Bob Watson
Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Theme: Earth

Professor Watson's career has evolved from research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory: California Institute of Technology, to a US Federal Government program manager/director at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), to a scientific/policy advisor in the US Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), White House, to a scientific advisor, manager and chief scientist at the World Bank, to a Chair of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, the Director for Strategic Direction for the Tyndall centre, and Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.   

In parallel to his formal positions he has chaired, co-chaired or directed international scientific, technical and economic assessments of stratospheric ozone depletion, biodiversity/ecosystems (the GBA and MA), climate change (IPCC) and agricultural S&T (IAASTD).  Professor Watson's areas of expertise include managing and coordinating national and international environmental programs, research programs and assessments; establishing science and environmental policies - specifically advising governments and civil society on the policy implications of scientific information and policy options for action; and communicating scientific, technical and economic information to policymakers.   During the last twenty years he has received numerous national and international awards recognizing his contributions to science and the science-policy interface, including in 2003 - Honorary "Companion of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George" from the United Kingdom.

Bunker Roy
Founder, Barefoot College

Theme: Earth

Bunker Roy is the Founder Director of the Barefoot College (www.barefootcollege.org ) based in the village of Tilonia in Rajasthan India. Started 36 years ago it is the only College based in a remote rural area built by the poor for the poor and managed by the poor who earn less than $ 1/day. The College follows the work style and lifestyle of Mahatma Gandhi where living conditions are simple, austere and down to earth.

Since 1972 more than 20 Barefoot Colleges have started in over 13 States of India. The Barefoot approach of training rural semi-literate middle aged women to solar electrifying their own villages has been replicated in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Bolivia, Cameroon, Mali(Timbuktu), Sierra Leone and The Gambia.

Mr Roy is the Founder Chairman of the Global Rain Water Harvesting Collective based in India as well as in The Netherlands( www.globalrainwaterharvesting.org ) focusing on collecting rain water from the roofs of remote rural schools. More than 50 million litres have been collected in over 1,000 schools all over the world.

In January 2008 The Guardian Newspaper in London recognized Bunker Roy as one of 50 people in the world who could save the planet.

Sir David King
Former UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser & Director, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment

Theme: Earth

Sir David King is the Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment at the University of Oxford.  He was the UK Government's Chief Scientific Adviser and Head of the Government Office of Science from October 2000 to 31 December 2007.  In that time, he raised the profile of the need for governments to act on climate change and was instrumental in creating the new £1 billion Energy Technologies Institute.  In 2008 he co-authored "The Hot Topic" (Bloomsbury 2008) on this subject.  As Director of the Government's Foresight Programme, he created an in-depth horizon scanning process which advised government on a wide range of long term issues, from flooding to obesity.  He also chaired the government's Global Science and Innovation Forum from its inception.  He advised government on issues including:  The foot-and-mouth disease epidemic 2001; post 9/11 risks to the UK; GM foods; energy provision; and innovation and wealth creation; and he was heavily involved in the Government's Science and Innovation Strategy 2004-2014. 

He was born in South Africa in 1939, and after an early career at the University of Witwatersrand, Imperial College and the University of East Anglia, he became the Brunner Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Liverpool in 1974.  In 1988 he was appointed 1920 Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Cambridge and subsequently became Master of Downing College (1995 - 2000) and Head of the University Chemistry Department (1993 - 2000).  He has published over 450 papers on his research in chemical physics and on science and policy, and has received numerous prizes, Fellowships and Honorary Degrees.  He continues as Director of Research in the Department of Chemistry at Cambridge University, and is currently President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

Jon Moulton
Alchemy Partners

Theme: Earth

Jon Moulton is Managing Partner of Alchemy, a UK-based private equity firm, which has invested £2.0 billion of equity with an emphasis on dealing with troubled companies.  It recently completed the raising of a £300m European special opportunities fund.

He is a Chartered Accountant, a CF and Fellow of the Society of Turnaround Professionals.  Previously worked with Citicorp Venture Capital in New York and London, Permira and Apax.  He has been a director of five public companies, numerous private companies and is currently a director of the US-based Irvin parachute business, the Cedar IT business, Sylvan (timber) and Ashmore Group - a major investor in emerging market debt amongst others.

Franny Armstrong
Film Producer/Director

Theme: Earth

Franny is an up and coming film producer/director whose first documentary, 'McLibel', was released to great critical acclaim in 1997.  More recently, she directed "The Age Of Stupid" (formerly known as 'Crude') - an ambitious drama-documentary-animation hybrid starring Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055, watching "archive" footage from 2007 and asking: why didn't we stop climate change while we had the chance?  The film is due for release this summer at Cannes.

Franny's films are produced through Spanner Films, an independent TV production company, based in London, which she founded in 1999. Working entirely outside the mainstream TV industry, her films have now been seen by a total of 49 million people.

Franny has spoken at more than 80 film festivals, seminars and colleges around the world. She has been interviewed for TV news and chat shows (inc BBC and ABC Australia) and written articles for books, newspapers and magazines (inc The Guardian).

Vinay Gupta
Co Founder of the Global Swadeshi Movement,

Theme: Earth

Vinay Gupta is a long term international policy strategist focussing on the transformative power of free and open source appropriate technology systems. He is a close student of Buckminster Fuller and Mahatma Gandhi, and seeks to help people transform their lives at an economic and political level through greater individual self-sufficiency. The crux of this work is bringing integrated appropriate technology solutions to the poorest through designing systems they can use, understand, and afford.

Vinay is best known for the Hexayurt Project, a simple free shelter design which is suitable for mass production after disasters. He has also worked on energy policy and in a variety of roles in the computer industry. A Scot of Indian extraction, Vinay sees his role as being to help cherry pick the best solutions to long term global problems and push them into broad adoption.

He is one of the founders of the Global Swadeshi Movement, a group working to update and modernize Gandhian ideas about long term progress.

David MacKay
Professor of Natural Philosophy, Department of Physics, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge

Theme: Earth

David MacKay is a Professor in the Department of Physics at Cambridge University. He obtained his PhD in Computation and Neural Systems at the California Institute of Technology. His research interests include reliable computation with unreliable hardware, and communication systems for the disabled. He's written a textbook on 'Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms' (2003, Cambridge). He's currently writing another free book on `Sustainable Energy - without the hot air.'

Colin Humphreys, CBE
Goldsmiths Professor of Materials Science, University of Cambridge

Theme: Earth

Colin Humphreys is the Goldsmiths' Professor of Materials Science in the University of Cambridge.  He is the Chairman of the International Advisory Board of the National Institute for Material Science (NIMS) in Japan, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Institute for Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) in Singapore.  He is the Director of the Cambridge Centre for Gallium Nitride, and the Director of the Rolls-Royce University Technology Centre for Aerospace Materials.  He has published over 550 research papers, and his research areas include semiconductors and photonic materials, particularly gallium nitride, LEDs, high-temperature aerospace materials, and electron microscopy. He has written a book about the Exodus from Egypt, called "The Miracles of Exodus", which was published in 2003.

Andrew Mitchell
Director, Global Canopy Programme

Theme: Earth

Andrew W. Mitchell is a leading international authority on forests and climate change. In 2001, he founded the Global Canopy Programme (GCP), an international network linking 38 leading scientific institutions in 19 countries focused on the research and conservation of tropical forests. He is the architect of the Forests Now Declaration, which calls on Governments to take action to halt deforestation and has the support of over 300 high level endorsers, including two Heads of State.

Andrew has been an impassioned advocate of forest conservation for over 30 years, with a career spanning scientific research, broadcast journalism, and environmental policy. Before founding the Global Canopy Project, he worked at Earthwatch, overseeing 130 field research and conservation projects in 40 countries.

 Andrew acts as an adviser to governments and international institutions, and is senior advisor to the Prince of Wales' Rainforest Project, established in 2007. Andrew co-founded the UK Corporate Environment Responsibility Group, and has advised on environmental policy for companies including McDonalds, Barclays and British Airways.

Andrew is the author of seven books, including A Fragile Paradise, a Sir Peter Morris Conservation Book Prize finalist (1990), which was made into a six-part BBC Radio 4 series.

Andrew is a well-known and recognisable media figure. In 2007, he gave interviews to BBC World, Sky News and Channel 4 News, and was quoted in publications from The Independent and Daily Telegraph in the UK to the Washington Post and Time Magazine in the United States.

Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio
Managing Director, Global Climate Change Practice, Internet Business Solutions Group, Cisco Systems Inc

Theme: Earth

Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio leads the Global Climate Change Practice of Cisco's Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) - Cisco's Strategy & Innovation group.

The Global Climate Change practice focuses on the unique role that collaborative networks and information can play in low carbon development innovation in partnership with National Governments, International Finance Institutions, Economics & Policy Think Tanks, Scientific Research Organizations, NGOs and Corporations. The practice interests lie in areas as diverse as joined-up climate change science, economics of climate change, integrated assessment modeling, low carbon innovation scenarios, adoption of energy efficiency, deforestation business models, carbon markets and global to local risk modelling.

Prior to this role in IBSG, Juan Carlos led the Emerging Markets Public Sector team focused on technology enabled national public service delivery transformation, national social/digital inclusion programs, SMB economic inclusion programs, healthcare and educational reforms.

Prior to joining Cisco, he was a Partner for DiamondCluster where he led the financial services and telecom practices in Latin America. Prior to DiamondCluster, he was CEO for an industrial biotechnology start-up focused on biofuel technologies, an EVP Operations for a large brewery group, a VP for Corporate Strategic Development of a financial services group and a senior consultant for McKinsey & Company.

In his tenure as a research professional in the biotech industry he acted as a consultant to the Corporacion Andina de Fomento and to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization.

A native Peruvian, he graduated from the University of Cambridge, UK with a B.Eng. in Chemical Engineering and with a M.Eng in Biochemical Engineering. He later graduated with an MBA from INSEAD in France. He is married to a Brazilian lady and has four children.