Richard Dare - Managing Partner of Pacific Rim Partners, Richard Dare is responsible for identifying cross-border opportunities. Dare has consummated significant international deals with Mitsubishi, NTT Communications and Pioneer Corporation.
Dare began his career as an adjunct Professor of Cognitive Field Theories, lecturing widely in the U.S., England and Japan.
David Ewing Duncan - David Ewing Duncan is an award-winning, best-selling author of six books and numerous essays, articles and short stories, and a television, radio and film producer and correspondent. He is the co-host of NPR's Biotech Nation.
Duncan's most recent book is Experimental Man: What one man’s body reveals about his future, your health, and our toxic world (John Wiley). His last book was Masterminds: Genius, DNA and the Quest to Rewrite Life (Harper Perennial). He also wrote the international bestseller Calendar: Humanity's Epic Struggle to Determine a True and Accurate Year (Harper-Collins/Avon), published in 19 languages, and a bestseller in 14 countries.
Duncan is a Contributing Editor to Wired, and Discover, and a science columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, a commentator for NPR's Morning Edition and co-host of BioTech Nation on NPR. He has been a special correspondent and producer for ABC's Nightline and 20/20, and a producer for Discovery Television. He is a correspondent for NOVA's ScienceNow!. He is a regular contributor to National Geographic, Fortune and MIT Technology Review, and was a longtime correspondent for Life.
He also writes for Harper's, Atlantic Monthly, Smithsonian, Outside, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Washington Post Book World, and The New York Times, among others. He contributes to the Dialogues column for Discover.
Drew Endy - Drew Endy is a synthetic biologist. He was a junior fellow for 3 years and later an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT. As of September 2008, he continued his research and teaching as an assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering at Stanford University.
Silicon Valley's concentration of computer scientists and engineers, in addition to Stanford's broad focus on engineering as well as ethics and the humanities, are believed to be the main reason for his move according to press reports. Additionally, his fiancee Christina Smolke has also recently made the move from the California Institute of Technology to Stanford.
With Thomas Knight, Gerald Jay Sussman, and other researchers at MIT, he is working on synthetic biology and the engineering of standardized biological components, devices, and parts, collectively known as BioBricks. Endy is one of several founders of the Registry of Standard Biological Parts, and invented an abstraction hierarchy for integrated genetic systems.
Endy is also known for his opposition to limited ownership and support of free access to genetic information. He has been one of the early promoters of open source biology, and helped start the Biobricks Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that will work to support open-source biology. He is also a co-founder of Codon Devices, a biotechnology startup company that is aiming to commercialize DNA synthesis. With their proprietary BioFAB platform, Codon Devices produces the DNA or protein sequences anybody orders.
Paul Saffo - Paul Saffo is a forecaster and strategist with over two decades experience exploring long-term technological change and its practical impact on business and society.
Saffo is Chairman of the Samsung Science Board, and serves on a variety of other boards and advisory panels, including the Stanford Advisory Council on Science, Technology and Society, and the Long Now Foundation, as well as the boards of several public and pre-public companies located the United States and abroad. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences and has served as an advisor and Forum Fellow to the World Economic Forum, which in the late 1990s named Saffo one of its "100 Global Leaders For Tomorrow."
Saffo's essays have appeared in numerous publications, including Business 2.0, Fortune, The Harvard Business Review, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, The New York Times and the Washington Post and Wired.
Saffo holds degrees from Harvard College, Cambridge University, and Stanford University. IFTF is a 30-year old foundation that provides strategic planning and forecasting services to major corporations and government agencies.
Saffo currently serves on the Board of the Institute for the Future and the Long Now Foundation. He is also the Chairman of Samsung Science Advisory Board.
Jonathan Wolfson - Jonathan Wolfson is CEO of Solazyme. Wolfson has held a variety of positions in finance, business and law.
He was most recently the Vice President of Finance and Business Development for 7thOnline, a venture-backed supply chain software company where he was responsible for overseeing legal issues, finance and the development and implementation of corporate strategy, which resulted in annualized revenue growth of over 100% during his tenure. Mr. Wolfson was also a primary interface between the company's management and its board and investors.
See some signs of hope in dark economic times as panelists explore some of the mind-boggling innovations that are changing our lives and can shape the future of the country. Even in the midst of economic free fall, there are signs of hope.
As of January 2009, the United States has built a flying car, found ways to turn algae into fuel, synthetically reproduced organs, had face-to-face conversations with people on the other side of the planet, and built robots to do our house cleaning for us.
Tune in to find out how some of the smartest people in California are trying to innovate us out of disaster.
