Biographies for speakers and chairs

Co-Chair in Parallel Session 5 Scientists and Politics. Aftab Ahmad is a Biologist by profession and working in area of Stem Cells Biology.

Mr. Aftab is founder and president of Asia’s first National Young Academy entitled National Academy of Young Scientists (NAYS), Pakistan. NAYS has played an important role for the promotion of education, science and technology in Pakistan since its inception in 2009. Aftab Ahmad has also served as President of Sciforum Pakistan (Pakistan first discussion forum on life sciences).

In addition, Aftab Ahmad was selected as Member of Global Young Academy in 2001 and currently serving as Member and Group Leader of Science for Youth Project of GYA. He was selected as Young Scientist Member of Interacademy Panel (IAP) and World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2012 and is also serving as Chairman of Islamic World Young Scientists Academy (IYSA).

Mr. Aftab has represented Pakistan in more than 10 countries on different forums. He has also written four books in Local language for public awareness about Hepatitis B and C and recently on Gene Therapy.

Speaker in plenary 1 Military Technologies of Tomorrow. Altmann, PhD, is a physicist and peace researcher at Technische Universität Dortmund, Germany. Since 1985 he has studied scientific-technical problems of disarmament.

An experimental focus is automatic sensor systems for co-operative verification of disarmament and peace agreements and for IAEA safeguards for an underground final repository.

Another focus is assessment of new military technologies and preventive arms control. Major studies have dealt with laser weapons, ballistic missile defence, microsystems technology, nanotechnology, non-lethal weapons and armed uninhabited vehicles.

He is a co-founder of the German Research Association for Science, Disarmament and International Security (FONAS), a deputy speaker of the Working Group on Physics and Disarmament of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft (DPG), and a deputy chair of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control ICRAC.

Will speak on Niels Bohr and Atoms for Peace. Amano is Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Prior to this appointment, Director-General Amano has held several different positions within the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. These positions include Director of the Science Division, and Director of the Nuclear Energy Division, Director-General for Arms Control and Scientific Affairs, and Director-General of the Disarmament, Nonproliferation and Science Department.

In connection to these positions, Director-General Amano was involved in several large-scale international negotiations, including the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Extension, the  Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, the Convention on Certain Chemical weapons, the Biological Weapons Convention, and the International Code of Conduct against Ballistic Missile proliferation.

Director-General Amano holds a degree from the Faculty of Law at the University of Tokyo, and has specialized in nuclear nonproliferation efforts, and international disarmament. He advocates an integrated approach to nuclear safety, as well as the necessity for state infrastructures to keep pace with the scientific developments in the field of nuclear science.a

Danish Minister of Education. Ms. Antorini will be awarding the UNESCO Niels Bohr Gold Medal to this year's recipients.

Ms. Antorini was appointed minister for education and children in 2011 and from 2013 she has been minister for education. She is a member of the Danish parliament for the Social Democratic party. She was elected for the Social Democratic party for the first time in 2005 and has been serving in parliament conintually since then.

Ms. Antorini has a master's degree in public administration from Roskilde University. She has been a member of several government boards and comittees relating to science and the communication of scientific research.

Ms. Antorini has previously worked with communication, consumer information and Danish national television.

Will give closing comments. Mr. Aragão is a specialist in Quantum Field Theory and its applications. He is a Professor at the Institute of Physics of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ).

Mr. Aragão holds many positions, including: Director of the Latin American Center for Physics (CLAF), Secretary-General of the 3rd Brazilian National Conference on Science, Technology, and Innovation, Director of Innovation of the Brazilian Industrial Development Agency (ABDI), General-Manager of the Vale Technological Institute (ITV) and Director-General of the Brazilian National Center for Research in Energy and Materials (CNPEM).

He published more than 70 articles on Physics, is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and of TWAS (The World Academy of Sciences) and received the medal of the Brazilian Order of Scientific Merit.

Recipient of the UNESCO Bohr Gold medal. Dr. Alain Aspect is the Augustin Fresnel Professor at Institut d’Optique, professor at Ecole Polutechnique and director of research at French National Center for Scientific Research.

Dr. Aspect earned his master's degree in physics from Orsay University, France, in 1971 and his Ph.D. in physics, also from Orsay University, in 1983 and has held a number of research and teaching positions at several institutes of higher learning in France.

Dr. Aspect has done extensive research related to quantum physics. His research has among other topics focused on atom optics and ultra-cold atoms, laser cooling of atoms, non-classical properties of light as tests of the foundations of quantum mechanics and coherent optics.  His results have been published extensively in international scientific publications.

The awarding of the Niels Bohr Gold Medal to dr. Aspect is the latest of numerous prestigious honors and awards presented to dr. Aspect.

Chair of parallel session 1 Military Technologies of Tommorow. Professor de Sousa Barros is currently authoring a book on the history of physics instruments in the development of physics concepts.

From 1962-1972 he was a research physicist at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, and from 1973-1995 he held the coordinating position of the graduate programme at the Physics Institute of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

From 1983-1992, he has participated in the Pugwash program for the peaceful application of nuclear energy, and the elimination of nuclear weapons. He was also appointed President of the Brazilian Society of Physics 1985-1987.

The focus of his research includes experimental studies of stripping reactions with light nuclei, Mössbauer effect studies on electron-nucleus interactions, research into the condensed matter physics using spectroscopic techniques, and the study of mineral fertilizer aggregates.

Musical guest at the dinner banquet at the National Museum.

Ms. Bohr is a Danish pop/soul singer, performer and songwriter. She Studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston and at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen. Ms. Bohr is the great-granddaughter of Niels Bohr.

• You can listen to her music at reverbnation.com

Chair of Plenary 2 New Global Threats and Possibilities. Thomas Bohr is Professor of Physics and Director of Center for Fluid Dynamics at the Technical University of Denmark.

Tomas Bohr’s field of research is Complex Systems. He has worked with chaos, turbulence and statistical mechanics and written ”Bevægelsens Uberegnelige Skønhed. Om kaos.” (Gyldendal 1992) for the lay audience and is co-author of the monograph ”Dynamical Systems Approach to Turbulence" (Cambridge 1998).

In later years he has been particularly interested in strongly non-linear fluid flows, which, even if they are not turbulent, give rise to surprising structures - in particular surfaces with edges, corners and needles. Tomas Bohr combines theoretical work with simple model experiments on e. g.  hydraulic jumps, bathtub vortices, sand ripples and sap flows in trees.

He is son of Aage Bohr who won the Nobel prize in Physics, and he is the grandson of Niels Bohr.

Chair of Plenary 4 Politics and Economics with New Technology. Doctor Vilhelm Bohr is Chief of the Laboratory of Molecular Gerontology, National Institute on Aging, US National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Bohr received his M.D. in 1978, Ph.D. in 1987, and D.Sc. in 1987 from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. After training in neurology and infectious diseases at the University Hospital in Copenhagen, Dr. Bohr did a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Hans Klenow at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

He then worked with Dr. Philip Hanawalt at Stanford University as a research scholar from 1982-1986. In 1986, he joined the National Cancer Institute (NCI) as an investigator and become a tenured Senior Investigator in 1988. Dr. Bohr developed a research section on DNA repair at the NCI. In 1992, he moved to the National Institute on Aging to become Chief of the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics, renamed Laboratory of Molecular Gerontology in February 2001.

Speaker in plenary 3  The Internet – A Global Infrastructure of Openness? Caspar Bowden is an independent advocate for information privacy rights, and public understanding of privacy research in computer science. He is a specialist in EU Data Protection, European and US surveillance law, PET research, identity management, and information ethics.

He is author of 2013 EU Parliament inquiry briefing on the US FISA law, and co-authored the 2012 Note on privacy and Cloud computing (which anticipated the infringements to EU data sovereignty disclosed by Edward Snowden).

For nine years he was Chief Privacy Adviser for Microsoft for forty countries, and previously co-founded and was first director of the Foundation for Information Policy ResearchHe was an expert adviser for UK Parliamentary legislation, and co-organized six public conferences on encryption, data retention, and interception policy.

He has previous careers in financial engineering and risk management, and software engineering (systems, 3D games, applied cryptography), including work with Goldman Sachs, Microsoft Consulting Services, Acorn, Research Machines, and IBM.

participant in the final Roundtable Discussion.  Paolo Cotta-Ramusino has been Secretary General of the Nobel Peace Prize winning Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs since August 2002. He is also Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Milano (Italy) and Senior Researcher at the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics.

As Secretary General of Pugwash he continued Pugwash’s tradition of addressing the need of eliminating nuclear weapons and more generally all WMDs. Pugwash has dealt extensively with the situation in the Middle East, South Asia and North East Asia in particular.

For example Pugwash has been devoting much attention to the creation of a WMD-Free Zone in the Middle East, in addressing the issue of dialogue in and on Palestine, in facilitating dialogue around the issues raised by the Iranian nuclear programs. Pugwash is also dedicating a significant part of its activity to the situation in South Asia, to the risks associated to the presence of nuclear weapons in that area and to the contentious issue of Kashmir.

Speaker in plenary 3 The Internet: A Global Infrastructure of Openness? Chair in parallel session Politics and Economics with New Technology, and participating in the closing roundtable discussion.

Susan Crawford is professor at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, fellow at Roosevelt Institute, and co-director of the Berkman Center. She is author of Captive Audience and contributor to Bloomberg View and Wired.

She served as Special Assistant to the President for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy (2009) and co-led the FCC transition team between the Bush and Obama administrations. She is a member of New York Cit Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Advisory Council on Technology and Innovation.

As an academic, she teaches internet law and communications law. She was a member of the board of directors of ICANN from 2005-2008 and is the founder of OneWebDay, a global Earth Day for the internet that takes place each Sept. 22.

Speaker in plenary 2 New Global Threats and Possibilities. Dr. Abdallah Daar is Professor of Public Health Sciences at the Dalla Lana Faculty of Public Health, University of Toronto, with a cross-appointment in the Department of Surgery.

He is Senior Scientist at University Health/Toronto General Research Institute, and is Director of Ethics and Commercialization at the Sandra Rotman Centre, University Health Network and University of Toronto.

Professor Daar's academic career has spanned biomedical sciences, organ transplantation, surgery, global health and bioethics. He works in various advisory or consulting capacities with the UN, the World Health Organization and UNESCO.

He holds the official world record for performing the youngest cadaver kidney transplant. His major research focus is on the use of life sciences to ameliorate global health inequities, with a particular focus on building scientific capacity and increasing innovation in developing countries.

Member of the UN Secretary-General's Scientific Advisory Board.

Speaker in plenary 1 Military Technologies of Tomorrow. Ronald J. Deibert is Professor of Political Science, and Director of the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies and the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto.

The Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary research and development hothouse working at the intersection of the Internet, global security, and human rights. He is a co-founder and a principal investigator of the OpenNet Initiative and Information Warfare Monitor (2003-2012) projects.

Deibert has published numerous articles, chapters, and books on issues related to technology, media, and world politics.

He is currently promoting his new book Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace and he was one of the authors of the Tracking Ghostnet report that documented an alleged cyber-espionage network affecting over 1200 computers in 103 countries, and the Shadows in the Cloud report, which analyzed a cloud-based espionage network.

Speaker in plenary 1 Military Technologies of Tomorrow. Dr. Deudney is an associate professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. His research is focused mainly in the areas of international relations, political theory, geopolitics and republicanism.

Dr. Deudney graduated from Yale University in 1975 with a bachelor's degree in political science and philosophy. Aditionally he holds a master of public affairs degree from George Washington University and a master's degree and a Ph.D. in political science from Princeton University.

Dr. Deudney has worked in the US Congress and has consulted for the US State Department, Departement of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency. He has been a senior researcher at the World Watch Institute in Washington D.C.

His most recent book is Bounding Power: Republican Security Theory from the Polis to the Global Village in which he critiques realism and liberalism, the predominant theories in international relations and places them in a larger theoretical framework of republican thought. The book has won several prestigious awards.

Opening remarks, presenting the UNESCO Niels Bohr Gold Medals and participant in the closing roundtable discussion.

Mr. Engida is Deputy Director-General of UNESCO since 2010. He has had a distinguished international career in auditing and financial management for prominent international companies and also worked for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) as Assistant Comptroller. He joined UNESCO in 2004.

Moderator in Roundtable discussion.Dr. Friis is prorector at Copenhagen University, former Minister for Climate, Energy and Gender Euqality and former member of the Danish Parliament for the Danish liberal party, Venstre.

 Dr. Friis holds a master’s degree in economics from London School of Economics, a master’s degree in political science from Copenhagen University and ph.d. in international relations from Copenhagen University.

Over the years Dr. Friis has been involved with international relations in many different capacities. Both as a researcher and lecturer and in business. Since 2012 she has been president of the Danish Foreign Policy Society.

Chair of parallel session 5 Scientist and Politics. Professor and Co-Chair of IAP, the global network of science academies, and Chairman of the Council of the United Nations University (UNU).

He also serves on a number of Boards of international organizations worldwide, including Board of Directors of global change System for Analysis, Research and Training (START), Washington, US.

After obtaining his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Oxford he returned to Sudan as Lecturer in the University of Khartoum, and later became Professor and Dean of the School of Mathematical Sciences.

Prof. Hassan has a long list of publications in Theoretical Plasma Physics and Fusion Energy; Wind Erosion, Dust and Sand Transport in Dry Lands. He also published several articles on Science and Technology in the Developing World. Prof. Hassan was founding Executive Director of TWAS, President of the African Academy of Sciences and chairman, Honorary Presidential Advisory Council for Science and Technology, Nigeria.

Chair for UNESCO Niels Bohr Gold Medal Award Ceremony. Gaardhøje is Professor of experimental physics at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, with particular focus on nuclear and particle physics and leader of the High Energy Heavy Ion group (HEHI).

He is a member of the Management board, technical board and collaboration board of the ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Geneva and co-spokesman of the BRAHMS experiment at Brookhaven national Laboratory, USA. He is also a member of the Danish Natural Science Research Council (FNU). He is also a member of the scientific board of the European theory Center, ECT, in Trento, Italy.

Gaardhøje is the Danish prepresentative in NUPECC and, from 2012 to the council of CERN.

Additionally, Gaardhøje is a member of the Danish National Commission for UNESCO, chair of the science committee and member of the advisory board to the director general of UNESCO for the International Basic Science Program (IBSP). Finally, Gaardhøje is a member of the Organizing Committee for AN OPEN WORLD.

Welcome to the reception at the city hall.

Ms. Hedlund is a new ly reelected member and Vice President of the Copenhagen City Council for, Socialdemokratiet.

First speaker of the opening ceremony. Professor of Psychiatry and  258th Rector of the University of Copenhagen.  He obtained his medical degree, and graduated from the Faculty of Health Sciences in 1975. He completed his doctorate in medicine in 1981, and after practicing as a consulting psychiatrist, he was awarded his professorship in 1995.

From 1986 – 2002 he was the director of a medical ward in Bisbejerg hostpital, and in this capacity was responsible for the institutional administration. Prior to his appointment as Rector, he was the Dean at the Faculty and Health Sciences. In the period from 1975-2006, he has had 161 papers published in several scientific journals.

139 of these are indexed in Medline. Prof. Hemmingsen’s research interests are in the fields of neurobiology and chemistry, with a specific focus on schizophrenia and psychiatric law. This research has included clinical work with patients, as well as experimental  studies incorporating animal modeling.

Will recieve one of the UNESCO Niels Bohr Medals and speak in the Roundatable discussion.

Rolf-Dieter Heuer has been CERN Director General since January 2009. From 1984 to 1998, Prof. Heuer was a staff member at CERN, working for the OPAL experiment at the electron-positron storage ring LEP. During his 15 years at CERN Prof. Heuer occupied the highest managerial positions in the OPAL experiment and was the OPAL's spokesperson in 1994-1998.

In 1998, Rolf-Dieter Heuer was appointed to a chair at the University of Hamburg. There, he set up a working group to prepare experiments at an electron-positron Linear Collider that quickly became one of the leading groups in this field worldwide. From 2004 to 2008, Prof. Heuer was research director for particle and astroparticle physics at the DESY laboratory.

Prof. Heuer has been a member of many scientific committees and advisory bodies where he has acquired a great deal of expertise in reviewing projects as well as in assessing and promoting people.

Speaker in plenary 4 Politics and Economics with New Technology. Eric von Hippel is T Wilson Professor of Innovation Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is also Professor of Engineering Systems at MIT. Von Hippel is known for his research into the sources of innovation.

He and his colleagues find that innovation is shifting away from product and service producers to product and service users in the Internet Age, and shifting from intellectual property protection to free. These important changes are driving major changes in research, in government policymaking, and in innovation practice as well.

Von Hippel holds a BA in economics from Harvard College, a SM in mechanical engineering from MIT, and a PhD in business and engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University.  He has received honorary doctorates from Ludwig-Maximilians-Univerität München, Copenhagen Business School, and The Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg.

He has published many articles and two books. In keeping with the spirit of open access, all of his work is available for free access and free downloading on the Web.

The Crown Princes of Denmark will attend the opening ceremony. He is an IOC member and he has a MSc degree in Political Science from the University of Aarhus.

His Royal Highness Crown Prince Frederik is the eldest son of Queen Margrethe II of Denmark.

Her Royal Highness Princess Marieis Protector for the Danish UNESCO national commision, and will be awarding the Niels Bohr Gold Medals to this years recipients.

She is married to Prince Joachim son of Queen Margrethe II of Denmark.

Chair in parallel session 3 The Internet: A Global Infrastructure of Openness? Dr. Husfeldt is professor of Computer Science at Lund University, Sweden and associate professor at the IT University in Copenhagen, Denmark.
 
Dr. Husfeldt holds a ph.d degree in Computer Science from Aarhus University, Denmark. He does research in theoretical computer science, focusing on algorithms. Furthermore he has done research in data structures.

Husfeldt is an avid commentator in matters relating to the challenges and possibilities in information technology for society and science in both Denmark and Sweden. Several honors have been awarded to Dr. Husfeldt for his teaching in computer science throughout his career.

Co-chair in parallel session 3 The Internet: A Global Infrastructure of Openness? Prof. Kadir is currently the Head of EEE, UPM. He is also the Chair of IEEE PES Malaysia, WG Member of IEEE PES Lightning Performance on Overhead Lines and the Advisor of Centre for Electromagnetic and Lightning Protection Research (CELP), UPM.

He is an Advisory Board Member for National Lightning Safety Institute (NLSI), USA and Malaysian National Committee of CIGRE. He is a Professional Engineer (PEng) and a Chartered Engineer (CEng), as well as member of IEM, IEEE, IET, CIGRE and IAENG.

Co-chair of parallel session 1 Military Technologies of Tomorrow.

Gurjit Singh Lalli holds a master in Business Administration and is a member of the Royal Society of the Young Academy of Scotland. He is the Founder-Chariman and Chief mentor of several companies, that have global business operations across three businesslines - real estate, clean tech, and equity investment.

Currently he is going into new verticals and business. Amongst other things he is Amabassador at HRH Prince Charles Youth Business Trust. He has a particular interest in the application of philanthrocapitalism, and developing social venture capital funds.

Speech at the reception in the City Hall. Editor in chief of the Danish nationwide newspaper Politiken. An acclaimed historian and former diplomat with the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Danish Prime Minister’s Office.

Lidegaard started his diplomatic career in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1984. He served at Danish representations in Geneva and Paris, before leaving the foreign service in 2000. In 2005 he joined the Ministry of the State, as Permanent Under-Secretary of State, initially heading the Foreign and Security Affairs section, and was later in charge of the Climate Change secretariat.

Lidegaard is also a member of the Organizing Committee for AN OPEN WORLD.

Chair of parallel session 2 New Global Threats and Possibilities and will speak at the final Roundtable discussion. Dennis Meadows was a member of the faculty at: MIT (1969 - 1972); Dartmouth College (1972-1988); University of New Hampshire (1988 - 2004). In each institution he directed centers for policy on economic and environmental issues.

Director of the Club of Rome's project on the limits to growth. Co-author of the 'Limits to Growth' report and 9 other books on environment, systems, and energy. These have been translated into 35 languages.

Designer of management-training games that have been translated for use in 15 countries. The World Bank and the governments of Hungary, Russia, and Canada all created special training programs based on his games.

Member of the board of directors of numerous financial, software, and alternative energy firms in Europe and the US.

Speaker in plenary 2 New Global threats and Possibilities. David and Lyn Silfen Professor at the University of Pennsylvania where he teaches in the Departments of Medical Ethics and History of Science.

His book, "The Body Politic: The Battle Over Science in America," was named a Best Book of 2011 by Kirkus Reviews. Among his other books are "Mind Wars: Brain Science and the Military in the 21st Century," and "Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans."

Moreno is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and is a National Associate of the National Research Council. He is the U.S. member of the UNESCO International Bioethics Committee and has served as a senior staff member for three presidential advisory commissions, including the current commission. In 2008-09 he served as a member of President Obama’s transition team.

A Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., Moreno has served as an adviser to many governmental and non-governmental organizations.

Speaker in plenary 5Scientist and Politics . Naughton is vice-president of Wolfson College, Cambrigde, and Emiritus Professor of  the Public Understanding of Technology at the British Open University.

In 1972 Naughton joined the Open University as a lecturer in which he co-designed courses that introduced students to the use of computers and in 1990 he created the Open University’s first online course.

 Naughton is now known for his research withinDigital Humanities  which explores the intersection between computing and the broader humanities.

Besides his academic achievements, Naughton has worked in journalism for the  BBC, The New Statesman and the Observer, where he won the prestigious “Critic of the Year” prize three times. He now writes the Observer’s “Networker” column.

Chair in Plenary 3, part 1, The Internet: A Global Infrastructure of Openness? Nissen is a radiohost for the hughly popular programme Harddisken on Danish Radio Broadcasting, P1. The programme is concern with new communication technologies, especially computers and the Internet.

Nissen har worked for DR and Harddisken since 2000. He has a bachelor degree in Literature and Media Studies.

Speaker at the dinner banquet at the National Museum.

Mr. Nørretranders is a Danish author and journalist. He has authored a number of books on popular science. His books and lectures have primarily focused on the role science in society.

Mr. Nørretranders holds a master’s degree in technology and social science from Roskilde University, Denmark and has previously worked at the Technical University of Denmark and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.

Since 2003 he has served as adjunct professor at Copenhagen Businsess School. He has also been employed by several Danish national newspapers as well as by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (Danmarks Radio).

Speaker in plenary 5Scientists and Politics.  Naomi Oreskes is Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego, and an internationally renowned historian of science and author.

She received her B.S. in geology from the Royal School of Mines, Imperial College London and received an inter-disciplinary Ph.D. in geological research and history of science from Stanford University in 1990.

Professor Oreskes has lectured widely in diverse venues ranging from the Madison, Wisconsin Civics Club to the Air Force Research Laboratory, and has won numerous prizes, including, most recently the 2011 Climate Change Communicator of the Year.

Professor Oreskes has a long-standing interest in understanding the establishment of scientific consensus and the role and character of scientific dissent. Her early work examined the 20th century transformation of earth science, but for the past decade, Professor Oreskes has primarily been interested in the problem of anthropogenic climate change.

Will give a key note talk.

Richard Rhodes is the author of twenty-four books including The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which won a Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction, a National Book Award and a National Book Critics Circle Award; Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, which was shortlisted for a Pulitzer Prize in History; and two further volumes of nuclear history.

He has received numerous fellowships for research and writing, including grants from the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. He has been a visiting scholar at Harvard and MIT and a host and correspondent for documentaries on American public television.

Most recently Richard Rhodes have also written a play about Reagan and Gorbachevs summit in Reykjavik, marking the start to the end of the Cold War.

Speaker in plenary 5  Scientists and Politics.

Dr. Richardson is a professor in Biological Oceanography at University of Copenhagen and leader of that university’s Sustainability Science Centre focusing on climate control of marine ecological processes. She was chair of the Danish Commission on Climate Change Policy and co-author of the 2009 article in Nature outling the concept of Planetary Boundaries.

 Dr. Richardson holds a ph.d. from University of North Wales, United Kingdom and a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, USA. She has held a number of research and leadership positions at institutes of higher learning in Denmark, the UK and Sweden. Furthermore she has served on a broad range of boards and committees related to science and the advancement of science both in Denmark and abroad.

Speaker in plenary 4 Politics and Economics with New Technology. Carne Ross is a former British diplomat who founded and now runs Independent Diplomat, the world’s first non-profit diplomatic advisory group.

With 8 offices worldwide, Independent Diplomat helps a number of countries and political groups express their needs in the closed world of international diplomacy.

One of only two British diplomats to resign over the Iraq war, he is also an activist and author, with publications and articles in a wide range of outlets. His first book, “Independent Diplomat: Dispatches from an Unaccountable Elite”, examines the many deficits of diplomacy.

His most recent book, “The Leaderless Revolution”, discusses how supposedly representative democracies are failing, and proposes instead a politics of action by ourselves, organized directly with one another: anarchism for the 21st Century.

Speaker in plenary 3 The Internet: A Global Infrastructure of Openness?  Sir Nigel Shadbolt is Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Southampton, where he leads the Web and Internet Science Group.  He is also the Chairman and Co-Founder of the Open Data Institute (ODI).

Since 2009, Sir Nigel has acted as an Information Adviser to the UK Government, helping transform public access to Government information, including the widely acclaimed data.gov.uk site. He is currently Principal Investigator on a £6.14M EPSRC funded Programme Grant, researching the theory of social machines - Web-scale problem solving systems comprising large numbers of humans and computers.

In 2006 he was one of three founding Directors of Garlik Ltd, which in 2008 was awarded Technology Pioneer status by the Davos World Economic Forum and won the prestigious UK National BT Flagship Award.  Experian Ltd acquired Garlik in 2011.  In 2013 he was awarded a Knighthood for services to science and engineering.

Co-chair of parallel session 4 Politics and Economics with New Technologies.

Senior Researcher at the Department of Economic information technologies, Institute of Economics and Industrial Engineering of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She holds a PhD in Economics from Novosibirsk University, Russia.

Dr Serdyukova holds positions as the member of Coordinating council in science and education under the Russian President’s Council of science and education and also the Vice-President of the Council of Young Scientists of the Siberian Branch of the RAS.

Her research revolves around the interaction between economics, computer science and food science. She is particularly interested in determination priorities and threats in the development of advanced technologies and new products in food market, and she conducts researches to identify new approaches to the analysis of the agricultural and food market and set targets to build up expert agent modeling and geoinformation systems for macroeconomic decision-making.

Co-chair of parallel session 2 New Global Threats and Possibilities

Dr. Warinthorn Songkasiri is a senior researcher at the Excellence Centre of Waste Utilization and Management (ECoWaste) at the National Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Thailand.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in Chemical and Environmental Engineering from Carneige Mellon University, USA, a master’s degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Stanford University, USA, and a Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Northwestern University, USA. 

Dr. Warinthorn has been working in the environmental and renewable energy areas, with a particular focus on wastewater treatment schemes and starch technology. She has taken a leading role in several EU-Thailand collaborative projects related to environmental and renewable energy topics and has been serving as the founding co-chair of the Thai Young Scientists Academy (TYSA) since 2010.

Chair of plenary 3 The Internet – A Global Infrastructure for Openness?
Mr. Thyssen is a Danish journalist and editor with the Danish national newspaper Information. He holds a master’s degree in literature and art history from University of Copenhagen and has also studied at University of California Berkeley and The New School in New York.

Mr. Thyssen has previously been posted in Russia as a correspondent for Information. He has also written for the magazine Månedsbladet Press and has been a producer at Danmarks Radio, the Danish Broadcast Corporation.

Mr. Thyssen has written extensively about surveillance, web issues and international affairs.

Speaker in plenary 4 Politics and Economics With New Technologies.

 She is an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill at the School of Information and Library Science with an affiliate appointment in the Department of Sociology. She is currently a fellow at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University and a faculty associate with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

Her research revolves around the interaction between technology and social, cultural and political dynamics. She is particularly interested in collective action and social movements, politics and civics, complex systems, surveillance, privacy, and sociality. In addition to her academic work, her work has appeared in many national and international media outlets.

She was previously a fellow at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University and taught at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. She was previously a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and is now a faculty associate at the Berkman Center.

Will receive one of the UNESCO Niels Bohr Gold Medals and speak in plenary 3 The Internet: A Global Infrastructure of Openness? Mr. Wales is the co-founder of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Wales holds a bachelor's degree in finance from Auburn University, Alabama and a master's degree in finance from the University of Alabama. He studied for a Ph.D. degree in finance at Indiana University, but left the program before completion to start his professional career in finance.

After a few years of work in the finance sector Mr. Wales decided to pursue his dream of creating an online encyclopedia. He originally wanted to create a for-profit encyclopedia but later decided to create Wikipedia as an open source user-generated site.

Mr. Wales is an avid proponent of free information and internet freedom and in that capacity he has held various positions and received several awards and honors. Among these positions he has been a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and continues to serve on the advisory board of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence.

Chair of plenary 2 New Global Threats and Possibilities. Wang Delu is born in Qing Dao, Shang Dong province, and graduated from Department of Physics in China University of Petroleum.

1985-1992 he was editor of Journal of Dialectics of Nature, engaged in the sociology of science and technology policy research.

Founder and President of Beijing Greatwall Enterprises Institute - a consulting institute focusing on innovative research. Wang is also Senior Consultants of The Center for International Strategy, Technology, and Policy (CISTP) in Tsinghua University. He is currently working as a consultant of enterprise strategy, district strategy, industry strategy etc., expert of “Made in China”, New Chinese economy area.

Wang is author of “Knowledge Management-Source of Competitive Advantage” (1999); “Knowledge Management using IT” (2003); “Chinese Growth Pole: High-tech Zone innovation about industry” (2007); “Social Network Between Silicon Valley and Zhongguancun” (2012); “Interviews with Chinese Scientists Who Returned from Study in the US in the 1950s” (2013) etc.

chair in plenary 1 Military Technologies of Tomorrow.

He carries the rank of Rear Admiral and has been the Commandant of the Danish Royal Military College since 2010. He has previously been commander of the operational command in the Danish Navy. Nils Christian Wang have several decorations, among these the Dannebrogordenen.

Speaker in plenary 5 Scientists and Politics. Spencer Weart is a historian of science. He was trained as a physicist (B.A. Cornell University, PhD. University of Colorado, Boulder) and worked as a Fellow of the Mt. Wilson and Palomar Observatories, publishing papers in leading scientific journals.

He then went to the University of California, Berkeley to study history of science. From 1974 until his retirement in 2009 he served as Director of the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics, an institution dedicated to preserving and making known the history of physics and related disciplines.

Among his numerous published works are a history of the rise of nuclear science and technology in France; a collection of essays on the history of solid-state physics; 'The Rise of Nuclear Fear', and 'The Discovery of Global Warming' with its complementary.

Welcome and presenter of the New Open Letter. Ole Wæver is chairman of the Organizing Comittee for AN OPEN WORLD and Professor of International Relations in the Political Science Department of the University of Copenhagen, founder of CAST, Centre for Advanced Security Theory, and Director of CRIC, Centre for Resolution of International Conflicts.

His research interests include international relations and security theory, sociology of science, religion in international relations, and the role of national identity in foreign policy.

He led the development of “securitization theory”, known as the Copenhagen School in security studies.

Interviewer of the UNESCO Bohr medal recipients. Yogeshwar is born in Luxembourg and spend his childhood in India.

After his diploma in particle physicist from Aachen University he first worked at the Swiss Institute for Nuclear Research (SIN), at CERN and at the Research Centre Jülich (Germany) before entering the field of science journalism. After holding the position of chief of the science TV programme group at WDR for many years, he now works as an independent author and presenter.

He has received many awards and decorations for his work in the field of science and society. Some of his books have been nationwide bestsellers in Germany.

Chair in the Closing Session. Danish Minister for Research, Innovation and Higher Research and member of the Danish Parliament. Mr. Østergaard holds master's degree in political science from Aarhus University, Denmark.

Mr. Østergaard was a member of Parliament in 2002-2003 and has served continually since 2005. He was appointed to his current position as minister in 2011.