Pamela Ronald is Professor at the University of California, Davis, where she studies the role that genes play in a plant’s response to its environment. Her laboratory has genetically engineered rice for resistance to diseases and flooding, which are serious problems of rice crops in Asia and Africa.

Hugo Van Vuuren helped launch The Laboratory at Harvard, a new platform for idea experimentation in the arts and sciences. Born and raised in South Africa, his endeavors and research focus on Design with Africa and the intersection between technology, design and innovation.

Monty Jones is co-winner of the prestigious 2004 World Food Prize, awarded for his discovery of the genetic process to create the New Rice for Africa (NERICA) which gives higher yields, shorter growth cycles and more protein content than its Asian and African parents.

Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid is a composer, multimedia artist and writer. His written work has appeared in The Village Voice, The Source, Artforum, and Rapgun among other publications.

Klaus Zuberbühler’s award-winning work on the communication and cognition of non-human primates in their natural habitats in Africa, South America and Asia has had a considerable impact on our understanding of primate cognition and, more generally, what it means to be human.

George Ellis is Professor Emeritus of Applied Mathematics at the University of Capetown and investigates cosmology, the nature of time, and the emergence of complexity. He is the co-author with Stephen Hawking of The Large Scale Structure of Space Time.

Femi Oke is an international broadcaster and a special correspondent for the syndicated national news radio show The Takeaway broadcast from WNYC Radio in New York. Oke became known around the world for her reporting on Africa after joining CNN International in 1999. She also hosted CNN’s award-winning African affairs program “Inside Africa.”

Chris Eckstrom is a writer, videographer, and producer. Her stories have appeared in National Geographic Magazine, Audubon, International Wildlife, National Geographic Traveler, and other publications. Her Traveler story, “The Last Real Africa,” won a 2007 Lowell Thomas Award for Best Magazine Article on Foreign Travel from the Society of American Travel Writers.

Olufunmilayo Olopade is a Walter L. Palmer Distinguished Service Professor and Associate Dean for Global Health at The University of Chicago Medical Center. Olopade graduated with distinction from the University of Ibadan College of Medicine in Nigeria.

Chris Stringer is a distinguished paleoanthropologist and a founder of the “Out of Africa” theory, the most widely accepted model for how modern humans evolved and spread across the globe.

Alison Brooks is Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at the George Washington University and a founding member of the Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology.

Cynthia McFadden is the senior legal and investigative correspondent for NBC News. Before joining NBC News, she co-anchored Nightline at ABC News. She has won Emmy, Peabody, and duPont awards, among others.

The fundamentals of foundational hip-hop pulsate vibrantly through the veins of the multi-dimensional artist, John Robinson. This native New Yorker has sojourned and resided in the underground scenes of New York, New Jersey, Atlanta and Los Angeles.

Sebastien Gouin is intellectual property and venture capital technical manager at Vestergaard Frandsen, working out of headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, but spends much of his time traveling to evaluate new innovative technologies being fostered in labs, startups, and university incubators across the world.

Peter Staley has been a long-term AIDS and gay rights activist, first as a member of ACT UP New York, then as the founding director of TAG, the Treatment Action Group. He served on the board of the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) for 13 years.

Richard Matthew is a professor in the schools of social ecology and social science at the University of California at Irvine, and founding director of the Center for Unconventional Security Affairs.

Francois Grey is a physicist and the head of Citizen Science at NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress. He launched the popular Science and the City hackfest series at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Dr. Peter L. Salk graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University in 1965 and Alpha Omega Alpha from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1969.

Hannah Morris is an archaeologist studying how humans and plants interacted in the past. She is founder of the paleoethnobotanical consulting company, Chena Consulting Services, and is working on a long-term project with the American Museum of Natural History on St. Catherine’s Island, Georgia.

Brenna Henn is principal investigator of the Henn Lab and also teaches in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook University, SUNY. Her expertise is the history of African populations and diverse, indigenous populations from around the world who harbor genetic, linguistic and phenotypic variation.

Professor Lee R. Berger is an award-winning researcher, author, paleoanthropologist, and speaker. His explorations into human origins on the African continent, Asia, and Micronesia for the past two and a half decades have resulted in many new discoveries.

Pedro G. Ferreira is Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford. Originally from Portugal, he has studied and worked in London, Berkeley and at CERN in Geneva. His area of expertise is cosmology, focusing on the physics of the early universe and with a special interest in Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

Dr. Eleanor Sterling is Chief Conservation Scientist at the American Museum of Natural History’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation. She has over thirty years of international field research and community outreach experience in terrestrial and marine systems.

Louise Barrett was trained in both ecology and anthropology and is currently Professor of Psychology and Canada Research Chair in Cognition, Evolution & Behaviour at the University of Lethbridge. She ran a long-term project on baboons in South Africa for twelve years.

Lisa Barrett is a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, with positions in psychiatry and radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Growing up in South Africa, Master distiller Kevin Herson, formulated concoctions with his now antique chemistry set. His love for culture led him to travel the world and experience food and drinks of all customs and varieties. With a doctorate degree, “The Doc” has developed a unique palate for distilling, introducing delightful spirits to the craft beverage industry.

Rick Potts, PhD, heads the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program at the National Museum of Natural History. Since joining the Smithsonian, Potts’s research has focused on piecing together the record of Earth’s environmental change and human adaptation.