“I define my works as the intuitive exploration of the beautiful inner worlds of language and numbers” Daniel Tammet is a writer, linguist, and educator. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Born On A Blue Day (2007) and the international bestseller Embracing the Wide Sky (2009). His books have been translated into 20 languages. He is also the creator of Optimnem, an online language learning company.On March 14th 2004 Mr Tammet set a European record when he recited the mathematical constant Pi (3.14...) from memory to 22,514 decimal places in Oxford. He has worked with some of the world's leading neuroscientists, and made original contributions to the understanding of autism, savantism, and synesthesia. A 2007 poll of 4,000 Britons named him as one of the world's '100 living geniuses'. Born in London, Mr Tammet now lives in France.
"Seek novelty. Avoid dogma. Follow mysteries." David Eagleman is not your usual scientist. For example, he joined volunteers to free fall backwards from 15 floors for his experiment on time perception. His aim? To understand why time sometimes seems to slow down. Grasping this could lead to help for people with mental illnesses, such as those who experience auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia. The effect is probably brought on by an out of sync time perception. Potentially, this experience could be corrected by re-calibrating the brain with games. A leading neuroscientist and author based at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, Eagleman also specializes in synaesthesia, a sort of blending of the senses where you can hear colours and taste sounds. He is director of the groundbreaking Initiative on Neuroscience and Law which brings together neurobiologists, legal scholars and policy makers to explore how recent scientific discoveries can be employed within a legal framework. Unrelated to his scientific research, he believes in possibilianism, a term he recently coined. Eagleman thinks there isn´t much choice in the positions available to the public regarding religion. He argues that the extremes are just a few among a myriad of possibilities, and to counter this, has declared himself a possibilian; someone who believes in a world of possibilities. Ironically, and to his surprise, he quickly acquired a large group of followers.
"I investigate the dark side of human nature" David Livingstone Smith is a philosopher, but he’s not interested in doing what most philosophers do. He’s interested in thinking about things that make a difference to human life. His philosophical work is about contributing to the overall quality of life, and according to him, the best way to do this is by understanding ourselves, with the help of biology. Livingstone Smith isn’t shy about tackling ugly topics; he first sprang into the media’s attention with the publication of his book on lying, which was followed with one on war and the latest on dehumanization. He focuses on the worst aspects of human nature, explains and exposes these facets, as well as how we can come to transcend them. Livingstone Smith is currently an associate professor of Philosophy at the University of New England, and co-founder and director of the New England Institute for Cognitive Science and Evolutionary Studies.
“Evolutionary psychology is a lens through which any psychological phenomenon can be examined” Why, despite so much love in the strongest of our relationships, is conflict present? According to Buss, jealousy is an evolutionary adaptation, a hypersensitive defence system. In fact, jealousy is as necessary as love and sex for a successful relationship (in balanced doses, obviously). David M. Buss is an evolutionary psychologist, Professor at the University of Texas and head of the Individual Differences and Evolutionary Psychology (IDEP) program. A highly recognized researcher, his route to academia wasn’t straightforward. At 17 he dropped out of school and worked at a graveyard pumping tires before deciding to earn his high school diploma taking evening classes. Once at university, he became passionate about psychology, in particular when presented under a Darwinian light. Now outstanding in his field, he studies human behaviour, with a focus on sexual instincts. He has written many books, including the widely acclaimed The Evolution of Desire.
“The difference between measuring it all and measuring only some is literally difference between all or none" At six Deb Roy was already building robots, and after mixing a Data-processing Engineering degree with a doctorate in Cognitive Sciences, today he is director of the Cognitive Machines Group at MIT. Intrigued by the question of how a child learns a language, Roy took an unusual decision: he installed cameras in all of the rooms of his house. His purpose? To record the first three years of his son’s life. He and his team then studied 90,000 hours worth of tapes to decipher and understand how a simple ‘gaga’ becomes a more complex ‘water’. Using space-time worms (a form of motion analysis) and wordscapes (3D space graphs of language) he is able to study the relationship between social environments and language acquisition. Their software analysis programme recently took a twist and applied itself to television and its social feedback. This has opened up a world of interactions between the media and the public. Amazingly, his team has been able to take a “real-time pulse of a nation”, an impression of peoples reactions as they happen. Roy is also integrating this knowledge into his love for robotics and designs machines that learn to communicate in a human-like manner.
"My dream is to see the robot being used in millions of households as a robot helper” Dennis Hong loves to perform magic, but his real passion is robotics. He heads the human effort to breathe life into robots. His research lab RoMeLa (Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory) has designed 20 kinds of robots in the last seven years. They are responsible for CHARLI (Cognitive Humanoid Autonomous Robot with Learning Intelligence) a fully autonomous adult size humanoid robot, which among many things, can play soccer. With a goal of beating the human WorldCup champions in a game of soccer by the year 2050, his team is pushing the boundaries of science and engineering in humanoid robotics. DARwIn, (Dynamic Anthropomorphic Robot with Intelligence) is a family of miniature humanoid robots developed for research and education. To foster the advancement in robotics, both the hardware and software of DARwIn is fully open-source, making it available for free to the general public. SAFFiR (Shipboard Autonomous Fire Fighting Robot) is a waterproof fire fighting humanoid robot being developed by the US Navy. Hong’s innovative power and compelling belief that robotics can have a positive impact on humanity have landed him several awards and recognitions.
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“Innovation is not possible without multidisciplinarity or associated learning” Lawyer and economist by training, scientist by conviction, Punset is a man of many talents. After spending a good portion of his life in academia and the civil service, Punset decided to dedicate himself to science. He created the television programme “Redes” (Networks) with the mission to transform the world through science. How? By giving the public the necessary tools to “discover to what extent the scientific method, instead of dogmatism, can transform their lives”. He is a pioneer in science communication and has shown the world that science and the entertainment business can collaborate to produce successful and incredible productions. That it is possible for “science to burst into popular culture”.
"I see the school newspaper as watchdogs of society" Wojcicki was only 14 when she began earning money from journalism. Gradually, she worked her way up in the field until she was writing for the Los Angeles Times and Time Magazine. And then she turned her interest to teenagers. Affectionately known as ‘Woj’, she teaches Journalism and English at the Palo Alto High School in California. Under her, the peer-taught, award-winning journalism programme is now the largest in U.S. involving around 400 high school students. Wojcicki is also Vice Chair of the Creative Commons, an innovative and widely recognized licensing initiative that offers universal access to research and education whilst protecting intellectual property on the Internet. A committed educator, she has helped design the Google Teacher Outreach programme and Google Teacher Academy. A leading American female journalist, she currently writes for The Huffington Post.
“There’s an intimate relationship between sexual attractiveness, mental and physical health and the propensity to survive and reproduce” What if the evolution of human intelligence was shaped more by sexual selection than by natural selection? Geoffrey Miller thinks so. He believes that our minds, and the functions they can accomplish, are not a product of survival mechanisms but of courtship strategies. Miller is a social evolutionary psychologist specialized in the study of mental adaptations for judgment, decision-making, strategic behaviour, and communication. According to him, our appreciation for art, language, music, humour, and ideologies are all courtship displays. Miller’s latest book, the entertaining and accomplished Spent, explains why our drive to buy is sex. Seen with this idea in mind, baffling aspects of consumer behaviour suddenly make sense. Miller is also associate professor at the University of New Mexico.
“Since all the modern human ancestors are extinct, bonobos are the best window into our past” Bonobos, along with chimpanzees, are our closest cousins. They live in the dense jungles of the Congo and share 98% of their DNA with humans. Isabel Behncke is a Chilean anthropologist who has spent many of the last years studying them. She believes that their behaviour can tell us a lot about our own species and evolution. To study them in the wild, Behncke became the first western woman to enter the DR Congo after two decades. We share a distinct social pattern with the bonobos: play. And according to Behncke, “Play is not frivolous, it is essential”, because play promotes creativity, social interaction and is a key for adaptation. Behncke studied conservation and primatology at University College London and Cambridge University respectively. She is currently studying for a DPhil from the University of Oxford with Prof Robin Dunbar from the Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology.