Piero Angela is a science journalist and writer. In 1981 he started Quark, the first scientific TV program in Italy aimed at a general public. From 1990 to 1998 he authored three innovative TV series, translated into English and sold in over forty countries in Europe, the Americas and Asia. From 1995 he has been conducting Superquark, his current program on nature, science and technology. He is also author of over thirty books, many of which translated into English, German and Spanish. During his career he has received numerous recognitions in Italy and other countries, among which the Kalinga Prize of Unesco for his contributions to public awareness of science.
Martin W. Bauer is Professor of Social Psychology and Research Methodology at the London School of Economics, and director of the MSc Social & Public Communication, a former Research Fellow at the Science Museum London, and a regular academic visitor to Brazil since the early 1990s. He conducts research on tensions between science and common sense using comparative attitude surveys, media monitoring and qualitative enquires with colleagues in Europe, India, China, and Latin America. Editor of Public Understanding of Science since 2009. Published The Culture of Science - How the Public Relates to Science across the Globe (with R. Shukla and N. Allum, NY, Routledge, 2012).
Rick Borchelt is special assistant for public affairs to the National Cancer Institute director at the US National Institutes of Health, where he also directs the Office of Public Affairs and Research Communication, the Institute's news and public affairs enterprise. He is the former science communications director for the US Department of Agriculture, and was director of communications for the Pew-funded Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University. His career in science communications and science public policy has included stints as media relations director for the National Academy of Sciences; press secretary for the U.S. House of Representatives Science Committee; and special assistant for public affairs in S&T in the Executive Office of The President during the Clinton Administration.
Massimiano Bucchi is Professor of Science and Technology in Society at the University of Trento, Italy and has been visiting professor in several academic and research institutions in Asia, Europe and North America. His publications include Science in Society (London and New York, Routledge, 2004), Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology (with B. Trench, London and New York, Routledge, 2008), Beyond Technocracy. Citizens, Politics, Technoscience (New York, Springer, 2009) and essays in journals such as Nature and Science. He has received several recognitions for his work, including the Mullins Prize awarded by the Society for Social Studies of Science (1997) and the Merck-Serono special jury award for science books (2007).
Ilaria Capua is Director of the Division of Comparative Biomedical Sciences at the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezie (Italy) and of the National, FAO and OIE Reference Laboratory for avian influenza and Newcastle disease, and the OIE Collaborating Centre for Diseases at the Human-Animal Interface. She has extensive experience in coordinating international research projects and has worked closely with FAO managing Technical Cooperation Projects. She is a member of WHO's Scientific and Technical Advisory Group on Influenza. In 2007 she was awarded the Scientific American 50 prize and in 2008 was included among Seed Magazine's Revolutionary Minds, for leadership in science policy.
John Durant trained at the University of Cambridge. He has spent his career working to improve the public understanding of science and technology. He was Assistant Director of the Science Museum, London, between 1989 and 2000. From 2000-2005 he was Chief Executive of At-Bristol, a new science and natural history museum in England. In 2005, he was appointed as Director of the MIT Museum and Adjunct Professor in the Science, Technology & Society Program at MIT, where he has led the development of the MIT Museum. In 2007, he led the creation of the Cambridge Science Festival and in 2008 he was a founder Fellow of the Noyce Foundation Science Center Leadership Initiative.
Edna Einsiedel is Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Calgary. Her research interests are in the social issues around emerging controversial life science technologies. She is currently co-Principal Investigator on a project funded by the Stem Cell Network on the social and policy challenges on Stem Cell Research. A second project investigates publics and policy on synthetic biology. Her publications have appeared in diverse international journals. She recently served as editor of the journal Public Understanding of Science. She also completed a term as member of the Board of Governors for the Council of Canadian Academies of Science.
Felice Frankel is a research scientist at MIT in the Center for Materials Science and Engineering. Working in collaboration with scientists and engineers, her images have been published in over 300 journal articles and/or covers and various other publications for general audiences. She has received many awards and grants. She was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design for her previous work. Her new book, Visual Strategies (with A. DePace, Yale University Press, 2012), will help spearhead new efforts to create a virtual graphical community for researchers and students in science and engineering.
Bruce V. Lewenstein is Professor of Science Communication at Cornell University. He works primarily on the history of public communication of science. He has been active in international activities that contribute to education and research on public communication of science and technology, especially in the developing world. In 2009, he was co-chair of a U.S. National Research Council study and editor of Public Understanding of Science from 1998 to 2003. In 2010, he was chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's section on Societal Implications of Science & Engineering. Actually, he is serving as the first Presidential Fellow at the Chemical Heritage Foundation.
Andrew Pleasant is responsible for advancing the role of health literacy
across Canyon Ranch Institute activities. He has led and participated in hundreds of presentations and trainings in the United States and around the world, primarily on the topics of health literacy, and science, risk, and environmental communication. He has taught at Cornell University, Brown University, and Rutgers University and served as a temporary advisor at the World Health Organization Health InterNetwork in Geneva, Switzerland. He has published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and technical reports, and is co-author of the book Advancing Health Literacy: A Framework for Understanding and Action (2006). As a journalist, he received numerous awards for his photojournalism and reporting on national and international topics.
Semir Zeki is Professor of Neuroesthetics at University College London. He pioneered the study of the higher visual areas of the brain. More recently, he has expanded his work to enquire into the neural correlates of aesthetic and artistic experience. In addition to his published scientific papers, he is author of A Vision of the Brain, Inner Vision: an exploration of art and the brain, and Splendours and Miseries of the Brain. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Foreign Member of the American Philosophical Society. He was awarded the King Faisal International Prize in Biology in 2004 for his work on the brain, and founded the Institute for Neuroesthetics in London and California.
