The Disruptors

Steve Burgess (@steveburgess01) is the president of Foresight Institute, a nonprofit think tank that researches technologies of important to the future of humanity, focusing on nanotechnology, cybersecurity, and AI and rewards grants to lead scientists and safety initia tives. Steve is a nanotechnology activist, tech writer & speaker, startup mentor, and an internationally recognized computer fore...

Are you interested in space travel, genetic engineering and other futurist tech trends transforming our world/society? If so you will love this.  Our Expert Panelists: Aubrey de Grey is a Cambridge researcher and Chief Science Officer of SENS Research Foundation focused on aging and extending human longevity. He proposes that the first human beings who will live to 1,000 years old have already b...

Daniel Schmachtenberger (@theneurohacker) is the co-founder and director of Research and Development at the Neurohacker Collective, where he is focused on developing processes and technologies for advancing medicine and human optimization and hosts a podcast exploring those topics. Daniel is particularly focused on personalized medicine, adequate approaches to complex illness, and deepening our kn...

Joe Haldeman is a famed American science fiction author best known for his novel The Forever War (1974). That novel, and other of his works, including The Hemingway Hoax (1991) and Forever Peace (1997), have won major science fiction awards, including the Hugo Award and Nebula Award.[2] Joe was awarded the SFWA Grand Master for career achievements and in 2012 he was inducted as a member of the Sci...

Fraser Cain (@fcain) is the founder of Universe Today, one of the most popular space and astronomy sites on online with over 3 million space focused visitors a month. In addition to Universe Today, Fraser co-hosts Astronomy Cast, a fact-based weekly journey through the cosmos which offers discussions about astronomical topics ranging from planets to cosmology Fraser has been working in the softwar...

Cory Doctorow (@doctorow) is a best selling science fiction author, blogger and technology activist. He is the co-editor of the popular weblog Boing Boing), a contributor to many magazines, websites and newspapers and a special consultant to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org), a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties. He ho...

Bernard Bigot is the Director-General of the ITER Organization (@iterorg), an international fusion science and technology research facility based in France. Bernard has been closely associated with ITER since France's bid to host the project in 2003 and Mr Bigot was delegated by the French government to act as High Representative for the implementation of ITER in France, a position that he has occ...

Ashwin Seetharaman is a molecular genetics and cell/developmental researcher at the University of Toronto focused on understanding life at its most fundamental level. He is currently focused on unraveling genetic interaction networks underlying human disease using the revolutionary CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing technology, ie examining and fighting rare diseases using gene editing. With over a decade...

Joanna Bryson (@j2bryson) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computing at the University of Bath. She works on Artificial Intelligence, ethics, and collaborative cognition. In 2010 Bryson published her most controversial work, "Robots Should Be Slaves" and has helped the EPSRC to define the Principles of Robotics in 2010. She has also consulted The Red Cross on autonomous weapons and i...

Brad Waid (@techbradwaid) is an international speaker, influencer and educator with over 15 years of classroom and industry experience. Brad is an industry leader in the fields of educational technology, 21st century learning, culture and innovation and has been name a top 15 influencer/thought leader in Augmented Reality. Brad is a consultant to industry, education and government and is often cal...

Prof Peter Stone is the founder and director of the Learning Agents Research Group (LARG) within the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin, as well as associate department chair and chair of the University's Robotics Portfolio Program. He is also the President, COO, and co-founder of Cogitai, a startup company building AIs tha...

Amir Husain(@amirhusain_tx) is a serial entrepreneur, inventor, and author based in Austin, Texas. He was a finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year 2018 Award, has been named Austin's Top Technology Entrepreneur of the Year, and received the Austin Under 40 Technology and Science Award. Husain is the founder and CEO of SparkCognition, an award-winning artificial intelligence compan...

Ariel Garten (@ariel_garten) is the Founder of InteraXon, makers of Muse: the brain sensing headband. Muse is the award-winning headband that makes meditation easier. During guided exercises, Muse senses your brain activity and sends that information to your phone or tablet, giving you real time audio feedback... Ariel has researched at the Krembil Neuroscience Institute studying hippocampal neuro...

Isaac Arthur (@isaac_a_arthur) is a physicist and futurist who runs popular YouTube channel Featured Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur. Isaac's popular channel has over 270k subscribers and 20M+ views and a legion of loyal, insightful fans, including his own sub-Reddit. Arthur covers a wide range of futurist and science fiction ideas including cyborgs, androids and artificial intelligence, th...

Roxanne Meadows (@roxmeadows) is the co-founder The Venus Project (@thevenusproject), an ambitious project looking to find alternative solutions to the many problems that confront the world today and ultimately build an experimental city to design the future of humanity. From 1975 to the present, Roxanne has worked with renowned futurist, Jacque Fresco until his death in 2017. The Venus Project of...

Aubrey de Grey (@aubreydegrey) is Cambridge researcher and Chief Science Officer of SENS Research Foundation focused on aging and extending human longevity. He proposes that the first human beings who will live to 1,000 years old have already been born. In addition to his research, Aubrey is editor-in-chief of the academic journal Rejuvenation Research, author of The Mitochondrial Free Radical The...

Ann Miura-Ko (@annimaniac) has been called “the most powerful woman in startups” by Forbes and is a lecturer in entrepreneurship at Stanford. The child of a rocket scientist at NASA, Ann is a Palo Alto native and has been steeped in technology startups from when she was a teenager. Prior to co-founding FLOODGATE, she worked at Charles River Ventures and McKinsey and Company. Some of Ann’s investme...

Frank Bunger (@frankbunger) is a veteran technology executive, serial entrepreneur and Founder/CEO at Orion Span - the company that's building a space hotel (second space station) and looking bring down the cost of visiting and living in space by orders of magnitude. The hotel, named Aurora Station will host 6 individuals at a time for nearly $1M/day, letting everyday folks experience life 200 mil...

Euvie Ivanova (@euvieivanova) and Mike Gilliland (@mikegilliland) are the hosts of the Future Thinkers Podcast, a show about the evolution of technology, society, and consciousness. They also run CryptoRadio.io, a podcast on bitcoin, blockchain and decentralization. A self-described “consciousness explorer”, “artist” and “digital nomad”, Euvie is on a mission to investigate technology, society and...

Robin Hanson (@robinhanson)is 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 publicatio...

Dennis Kowalski (@CiCryonics) is the director of the US-based Cryonics Institute (CI), a non-profit founded in 1976 by Robert Ettinger, "The Father of Cryonics." CI's goal from the beginning has been to offer the best available cryonics services to the public at an affordable cost. Since founding, Cryonics Institute has been a leading force in the cryonics movement, advancing research, education a...

Roel Vertegaal (@roelvertegaal) is a Dutch-Canadian interaction designer, scientist, musician and entrepreneur working in the area of Human-Computer Interaction. He is a Professor at Queen's University's School of Computing where he directs the Human Media Lab and is best known for his pioneering work on flexible and paper computers, with PaperWindows (2004), PaperPhone (2010] and PaperTab (2012)....

Prof. Dirk Helbing (@dirkhelbing) is Chair of Sociology, in particular of Modeling and Simulation, in ETH Zurich, and the Scientific Coordinator of the FuturICT Flagship Proposal. He is also the Principal Investigator on FutureICT Knowledge Accelerator and Crisis Relief System, a big data computing system, conceived as sort of a crystal ball of the world. The core of the system is the Living Earth...

Geoffrey Woo (@geoffreywoo) is co-founder and CEO of HVMN, a research-driven company that provides nutrition to elite performers in sport and military. HVMN makes HVMN Ketone, the world's first ketone ester drink based on technology developed in a DARPA program to enhance soldier performance. In early 2016, Geoffrey started experimenting with intermittent fasting to activate metabolic pathways ass...

Parag Khanna (@paragkhanna) is a leading global strategist, world traveler, and best-selling author. He is a CNN Global Contributor and Senior Research Fellow in the Centre on Asia and Globalisation at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. He is also the Managing Partner of Hybrid Reality, a geostrategic advisory firm, and Co-Founder & CEO of Factotum, a...