The Disruptors

Erika Hamden (@erikahamden) is an astrophysicist at the University of Arizona and Steward Observatory and leads the team building FIREBall, a telescope that hangs from a giant balloon at the very edge of space and looks for clues about how stars are created. She's a 2019 TED fellow and her research focuses on developing ultraviolet (UV) detector technology, ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV/VIS...

Frans von der Dunk is a Professor of Space Law at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Director of Black Holes Consultancy, and is generally recognized as one of the world’s leading space law experts. Franz has served as an adviser to a number of governments, the European Commission, ESA, the United Nations, the OECD, various national space agencies, the Association of Space Explorers, the Centre f...

Karen Lloyd (@archaearama) is an associate professor at the University of Tennessee and lead of the Lloyd Lab. She's a deep subsurface microbiologist investigating novel types of microbes in Earth's deep surface biosphere, collecting them from remote places such as Arctic fjords, volcanoes in Costa Rica and even deep in a mud near the Mariana Trench to explore how these little critters affect the...

Arthur Holland Michel (@writeauthor) is a writer and researcher focused on drones, surveillance, artificial intelligence, robots, the arts, immigration, and movies for topnotch publications like Wired, Vice, The Verge, Fast Company, Motherboard, Al Jazeera America, U.S. News and more. Arthur's the author of EYES IN THE SKY, about the rise of advanced aerial surveillance technology and is the found...

Charles Mann (@CharlesCMann) is a science-focused journalist and award-winning author. He's the author of 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus which won the National Academies Communication Award for best book of the year which he followed up with 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. Charles has co-authored four books, is contributing editor for Science, The Atlantic M...

Mark Diesendorf (@markdiesendorf) teaches, researches and consults in the interdisciplinary fields of sustainability & energy, energy policy, urban transport, ecological economics, and practical sustainability Prior to joining the Institute of Environmental Studies, UNSW Australia, he's been a Principal Researcher and lecturer at various higher institutions. Mark's work with organisations includin...

Michele Romanow (@micheleromanow) is a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, the youngest Dragon on Canada's famed Dragon's Den and one of the most badass women in tech. Before that, she co-founded SnapSaves (acquired by Groupon in 11 months), Buytopia.ca and Clearbanc (a transformational funding company to help startups avoid giving up equity). Michele is ranked on WXN's "100 Most Powerful in...

Richard Whitt (@richardswhitt) is an 11-year vet of Google, corporate strategist, technology policy attorney and founder of GLIAnet, an organization, and foundation looking to upend existing surveillance capitalism paradigm with a user-owned and controlled data system. Richard is Fellow in Residence with the Mozilla Foundation, a Senior Fellow with Georgetown Institute for Technology Law and Polic...

Dan Gartenberg (@dangartenberg) aka Dr. Snooze, is a sleep scientist, TED resident and the co-founder and CEO of Sonic Sleep and also an adjunct assistant professor at Penn State University. With an expertise in psychology, AI, sleep and health, he's dedicated his life to improving the quality (and quantity of sleep) for the billions of individuals worldwide interesting in feeling and performing b...

Jack Horner (@dustydino) is one of the best-known paleontologists in the world, the inspiration for (and advisor of the Jurassic Park films and Dr. Alan Grant and discovered and named Maiasaura, providing the first clear evidence that some dinosaurs cared for their young. His research is now focused on reactivating dormant dinosaur DNA in birds to hatch modern-day dinosaurs. Horner’s face is famil...

Zack Abbott (@ZBioticsCompany) is the CEO and co-founder of ZBiotics, a company developing bioengineered probiotics for optimum human performance. He holds a Ph. D. in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Michigan and developed ZBiotics’ core technology: probiotic bacteria genetically engineered to express targeted protein therapies directly inside the body. By building genetically e...

Shaun Moore (@shaunpmoore) the founder and CEO of TrueFace, the 500Startups funded computer vision and facial recognition startup focused on making the world safer and smarter by transforming cameras into data. Prior to TrueFace, Shaun co-founded two startups in the content and mobile apps space and he's spoken frequently on the possibilities and possible pitfalls of facial recognition and AI. You...

Geoff Cook (@geoffcook) is a serial entrepreneur and co-founder and CEO of The Meet Group (NASDAQ: MEET), a social dating and livestreaming company with a $400+ million market cap. He started his first company from a Harvard dorm and sold it for millions of dollars at age 24. He sold his second company for $100 million and is the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award Winner for the Philadel...

Nancy Giordano (@nancygiordano) is an entrepreneur, futurist, consultant and techno-optimist committed to building societal structures and behaviors that keep up with tech to ensure a safe and thriving future for us all... Nancy's been recognized as one of the world’s top female futurists, she has spent her career building, shaping and guiding a portfolio of $50 billion worth of major global brand...

Dr. Fatma Kaplan (@KaplanSchiller) is the co-founder and CEO/CSO of Pheronym, a company trying to help solve world food crisis and feed the growing world population, farmers need for a non-toxic way to control pests. Fatma's an accomplished scientist with experience in both biology and chemistry focused on isolating biologically active compounds. She discovered the first sex pheromone of the nemat...

Isy Goldwasser (@isythync) is the founder of Thync, a startup creating breakthrough bioelectronic therapies to advance a frontier and create a consumer category that will impact billions of people. Prior to founding Thync, Isy was CEO and on the founding team of Symyx Technologies, a company he'd help take public. Isy's named as an inventor on more than 40 US, European and Canadian patents and cur...

Martin Ford (@MFordFuture) is a futurist and the author of the bestselling, award-winning Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future, Architects of Intelligence: The Truth About AI from the People Building It and The Lights in the Tunnel, as well as the founder of a Silicon Valley-based software development firm. Martin's written about the implications for future tech for pu...

Steve Brown (@baldfuturist) is a speaker, author, strategist, advisor with over 30 years of experience in high tech and is the former futurist and chief evangelist at Intel Corporation. Steve's been featured on BBC, CNN, Bloomberg TV, ABC News, Wired, WSJ:Digits, CBS, and many other media outlets and is passionate about helping people to imagine and build a better future; whether talking about the...

Bryan Alexander (@bryanalexander) is a futurist, researcher, writer, speaker, consultant, and teacher with an unconventional background in English and Romantic-era literature working in the field of how technology transforms education and blogging at bryanalexander.org. He's worked with the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE), a non-profit working to help small colleges...

George Church @geochurch) is a professor of genetics at Harvard & MIT, director of the Personal Genome Project, co-author of 509 papers, 143 patent publications and developed methods used for the first genome sequence (1994) & million-fold cost reductions since. It is NO exaggeration to say George's innovations have contributed to nearly all "next generation" DNA sequencing methods and companies;...

Tom Cheesewright (@bookofthefuture) is a futurist, speaker, engineer and founder of applied futurism practice, Book of the Future and creator of the Futurist’s Toolkit, a suite of tools for agile organizations. He has a degree in mechatronic engineering that led to 14 years working in technology for global brands such as BT, EE, and IBM and for digital start-ups, co-founded venture-backed big data...

Steve Sammartino (@sammartino) is an entrepreneur, futurist, author and public speaker focused on finding the truth and creating the future. He has had multiple tech startups and launched one of the first sharing-economy startups Rentoid.com, before Uber or Airbnb, and sold the company to a public company. Steve now invests in emerging technologies and has multiple advisory board positions. He is...

Robin Hanson (@robinhanson)is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University, and research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University with a doctorate in social science from CalTech, master's degrees in physics and philosophy from the University of Chicago. He has spent nine years as a research programmer, at Lockheed and NASA, has 3500 citations, 60 publica...

Jarl Jensen (@jarljensen) is an inventor, entrepreneur and best selling author. He served as President and CEO of EuroMed, Inc. from 2004 to 2009, has nine issued patents, with many more pending for medical devices which have grossed over $500 million dollars. Jarl's the author of Optimizing America where he applied his out of the box thinking to America’s economy in the book and he's also written...

Gabriel Licina (@glimsd) is a Molecular Biologist, Research Consultant, hardcore biohacker and the Chief Research Officer of Scihouse, a research-focused makerspace working to make science and technology accessible for everyone with a variety of classes on topics from programming and computer skills, to botany, chemistry, 3d printing and more. In 2015 Gabriel chemically induced night vision in his...