Joshua Bell is one of the most celebrated violinists of his era, and his restless curiosity, passion, and multifaceted musical interests are almost unparalleled in the world of classical music. Named the Music Director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields in 2011, Bell is the first person to hold this post since Sir Neville Marriner formed the orchestra in 1958. An exclusive Sony Classical artist, Bell has recorded more than 40 CDs garnering Grammy, Mercury, Gramophone and Echo Klassik awards since his first LP recording at age 18 on the Decca Label.

Born in Bloomington, Indiana, Bell received his first violin at age four and at 12 began studying with the legendary Josef Gingold at Indiana University. At the age of 14 Bell began his rise to stardom, performing with Riccardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra and at age 17 making his Carnegie Hall debut and touring Europe for the first time. Perhaps the event that helped most to transform his reputation from ‘musician’s musician’ to ‘household name’ was his incognito performance in a Washington, DC subway station in 2007. Ever adventurous, Bell had agreed to participate in the Washington Post story by Gene Weingarten which thoughtfully examined art and context. The story earned Weingarten a Pulitzer Prize and sparked an international firestorm of discussion.

Bell performs on the 1713 Huberman Stradivarius violin and uses a late 18^th century French bow by François Tourte.

As a behavioral economist, Dan Ariely studies how people actually act in the marketplace, as opposed to how they should or would perform if they were completely rational. His interests span a wide range of daily behaviors such as buying (or not), saving (or not), ordering food in restaurants, pain management, procrastination, dishonesty, and decision making under different emotional states. His experiments are consistently interesting, amusing, and informative, demonstrating profound ideas that fly in the face of common wisdom.

Dan is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University and a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight. He specializes in research in behavioral economics, describing it in plain language.  He is author of the New York Times bestseller Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions, and co-author of The Joy of Experimental Psychology. His work has been featured in leading psychology, economics, neuroscience, medicine, and business, and in a variety of popular media outlets, including The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, the Boston Globe, Scientific American, and Science. He has also has appeared on CNN and National Public Radio. 

Recognized as one of the finest classical dancers of our time, Jacques d’Amboise now leads the field of arts education with a model program that exposes thousands of school children to the magic and discipline of dance. In 1976, while still a principal dancer at the New York City Ballet, Mr. d’Amboise founded the National Dance Institute in the belief that the arts have a unique power to engage and motivate individuals towards excellence.His contributions in arts education have earned him numerous awards and honors including: Honorary Degree of Doctor of Fine Arts - Syracuse University (2008); The American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2007); Child Magazine - The Children’s Champion Award (2007); The Mayor’s Award for Arts & Culture (2004); People First Honoree – People Magazine (2002); People First Honoree – People Magazine (2002); The Heinz Award (2001); The Dance Magazine Award (1999); NCEA St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Award (1996); The Kennedy Center Honors (1995); The National Caring Award– The Caring Institute (1995); The Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1993); a 1990 MacArthur Fellowship: The Capezio Award (1990); The First Annual Producers Circle Award for public service (1989); The Paul Robeson Award for excellence in the field of the humanities (1988); The Nancy Hank Fellowship – Duke University; the Sterling Merrill Fellowship, Salt Lake City, Utah; The New York Public Library Literary Lion Award and is also an Honorary Big Brother.“He Makes Me Feel Like Dancing”, a 1984 PBS documentary film about his work with NDI, won an Academy Award, six Emmy Awards, the Peabody Award, the Golden Cine Award, and the National Education Association Award for the advancement of learning through broadcasting. He has also served as a full professor and Dean of Dance for two years at SUNY Purchase and eleven years as visiting professor at the College of Creative Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara.Mr. d’Amboise’s work in dance education has taken him all over the world. From the extremes of Yakutsk, Siberia, to the Danakil Desert in Ethiopia; from 13,000 feet below sea level at the Dead Sea to the mountains of Nepal and from the dryness of the Atacama Desert in Chile to rainforests on the island of Kauai in the Hawaiian Chain. Over the last 30 years NDI programs, in New York City and their affiliates, nationally and internationally, have reached and influenced well over 2 million children.

William Joseph "Bill" Bratton CBE (born October 6, 1947) was the chief of police of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). He previously served as the New York City Police Commissioner and Boston Police Commissioner.

On September 11, 2009, he was awarded with the honorary title of Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. In early August 2009, Bratton unexpectedly announced that effective October 31, 2009, he would resign his position as Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Richard Meier received his architectural training at Cornell University and established his own office in New York in 1963. His practice has included major civic commissions in the United States, Europe and Asia including courthouses and city halls; museums; corporate headquarters; and housing and private residences. Among his most well-known projects are The Getty Center in Los Angeles; the Jubilee Church in Rome, Italy; the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia; the Museum for Applied Art in Frankfurt, Germany; the Canal + Television Headquarters in Paris, France; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona, Spain.

Matt Stone, co-creator of the award-winning animated series "South Park", met Trey Parker at the University of Colorado. Together their most recognized work, “South Park,” which follows the misadventures of four irreverent grade-schoolers in the quiet, dysfunctional town of South Park, Colorado, is now in its 9th season on Comedy Central. "South Park" will make its debut in domestic syndication on Monday, September 19 and continue with new episodes on Comedy Central beginning October 19.

Matthew Abram "Matt" Groening (born February 15, 1954) is an American cartoonist, screenwriter, and producer. He is the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell as well as two successful television series, The Simpsons and Futurama.

Groening made his first professional cartoon sale of Life in Hell to the avant-garde Wet magazine in 1978. The cartoon is still carried in 250 weekly newspapers. Life in Hell caught the attention of James L. Brooks. In 1985, Brooks contacted Groening with the proposition of working in animation for the Fox variety show The Tracey Ullman Show. Originally, Brooks wanted Groening to adapt his Life in Hell characters for the show. Fearing the loss of ownership rights, Groening decided to create something new and came up with a cartoon family, The Simpsons, and named the members after his own parents and sisters — while Bart was an anagram of the word brat. The shorts would be spun off into their own series: The Simpsons, which has since aired over 450 episodes. In 1997, Groening, along with former Simpsons writer David X. Cohen, developed Futurama, an animated series about life in the year 3000, which premiered in 1999. After four years on the air, the show was canceled by Fox in 2003, but Comedy Central commissioned 16 new episodes from four direct-to-DVD movies in 2008. Then, in June 2009, Comedy Central ordered 26 new episodes of Futurama, to be aired over two seasons.

Groening has won 11 Primetime Emmy Awards, ten for The Simpsons and one for Futurama as well as a British Comedy Award for "outstanding contribution to comedy" in 2004. In 2002, he won the National Cartoonist Society Reuben Award for his work on Life in Hell.

James Korris has served as Creative Director of the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) since its inception in August 1999. He leads the ICT's efforts in interactive applications, including Full Spectrum Warrior, the first military application developed for Microsoft’s Xbox. Additionally, James led the development teams for Full Spectrum Command, Full Spectrum Leader, Every Soldier a Sensor Simulation and the Joint Fires and Effects Trainer System.

James Francis Cameron (born August 16, 1954) is a Canadian film director, film producer, screenwriter, editor, and inventor. His writing and directing work includes Piranha II: The Spawning (1981), The Terminator (1984), Aliens (1986), The Abyss (1989), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), True Lies (1994), Titanic (1997), and Avatar (2009). In the time between making Titanic and his return to feature films with Avatar, Cameron spent several years creating many documentary films (specifically underwater documentaries), and also co-developed the digital 3-D Fusion Camera System. Described by a biographer as part-scientist and part-artist, Cameron has also contributed to underwater filming and remote vehicle technologies.

In total, Cameron's directorial efforts have grossed approximately US$2 billion in North America and US$6 billion worldwide. Without adjusting for inflation, Cameron's Titanic and Avatar are the two highest-grossing films of all time at $1.8 billion and $2.7 billion respectively. In terms of worldwide gross, he is the second-highest grossing director of all time[citation needed], behind Steven Spielberg.

Raised in Toronto, Canada, Frank Gehry moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1947. Mr. Gehry received his Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Southern California in 1954, and he studied City Planning at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. In subsequent years, Mr. Gehry has built an architectural career that has spanned four decades and produced public and private buildings in America, Europe and Asia. In an article published in The New York Times in November, 1989, noted architecture critic Paul Goldberger wrote that Mr. Gehry’s “buildings are powerful essays in primal geometric form and... materials, and from an aesthetic standpoint they are among the most profound and brilliant works of architecture of our time.” His work has earned Mr. Gehry several of the most significant awards in the architectural field, including the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture, the Pritzker Prize, the Wolf Prize in Art (Architecture), the Praemium Imperiale Award, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Award, the National Medal of Arts, the Friedrich Kiesler Prize, the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal, and the Royal Institute of British Architects Gold Medal.