Scott Harrison probably wouldn’t have started charity: water if he hadn’t spent years selling $350 bottles of vodka in packed NYC nightclubs, found God on a beach in Uruguay, and photographed countless flesh-eating facial tumors in Liberia.  But those days are gone, and now all you can get him to talk about is bringing clean water to a billion people.

Among Marc-Andr? Hamelin's loves, besides his fianc?e Cathy without whom his life would be a shambles, are such things as anagrams, acronyms and collecting the weirdest records. And, oh yes, sharing with audiences the miracle of human creativity through his performances of works by the great composers as well as those historically left in the dust.

Dr Michael Gunton works for BBC Worldwide and the BBC as The Creative Director of Factual and The Natural History Unit. Within this dual role Mike works as an executive producer on many BBC programmes, acts as an ambassador for BBC Worldwide internationally, and is responsible for bringing new and pioneering stories and techniques to audiences globally.

Mike began working for the BBC in 1983 after he graduated with a first class degree in Zoology and a Doctorate at Bristol and Cambridge Universities. During his time with the Natural History Unit he has overseen over 120 wildlife films including the critically acclaimed series; Yellowstone, Life, Africa, Shark, Attenborough and The Giant Dinosaur and Life Story. Many of Mike’s series have gone on to win accolades across the world from BAFTA’s and RTS awards, to Jackson Hole and Sichuan TV festivals best in show awards. Mike’s upcoming projects include; Big Cats, Dynasty and Planet Earth II. 

Director and producer, Vanessa's latest acclaimed film, Between the Folds, looks at brilliant origami and paper folding artists around the world.

Founder and CEO of Blurb, Eileen has created a platform that makes it possible for anyone to publish, share and sell beautiful books.

Well known to e.g. from their many Woods Hole expeditionary reports, Dave & Bill are among the most visible, active and enthusiastic oceanographers in the world. David Gallo is Director of Special Projects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He received a B.Sc and M. Sc. degree in geological science from the State University of New York at Albany and a Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of Rhode Island. In 1987 he was invited by Dr. Robert Ballard (discoverer of the wreck of RMS Titanic) to join his team at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution as the Assistant Director of the Center for Marine Exploration. In his present role, David works closely with scientists and engineers at the forefront of global exploration and discovery. He has participated in numerous expeditions to the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, and to the Mediterranean Sea. He was one of the first oceanographers to use a combination of submarines and robots to map the undersea world. He was co-leader of an exploration of RMS Titanic and the German battleship Bismarck using the Russian MIR submarines and a participant in a recent expedition to find the lost WWII submarine USS Grunion. In addition to ocean exploration, he is currently interested in understanding the relationship between humanity and the sea. He was closely involved in the formulation and development of the Liquid Jungle Laboratory of Panama, a private venture designed to better understand the interaction between people, tropical forests, and coastal marine habitats. David is passionate about exploration and discovery and dedicated to communicating the importance of science and engineering to the public-at-large. He was involved in the formulation of the JASON Project and is an avid supporter of the FIRST Robotics Competition and the National Underwater Robotics Challenge. He has been called “an enthusiastic ambassador between the sea and those of us on dry land”.

Vaudeville never died. It lives on, zombie like, in the form of the Karamazov Brothers. This is not your old man's wild-haired, flame-throwing, kilt-and-tutu-wearing, wise-cracking juggling troupe. If human hands can lift it, they have probably thrown it.

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Rafe is a recipient of the National Medal of Arts, Oprah's $100k User Your Life award, an honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire, author of three books, and a fifth grade teacher at Hobart Elementary School for nearly 30 years.  He is fiercely devoted to his hardworking students.

Esther Dyson is the Internet's court jester, and believes that the remainder of the proof should be left to other investors. She sits on the board of the Sunlight Foundation and interferes with start-ups. Her post-proof protegees include Flickr, Medstory, NetBeans and Powerset; her current crop waiting to be proven includes 23andMe, Boxbe, AnchorFree, Eventful.com, Evernote, Factual, FluidInfo,  GoodData, Icon, Joobili,  Keas, Lendaround, NewspaperDirect, PatientsLikeMe, PatientsKnowBest, Polka.com, Resilient, School of Everything, Space Adventures, Voxiva, Wellgood, Xcor  and Yandex.

George Dyson spent three winters, starting at age 19, in a treehouse 95 feet up in a Douglas fir on the shores of Burrard Inlet in British Columbia, before settling down to become a historian of technology who has divided his time between building boats and writing books. His subjects have included the development (and redevelopment) of the Aleut kayak (Baidarka, 1986), the evolution of artificial intelligence (Darwin Among the Machines, 1997), and a path not taken into space (Project Orion, 2002). His recent Turing’s Cathedral (2012) illuminates the transition from numbers that mean things to numbers that do things in the aftermath of World War II. His current project, Analogia, opens with the campaign against the Chiricahua Apache in the 19th century and closes with the superseding of the digital revolution by something else.