Capital Cities is an electro-pop band featuring Ryan Merchant and Sebu Simonian, two jingle writers who first met on Craigslist. They released their debut EP in 2011. The lead single "Safe and Sound" shot to number two on Hype Machine, number one on CMJ's A&R chart, and number one on South American radio.

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David B. Agus is one of the world’s leading cancer doctors and an international leader in new technologies and approaches for personalized healthcare.

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Born without a right hand, Adrian Anantawan began the violin at nine, and has since established himself as "a rising star in classical music" (Globe and Mail). He also helped to create the Virtual Chamber Music Initiative at the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehab Centre--a cross-collaborative project that develops adaptive musical instruments for use by young persons with disabilities within a chamber music setting.

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Asenath Andrews founded and is currently the principal of Catherine Ferguson Academy, an alternative public high school for teen mothers that also provides early education services for the children of those high school moms.

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Vicki Arroyo is the executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center of Georgetown University Law Center. She specializes in climate mitigation and adaptation at the state and federal level, and teaches “experiential” environmental law courses.



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Sheila Bair served as chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for a five-year term, from June 2006 through June 2011. She presided over one of the most tumultuous periods in the history of the nation’s banking system, working to bolster public confidence and financial system stability. She has been a leading advocate and innovator of policies to end the doctrine of too-big-to-fail and taxpayer bailouts.

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Pilobolus is a venerable modern performance company that convenes groups of diverse artists to create athletic, collaborative works on stage and screen using the human body as a medium for expression. In Camden Pilobolus will enlist several hundred volunteers to participate in a large-scale, live performance using umbrellas fabricated with multi-colored LED lights created by the MIT Distributed Robotics Laboratory.

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David Bellwood, a marine biologist and an internationally recognized expert in coral reef fishes and systems, combines skills in such disparate fields as ecology, palaeontology, biomechanics and molecular systems to understand the nature of reefs.

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Kelly Benoit-Bird, an oceanographer at Oregon State University, applies acoustics to the study of ecosystems in the open ocean.

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Brad Burnham is a managing partner at Union Square Ventures. He began his career in information technology with AT&T in 1979 and in 1990 he spun Echo Logic out of Bell Laboratories. In 1993, Brad joined AT&T Ventures as an Executive in Residence. He became a principal there in 1994 and a General Partner in 1996.

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Flaminia Catteruccia is a molecular entomologist at the Harvard School of Public Health, specializing in the reproductive biology of Anopheles mosquitoes, the only mosquitoes capable of transmitting human malaria.

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Moran Cerf is a neuroscientist who has shown how to project patients' thoughts onto a screen in front of their eyes by implanting electrodes deep inside their brains and reading the activity of cells. Patients can use the feedback from the electrodes to regulate their own emotions and alter decisions. Oh, and he used to rob banks.

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David DeSteno is currently a professor of psychology at Northeastern University where he directs the Social Emotions Lab. At the broadest level, DeSteno's lab examines the mechanisms of the mind that shape social behavior.

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John Doyle is a renowned systems scientist at CalTech and an expert in control and resilience in complex systems. As the John G Braun Professor of Control and Dynamical Systems, Electrical Engineer, and BioEngineering, he has focused his research on the theoretical foundations for complex networks in engineering and biology, and specifically on architecture, and for multiscale physics.

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Sandro Galea is a doctor and epidemiologist who has researched the role of traumatic events in shaping population health and the causes of mental problems including mood-anxiety disorders and substance abuse. His research program explores how policies, features of the social environment, molecular, and genetic factors jointly produce the health of urban populations.

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Kyle Gilpin works to improve communication and control in large distributed robotic systems. He works in the Distributed Robotics Laboratory at MIT.

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C.J. Huff, the superintendent of Joplin Schools since July 2008, led his district of 1,100 employees and 7,700 students through the recovery effort that has followed the devastating May 22, 2011 tornado that ripped through the heart of Joplin, Missouri.

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Ari Jónsson is the rector of Reykjavik University, Iceland's leading university in technology, business and law. Jónsson currently serves on Iceland's Science and Technology Council as well as on the boards of three startup companies.

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Peter Kareiva is the chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, Kareiva is often noted for his emphasis on nature’s resiliency rather than its impending doom. But he is also an aggressive advocate for a future version of conservation that engages cities, excites young people, and isn’t populated only by rich white people.

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Dean Karlan is President of Innovations for Poverty Action, a non-profit organization that creates and evaluates solutions to social and development problems, and works to scale-up successful ideas through implementation and dissemination to policymakers, practitioners, investors and donors. He is a Professor of Economics at Yale University.

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Revered as “The Sound of New York,” Young Guru has mixed 10 of Jay-Z’s albums and officially became Jay-Z’s tour D.J. in 2010. He has recorded virtually every other top hip-hop artist and has more than a decade of experience in sound engineering, production, and A&R for the acclaimed Roc-A-Fella Records and Def Jam Recordings. Young Guru is part of a team using a grant from the National Science Foundation to develop so-called 3-D sound, which allows the brain to interpret the depth and direction of sound like it occurs in real space.

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Matt Kent is Pilobolus’ associate artistic director. He acted as Pilobolus’ head choreographer for Andre Heller’s Magnifico, a large-scale circus production, for a Sports Emmy-nominated teaser for Pilobolus’s collaboration with the NFL Network, and for one of Pilobolus’s television appearance on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.” Matt has performed in over 24 countries and in Pilobolus’s appearance on the 79th Academy Awards.

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Itamar Kubovy is Pilobolus’ Executive Director. He founded Pilobolus’ Collaborators Project, which has partnered with the MIT Distributed Robotics Lab, Steve Banks who is the head writer of “SpongeBob SquarePants,” and European choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, among others. Kubovy previously ran theaters in Germany and Sweden, directed plays by John Guare, and co-directed the 2002 season finale of “The West Wing.”

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Jennifer Leaning is a doctor who conducts research on human rights and international humanitarian law in crisis settings. She focuses on human security in the context of forced migration and conflict, and has worked in Afghanistan, Albania, Angola, Kosovo, the Middle East, the former Soviet Union, Somalia, and the Chad-Darfur border.

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Ann Masten studies resilience in human development and how to promote success in young people exposed to poverty, homelessness, migration, disaster and war. In the Twin Cities, for example, she collaborated with partners from school districts, shelters, county and community agencies to understand and precipitate school success in homeless and highly mobile children.

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