboratory, a member of the Helmholtz association. Prof. Heuer has been a member of many scientific committees and advisory bodies where he has acquired a great deal of expertise in reviewing projects as well as in assessing and promoting people.

Craig Venter

J. Craig Venter, Ph.D., is regarded as one of the leading scientists of the 21st century for his numerous invaluable contributions to genomic research. He is Founder, Chairman, and President of the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), a not-for-profit, research organization with approximately 300 scientists and staff dedicated to human, microbial, plant, synthetic and environmental genomic research, and the exploration of social and ethical issues in genomics.

Dr. Venter is also Founder and CEO of Synthetic Genomics Inc., a privately held company dedicated to commercializing genomic-driven solutions to address global needs such as new sources of energy, new food and nutritional products, and next generation vaccines.

Dr. Venter began his formal education after a tour of duty as a Navy Corpsman in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968. After earning both a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and a Ph.D. in Physiology and Pharmacology from the University of California at San Diego, he was appointed professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo and the Roswell Park Cancer Institute. In 1984, he moved to the National Institutes of Health campus where he developed Expressed Sequence Tags or ESTs, a revolutionary new strategy for rapid gene discovery. In 1992 Dr. Venter founded The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR, now part of JCVI), a not-for-profit research institute, where in 1995 he and his team decoded the genome of the first free-living organism, the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae, using his new whole genome shotgun technique.

In 1998, Dr. Venter founded Celera Genomics to sequence the human genome using new tools and techniques he and his team developed. This research culminated with the February 2001 publication of the human genome in the journal, Science. He and his team at Celera also sequenced the fruit fly, mouse and rat genomes.

Dr. Venter and his team at JCVI continue to blaze new trails in genomics. They have sequenced and analyzed hundreds of genomes, and have published numerous important papers covering such areas as environmental genomics, the first complete diploid human genome, and the groundbreaking advance in creating the first self-replicating bacterial cell constructed entirely with synthetic DNA.

Dr. Venter is one of the most frequently cited scientists, and the author of more than 250 research articles. He is also the recipient of numerous honorary degrees, public honors, and scientific awards, including the 2008 United States National Medal of Science, the 2002 Gairdner Foundation International Award and the 2001 Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize. Dr. Venter is a member of numerous prestigious scientific organizations including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Society for Microbiology.

James Watson

The winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize, Dr. Watson uncovered the basic scientific structures of life and how the organization of these proteins and nucleotides arrange themselves to create the unique identities of each living organism.

There is no one with more authority than Dr. Watson to comment on the current direction and debates surrounding genetic engineering, cloning and the future of ‘ life’ itself. Dr. Watson is a living legend whose greatest scientific discovery radically advanced and altered our understanding of human identity and whose legacy points to infinite possibilities and complicated questions.

From 1988 to 1992, Dr. Watson was appointed to head the National Institute of Health in the Human Genome Project, which involved thousands of scientists worldwide working to crack the human genetic code. The recent completion of the first survey of the entire human genome is a historic achievement in DNA research and provides scientists worldwide with the knowledge of an estimated 90% of genes on every chromosome. This discovery will expedite the understanding of how genetics can influence disease development, aid researchers looking for genes associated with particular diseases and lead to the discovery of new treatments.

A member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society, he has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science and, with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1962. Dr. Watson received an honorary knighthood December 31, 2001.

Jean-Jacques Dordain

Director General of the European Space Agency (ESA)

Jean-Jacques Dordain, born in 1946, studied engineering at the Ecole Centrale (obtaining his diploma the year Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon), before going on to join ONERA, the French National office for aerospace studies and research in 1970. First serving as a researcher in propulsion and launchers from 1970 to 1976, he then went on to be Coordinator of Space Activities and then Director of Fundamental Physics. In 1977, he was among the first five French candidate astronauts to be selected by CNES.

After joining ESA in 1986 as Head of the Microgravity and Space Station Utilisation Department, Jean-Jacques Dordain became Associate Director for Strategy, Planning and International Policy in 1993, Director of Strategy and Technical Assessment in 1999, then Director of Launchers in 2001. He was appointed Director General in December 2002, taking up office in July 2003. In June 2006, his mandate as ESA Director General was renewed until 2011. In June 2010 he was re-elected to a third four-year term until June 2015.

Máire Geoghegan-Quinn

Huanming Yang

Dr. Yang is the co-founder and President of BGI, one of the major genomics centers in the world. He and his collaborators have made a significant contribution to theInternational HGP, HapMap, Cancer Genomeand 1000 Genomes Projects, as well as to the Asian genomes, human pan-genome, ancient genomes, gut metagenomes, exomes and mythylome.  BGI has also contributed to sequencing genomes of rice,potato, maize, pigeonpea, soybean,cucumber, cabbage, chicken, silkworm, panda, ants, naked mole rat,cynomolgus and Chineserhesus macaque, CHO cell lines, SARS virus, lethal E.coliand many other microorganisms.

Dr. Yang obtained his Ph.D. from University of Copenhagen and postdoctoral trainings in France and USA. He has received many awards and honors, including Research Leader of the Year byScientific American in 2002 and Award in Biology by the Third World Academy of Sciences（TWAS）in 2006. He was elected as a foreign member of EMBO in 2006, an academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2007, a fellow of TWAS in 2008, a foreign academician of Indian National Academy in 2009.

Charles Bolden

Charles F. Bolden, Jr. (major general, USMC Ret.)

NASA ADMINISTRATOR

Nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, retired Marine Corps Major General Charles Frank Bolden, Jr., began his duties as the twelfth Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on July 17, 2009. As Administrator, he leads the NASA team and manages its resources to advance the agency’s missions and goals.

Bolden’s 34-year career with the Marine Corps included 14 years as a member of NASA’s Astronaut Office. After joining the office in 1980, he travelled to orbit four times aboard the space shuttle between 1986 and 1994, commanding two of the missions. His flights included deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope and the first joint U.S.-Russian shuttle mission, which featured a cosmonaut as a member of his crew. Prior to Bolden’s nomination for the NASA Administrator’s job, he was employed as the Chief Executive Officer of JACKandPANTHER LLC, a small business enterprise providing leadership, military and aerospace consulting, and motivational speaking.

Bolden’s NASA astronaut career included technical assignments as the Astronaut Office Safety Officer; Technical Assistant to the Director of Flight Crew Operations; Special Assistant to the Director of the Johnson Space Center; Chief of the Safety Division at Johnson (overseeing safety efforts for the return to flight after the 1986 Challenger accident); lead astronaut for vehicle test and checkout at the Kennedy Space Center; and Assistant Deputy Administrator at NASA Headquarters. After his final space shuttle flight in 1994, he left the agency to return to active duty.

During the first half of 1998, he served as Commanding General of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force Forward in support of Operation Desert Thunder in Kuwait. Bolden was promoted to his final rank of major general in July 1998. He retired from the Marine Corps in 2003. Bolden’s many military decorations include the Defense Superior Service Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross. He was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in May 2006.

Mary Robinson

Mary Robinson is President of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice.  She served as President of Ireland from 1990-1997 and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997-2002. She is a member of the Elders and the Club of Madrid and the recipient of numerous honours and awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom from the President of the United States Barack Obama.

A former President of the International Commission of Jurists and former chair of the Council of Women World Leaders she was President and founder of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative from 2002-2010.

Mary Robinson serves as Honorary President of Oxfam International and Chair of Board of the Institute of Human Rights and Business in addition to being a board member of several organisations including the Mo Ibrahim Foundation and the European Climate Foundation. Mary is the Chancellor of the University of Dublin since 1998.

Jules Hoffmann

2011 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology.

J. Hoffmann is Professor at the University of Strasbourg and has spent most of his career working with the French National Research Agency CNRS. The studies of the Hoffmann laboratory have been devoted over the last 30 years to unravelling the mechanisms of antimicrobial defenses in Diptera, namely in Drosophila. They have identified inducible antimicrobial peptides as primary immune response genes and have deciphered significant steps in the signaling cascade leading to gene reprogramming. They have further characterized the receptor proteins interacting with bacterial peptidoglycans and fungal -glucans. Of major interest was the discovery of the involvement of the Toll receptor (initially identified by Ch. Nüsslein-Volhard for its role in embryonic development) in the response to fungal and Gram-positive bacterial infection.

Altogether the studies of the Strasbourg laboratory have established Drosophila as an important model system for innate immunity and have contributed to a reevalution of this defense arm in the physiology of antimicrobial defense.

J. Hoffmann is the recipient of many international awards, including the 2011 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology.

Lars Steinmetz

Dr. Lars Steinmetz is one of the world’s leading scientists at the forefront of genetics and genomics research.He obtained his undergraduate degree from Yale University and a PhD in 2002 from Stanford University.

At the age of 27, he started his own research group at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany.

Since 2009, Dr. Steinmetz has served as co-chair of the Genome Biology Unit, which consists of over 100 scientists and 9 research teams; he also co-directs the Centre for High-Throughput Functional Genomics at EMBL.

In parallel, Dr. Steinmetz leads a focused research team at the Stanford Genome Technology Centre in the USA. Furthermore, he is a consultant, collaborator, and scientific advisor for several major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, advising in the areas of genetic diagnostics and personalized medicine.

Kári Stefánsso

Kári Stefánsson, M.D., Dr. Med. founded deCODE in August 1996. Dr. Stefánsson was previously a professor of Neurology, Neuropathology and Neuroscience at Harvard University and Director of Neuropathology at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.

From 1983 to 1993, he held faculty positions in Neurology, Neuropathology and Neurosciences at the University of Chicago. Dr. Stefánsson received his M.D. and Dr. Med. from the University of Iceland and is board-certified in neurology and neuropathology in the United States.

Dr. Stefansson is recognized as a leading figure in human genetics. He has shaped deCODE’s scientific approach and been actively engaged in leading its gene discovery work, serving as the senior author on most of the company’s publications.

Regina Palkovits

Regina Palkovits is Associate Professor for Nanostructured Catalysts at RWTH Aachen. She studied chemical engineering at the Technical University Dortmund and carried out her Ph.D. in the group of Prof. FerdiSchüth at the Max-Planck-InstitutfürKohlenforschung. After a research stay in the group of Prof. Bert Weckhuysen at UtrechtUniversity, she returned as a group leader to the Max-Planck-InstitutfürKohlenforschung before she became Professor at RWTH Aachen. In 2010, she was awarded the Robert Bosch-Juniorprofessorship for Utilization of Natural Renewable Resources, the Jochen-Block Award of the German Catalysis Society and the Innovation Award of North Rhine-Westphalia. Her current research focuses on the development of solid catalysts and processes for the efficient utilization of renewable and conventional resources.

Helga Nowotny

Helga Nowotny is Professor emerita of Social Studies of Science, ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) and a founding member of the European Research Council. In 2007 she was elected ERC Vice President and in March 2010 succeeded FotisKafatos as President of the ERC. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University, NY. and a doctorate in jurisprudence from the University of Vienna. Her current host institution is the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF). Helga Nowotny is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Ludwig Maximilians University Munich and member of many other international Advisory Boards and selection committees. From 2005 – June 2011 she was Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the University of Vienna. She is a Foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and long standing member the Academia Europaea and recipient of several prizes and awards.

Helga Nowotny has published more than 300 articles in scientific journals. Her latest book publications include “Naked Genes, Reinventing the human in the molecular age”, (with Giuseppe Testa), MIT Press, 2011, “Insatiable Curiosity, Innovation in a Fragile Future”, MIT Press, 2008, and “Cultures of Technology and the Quest for Innovation (ed.)”, New York and London, 2006.

Christian Keysers

Department Head, Social Brain Lab, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (KNAW), Amsterdam, The Netherlands & Full Professor for the Social Brain, Department for Neuroscience, University Medical Center Groningen.

Christian Keysers (1973) is full professor and heads the Social Brain department at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam. German and French-born, after a PhD with David Perrett, he joined the team of Giacomo Rizzolatti where he contributed to the discovery of auditory mirror neurons. He then moved to the Netherlands where he showed that our brain is deeply empathic: whenever we see the actions, sensations and emotions of others, we activate our own actions, sensations and emotions as if we were in the skin of the people we observe. Christian is one of the founding fathers of ‘social neuroscience’, his work, published in the finest scientific journals, was cited over 3000 times. He won the Marie Curie Excellence Award and his acclaimed new book, The Empathic Brain, explains how empathy is at the very core of human nature.

Eric Karsenti

I obtained my PhD from Paris University in 1979 (Laboratory of S. Avrameas, Pasteur Institute). I then moved to the University of California, San Francisco (1981), where I worked on the cell cycle and mitosis ( M. Kirschner Lab). I joined EMBL as a group leader in 1985. Over the following 20 years, I have been one the leading scientists that contributed to the understanding of the cell cycle and mitotic spindle.

I also became head of the Cell Biology and Biophysics unit at EMBL. In this Unit, I have developed a new scientific culture, mixing group leaders trained in sophisticated imaging methods with biologists and physicists creating a new discipline that could be called Systemic Cell Biology.

Finally in 2008-2009, I organized the TARA OCEANS expedition that sailed around the world, finishing in March 2012. This has also been a very interesting scientific project in which I brought together Physical Oceanographers with Marine Biologists, Imaging specialists, Molecular Biologists, Bio-Informaticians and Modelers. The aim of this expedition is to better understand plankton organisms evolution and ecosystem.

Enrico Giusti

Enrico Giusti was Professor of Mathematics at the University of L’Aquila, and later at the Universities of Trento, Pisa and Florence. He retired from teaching in 2010.

He has been visiting professor/scholar at several institutions, among which the University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University,  the Institute for Advanced Study, the Australian National University, the Mittag-Leffler Institute in Stockholm, the Lomonosov University in Moscow, the Nankai Institute of Mathematics, the Max-Planck-Institut in Bonn, the University of Tokyo.

His scientific interests include  partial differential equations, the calculus of variations, and differential geometry; later he focused on the history of mathematics and more recently on the popularization of mathematics.

In 1999 he founded “Il Giardino di Archimede”, the first museum ever devoted entirely to mathematics.
He is the editor since its founding (1981) of theBollettino  di Storia delle Scienze Matematiche, the Italian journal for the history of mathematics, and is a member of the Editorial Board of several scientific journals.

Marcus du Sautoy

Marcus du Sautoy is the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of New College. In 2001 he won the prestigious Berwick Prize of the London Mathematical Society awarded every two years to reward the best mathematical research made by a mathematician under 40. In 2004 Esquire Magazine chose him as one of the 100 most influential people under 40 in Britain and in 2008 he was included in the prestigious directory Who’s Who. In 2009 he was awarded the Royal Society’s Faraday Prize, the UK’s premier award for excellence in communicating science. He received an OBE for services to science in the 2010 New Year’s Honours List. He also received the Joint Policy for Mathematics Board Communications Award for 2010.

He is author of numerous academic articles and books on mathematics. He has been a visiting Professor at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, the Max Planck Institute in Bonn, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Australian National University in Canberra.

Marcus du Sautoy is author of the best-selling popular mathematics book “The Music of the Primes” published by Fourth Estate in 2003 and translated into 10 languages. It has won two major prizes in Italy and Germany for the best popular science book of the year. His book “Finding Moonshine: a mathematician’s journey through symmetry” is also published by Fourth Estate and appeared in February 2008. It was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. His new book The Num8er My5teries was published by Fourth Estate in June 2010.

Marcus du Sautoy writes for the Times, Daily Telegraph, Independent and the Guardian and is frequently asked for comment on BBC radio and television. For several years he had a regular column in the Times called Sexy Science. He was presenter of BBC4’s TV game show Mind Games, for which he was nominated for the Royal Society of Television’s Best Newcomer to a Network award. In 2005 he presented a one hour documentary for BBC4 and BBC2 based on his book The Music of the Primes. In autumn 2008 he wrote and presented a four part landmark TV series for the BBC calledThe Story of Maths. He has presented four BBC Horizons including “Alan and Marcus go forth and multiply” co-presented with comedian Alan Davies and “The Secret You” a film about the science of Consciousness. In 2010 he presented a six part TV series for BBC called The Beauty of Diagrams. He is currently making a new 3 part  landmark series called The Code to be broadcast on BBC2 in autumn 2011.

He has written and presented several series for radio including: 5 Shapes for BBC radio 4 in 2004 and Maths and Music for the Essay on BBC radio 3 in 2007 and The Baroque: from ecstasy to infinityfor BBC radio 3 in 2009. In 2010 he wrote and presented a ten part series for BBC Radio 4 called A Short History of Mathematics. He gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 2006 entitled THE NUM8ER MY5TERIES, broadcast on Channel Five. His presentations on mathematics, which include “Why Beckham chose the 23 shirt”, have played to a wide range of audiences: from theatre directors to bankers, from diplomats to prison inmates.

Marcus du Sautoy plays the trumpet and football. Like Beckham he also plays in a prime number shirt, no 17, for Recreativo FC based in the Hackney Marshes. Born in 1965, he lives in London with his wife, three children and cat Freddie Ljungberg.

Peter Doherty

Peter Doherty shared the 1996 Nobel Medicine Prize for discovering the nature of the cellular immune defense.

Based at the University of Melbourne and also spending part of his year at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, he continues to be involved in research directed at understanding and preventing the severe consequences of influenza virus infection.

In addition, he goes in to bat for evidence-based reality, relating to areas as diverse as childhood vaccination, global hunger and anthropogenic climate change.  In an effort to communicate more broadly, he has published two “lay” books, and has two more in progress.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell

Now a Visiting Professor at Oxford University, I was previously Dean of Science at the University of Bath and for ten years Professor of Physics at The Open University. I had a year as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Princeton University, USA.

I read a Physics degree at Glasgow University, which was followed by a PhD at Cambridge in radio astronomy. During my time there I was involved in the discovery of pulsars – work which was recognised by the award of a Nobel Prize to my supervisor! I subsequently worked in many branches of astrophysics.

In 2008 I become the first female President of the Institute of Physics. I am a fellow of the Royal Society and a Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Science. In demand as a speaker and broadcaster I see public engagement with science as important, and by being visible hope to encourage more women into science.

Pearse Lyons

Renée Schroeder

Bob Geldof