INTELLECTUAL JAZZ
DAVID AGUS
DAN ARIELY
KEITH BLACK
DAVID BLAINE
MIKE BLOCK
ADAM B LY
SCOTT BOLTON
DAVID BROOKS
MARK CUBAN
ANTONIO DAMASIO
JACK DANGERMOND
DAVE GALLO
FRANK GEHRY
MATT GROENING
HERBIE HANCOCK
DANNY HILLIS
BJARKE INGELS
QUINCY JONES
MARY JORDAN
JON KAMEN
JEFFREY KATZENBERG
NORMAN LEAR
YO-YO MA
JOHN MAEDA
JOHN MAZZIOTTA
NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE
TODD OLDHAM
CRISTINA PATO
STEVEN PINKER
LISA RANDALL
PETER RAVEN
MOSHE SAFDIE
MEGAN SMITH
BENEDIKT TASCHEN
JULIE TAYMOR
CHARITY TILLEMANN DICK
CRAIG VENTER
GEOFFREY WEST
will.i.am
C. K. WILLIAMS
EO WILSON
DAMIAN WOETZEL
STEPHEN WOLFRAM
WILL WRIGHT
JOSHUA WURMAN
RICHARD SAUL WURMAN
SCHEDULE
TUES18SEPT
Mission Inn Hotel and Spa
3649 Mission Inn Avenue
Riverside, CA 92501
Tel: 951.784.0300
www.missioninn.com
5:00PM OPENING in the St. Francis of Assisi Chapel at The Mission Inn
RICHARD SAUL WURMAN
YO-YO MA and will.i.am
C. K. WILLIAMS AND STEVEN PINKER
7:20PM WINE and hors d’oeuvres in the Atrio adjacent to the Chapel
8:30PM DINNER in the Galleria at The Mission Inn
WED19SEPT
Esri
380 New York Street
Redlands, CA 92373
Tel. 909.793.2853
www.esri.com
7:00AM Transport from the Mission Inn to Esri Conference Center
7:15AM Coffee, Juice / Esri Conference Center
8:00AM promptly
JEFFREY KATZENBERG and NORMAN LEAR
DAVID AGUS and ANTONIO DAMASIO
HERBIE HANCOCK and will.i.am
10:15AM BREAK—Esri Café, adjacent to the Conference Center
11:15AM
E.O. WILSON and CRAIG VENTER
KEITH BLACK and DAVID AGUS
YO-YO MA and MIKE BLOCK
1:15PM LUNCH—Esri Café, adjacent to the Conference Center
2:45PM
DANNY HILLIS and STEPHEN WOLFRAM
DAVID BLAINE and JULIE TAYMOR
MATT GROENING and DAVID BROOKS
4:45PM BREAK—Esri Café, adjacent to the Conference Center
5:15PM Chinese Telepresence / Esri Executive Briefing Room
6:00PM
YO-YO MA and DAVID BROOKS
MARK CUBAN and DAN ARIELY
QUINCY JONES and DAMIAN WOETZEL
8:00PM Transport to The Mission Inn
8:45PM DINNER in the Galleria at The Mission Inn
THURS20SEPT
Esri
380 New York Street
Redlands, CA 92373
Tel. 909.793.2853
www.esri.com
7:00AM Transport from the Mission Inn to Esri Conference Center
7:15AM Coffee, Juice / Esri Conference Center
8:00AM promptly
CHARITY TILLEMANN DICK
PETER RAVEN and JACK DANGERMOND
MEGAN SMITH and NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE
FRANK GEHRY and JOHN MAZZIOTTA
10:15AM BREAK—Esri Café, adjacent to the Conference Center
11:00AM
BENEDIKT TASCHEN and JON KAMEN
MARY JORDAN and MOSHE SAFDIE
JOSHUA WURMAN and DAVE GALLO
1:00PM LUNCH—Esri Café, adjacent to the Conference Center
2:15PM
JOHN MAEDA and ADAM B LY
TODD OLDHAM and BJARKE INGELS
4:00PM BREAK—Esri Café, adjacent to the Conference Center
4:30PM Chinese Telepresence / Esri Executive Briefing Room
5:00PM
LISA RANDALL and SCOTT BOLTON
CRISTINA PATO
EO WILSON and WILL WRIGHT
6:15PM GEOFFREY WEST and RICHARD SAUL WURMAN
7:15PM Transport to The Mission Inn
8:30PM FAREWELL DINNER in the Spanish Art Gallery at The Mission Inn
DAVID AGUS
David Agus (born January 29, 1965) is an American physician
and a co-founder of Navigenics, a personal genetic testing
company, and Oncology.com, the largest online cancer
resource and virtual community and Applied Proteomics.
He is a Professor of Medicine and Engineering
at the University of Southern California.
He graduated cum laude in molecular biology from
Princeton University and received his medical degree from
the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1991.
Agus completed his residency training at Johns Hopkins
Hospital and completed his oncology fellowship training at
the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
He spent two years at the National Institutes of Health as a
Howard Hughes Medical Institute-NIH Research Scholar.
Agus has had a long and varied career. At the
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York,
he was an attending physician in the Department
of Medical Oncology and head of the Laboratory of
Tumor Biology. He was also Assistant Professor of
Medicine at Cornell University Medical Center.
As director of the Spielberg Family Center for Applied
Proteomics at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles,
he led a multidisciplinary team of researchers dedicated
to the development and use of proteomic technologies to
guide doctors in making health-care decisions tailored to
individual needs. The center grew out of earlier clinical
projects at Cedars-Sinai, where Agus served as an attending
physician in oncology, which showed striking differences
between the aggressiveness of prostate cancer in certain
patients and their ability to respond to treatment.
Agus also served as Director of the Louis Warschaw
Prostate Cancer Center, and as an attending physician in the
Department of Medicine, Division of Medical Oncology at
Cedars-Sinai. He was also an Associate Professor of Medicine
at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
He currently is a Professor of Medicine and
Engineering at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and the
Viterbi School of Engineering and is the Director of the USC
Center for Applied Molecular Medicine and the USC Westside
Norris Cancer Center. Agus is co-Director of the newly funded
USC-NCI Physical Sciences in Oncology Center together
with Danny Hillis. Dr. Agus is an international leader in new
technologies and approaches for personalized healthcare,
chairs the Global Agenda Council (GAC) on Genetics for the
World Economic Forum, and speaks regularly at TEDMED,
the Aspen Ideas Festival and the World Economic Forum.
Agus has received many honors and awards,
including the American Cancer Society Physician Research
Award, a Clinical Scholar Award from the Sloan-Kettering
Institute, a CaP CURE Young Investigator Award and the
American Cancer Society Clinical Oncology Fellowship
Award, the HealthNetwork Foundation’s Excellence Award,
and the 2009 Geoffrey Beene Foundation’s Rock Stars of
Science™, as seen in GQ. In 2009, he was selected to serve
as a judge for the first Biotech Humanitarian Award.
Agus’s research has focused on the application
of proteomics and genomics for the study of cancer
and the development of new medications for cancer.
He has published many scientific articles.
He is a member of several scientific and
medical societies, including the American Association
for the Advancement of Science, American Association
for Cancer Research, American College of Physicians,
American Society of Clinical Oncology, American Society
of Hematology and the American Medical Association.
Agus was recently named one of the
“Future Health 100” by HealthSpottr.
The End of Illness is Agus’s first book, was published
January, 2012 by the Free Press Division of Simon and
Schuster and is a New York Times #1 Bestseller.
Agus is married to Amy Joyce Povich, actress and
daughter of syndicated television talk show host Maury
Povich. Her stepmother, Connie Chung, is a former CBS News
anchor. Agus’ grandfather, the late Rabbi Jacob B. Agus, was a
theologian and the author of several books on Jewish history
and philosophy. Agus has two children, Sydney and Miles.
Agus has one film credit to his name, appearing as
“David Agus” in the 2006 documentary “Who Needs Sleep?”
DAN ARIELY
Dan Ariely (born April 29, 1968) is an Israeli American
professor of psychology and behavioral economics. He
teaches at Duke University and is the founder of The
Center for Advanced Hindsight. Ariely’s talks on TED
have been watched 2.8 million times. He is the author
of Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality,
both of which became New York Times best sellers.
Dan Ariely was born in New York City while
his father was studying for an MBA degree at Columbia
University. The family returned to Israel when he was
three. He grew up in Ramat Hasharon. In his senior year of
high school, he was active in Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed,
an Israeli youth movement. While preparing a ktovet esh
(fire inscription) for a traditional nighttime ceremony, the
flammable materials he was mixing exploded, causing
third-degree burns over 70 percent of his body.
Ariely is married to Sumi, with whom
he has two children, a son and a daughter.
Ariely was a physics and mathematics major
at Tel Aviv University, but transferred to philosophy
and psychology. However, in his last year he dropped
philosophy and concentrated solely on psychology, in
which he received his B.A. He also holds an M.A. and a
Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. He completed a second doctorate
in business administration at Duke University at the urging
of Nobel economic sciences laureate Daniel Kahneman.
After obtaining his Ph.D. degree, he taught at MIT
between 1998 and 2008, before returning to Duke University
as James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral
Economics. He was formerly the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of
Behavioral Economics at MIT Sloan School of Management.
Although he is a professor of marketing with no formal training
in economics, he is considered one of the leading behavioral
economists. Ariely is the author of the books Predictably
Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions and The
Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic
at Work and at Home. When asked whether reading Predictably
Irrational and understanding one’s irrational behaviors could
make a person’s life worse (such as by defeating the benefits of
a placebo), Ariely responded that there could be a short-term
cost, but that there would also likely be long-term benefits,
and that reading his book would not make a person worse off.
Ariely’s laboratory, the Center of Advanced
Hindsight at Duke University, pursues research in
subjects like the psychology of money, decision making
by physicians and patients, cheating, and social justice.
KEITH BLACK
Keith L. Black (born September 13, 1957) is an American
neurosurgeon specialising in the treatment of brain tumors
and a prolific campaigner for funding of cancer treatment.
He is chairman of the neurosurgery department and
director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute at
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California.
Keith Black was born in Tuskegee, Alabama. His
mother, Lillian, was a teacher and his father, Robert, was the
principal at a racially segregated elementary school in Auburn,
Alabama; prohibited by law to integrate the student body,
Black’s father instead integrated the faculty, raised standards,
and brought more challenging subjects to the school. Later in
his childhood, Black’s parents found new jobs and relocated
the family to Shaker Heights, Ohio. Black attended Shaker
Heights High School. Already interested in medicine, Black
was admitted to an apprenticeship program for minority
students at Case Western Reserve University, and then became
a teenaged lab assistant for Frederick Cross and Richard
Jones (inventors of the Cross-Jones artificial heart valve) at
St. Luke’s Hospital in Cleveland. At 17, he won an award in a
national science competition for research on the damage done
to red blood cells in patients with heart-valve replacements.
According to Black: “I was working in the lab of a heart surgeon
who had developed his own artificial heart valve, and I had a
concept that the heart valve might be damaging red blood cells,
so I asked to do a research project using a scanning electron
microscope at the time. When I was trying to basically learn
the technique, I took some blood from the heart-lung bypass
machine from patients undergoing heart-lung bypass, and
when I incubated the red blood cells overnight, I noticed that
a certain percentage of these cells change from their normal
discoid shape to one that resembled a porcupine, called an
econocyte. What I did was to describe the discocyte-econocyte
transformation in patients undergoing heart-lung bypass, as
an index of sub-lethal red blood cell damage. The importance
being that the blood cells could not parachute through the
small capillaries.” He attended the University of Michigan in
a program that allowed him to earn both his undergraduate
degree and his medical degree in 6 years. He received his M.D.
degree from the University of Michigan Medical School in 1981.
After serving his internship and residency at the
University of Michigan, in 1987 he moved to the UCLA
Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he later became head
of UCLA’s Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program. In 1997,
after 10 years at UCLA, he moved to Cedars-Sinai Medical
Center to head the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute.
He was also on the faculty of the University of California,
Irvine School of Medicine from 1998 to 2003. In 2007 he
opened the new Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. Brain Tumor Center
at Cedars-Sinai, a research center named after the famous
lawyer who had been Black’s patient and supporter.
Black has been a frequent subject of media reports
on medical advances in neurosurgery. He was featured
in a 1996 episode of the PBS program The New Explorers
entitled “Outsmarting the Brain”. Esquire included him in
its November 1999 “Genius Issue” as one of the “21 Most
Important People of the 21st Century.” He has been cited as
an expert in reports about whether mobile phone use affects
the incidence of brain tumors. He is also noted for his very
busy surgery schedule: a 2004 Discover article noted that he
performs about 250 brain surgeries per year, and that at age 46
he had “already performed more than 4,000 brain surgeries,
the medical equivalent of closing in on baseball’s all-time
career hits record.” (As of 2009, Black’s surgery count had risen
to “more than 5,000 operations for resection of brain tumors”.)
In 1997, Time magazine featured Black on the
cover of a special edition called “Heroes of Medicine”. The
accompanying article described Black’s reputation as a
surgeon who would operate on tumors that other doctors
would not, as well as aspects of his medical research,
including his discovery that the peptide bradykinin can
be effective in opening the blood–brain barrier.
In 2009 Black published his autobiography, coauthored
with Arnold Mann, entitled Brain Surgeon. New
York Times reviewer Abigail Zuger described the book as a
“fascinating, if somewhat stilted, memoir”. The Publishers
Weekly review commented that the book “examines
racial hurdles he had to leap to become a neurosurgeon”
and “alternat[es] incisive writing about incisions with
his personal memoir, insightful and inspirational.”
DAVID BLAINE
For more than a decade, David Blaine has been attracting
the world’s attention with his high-profile endurance stunts.
Starting his career as a magician who appeared to do the
impossible with a deck of cards, he was soon following in the
footsteps of Houdini—seeking out that which seems physically
impossible and actually doing it. To that end, he’s been buried
alive in New York City for a week, barely survived being
encased inside a six-ton block of ice for three days and three
nights, stood atop a 100-foot-tall pillar in Bryant Park for 36
hours without a safety net, survived inside a transparent box in
London on nothing but water for 44 days, and spent one week
submerged in a sphere-shaped aquarium at Lincoln Center, at
the end of which he attempted to break the world record for
breath holding. A year later, he succeeded live on the Oprah
Winfrey show, holding his breath for 17 minutes and 4 seconds.
Born in Brooklyn, Blaine discovered his passion for
magic at the age of four when he saw a magician perform
in the subway. His mother encouraged his passion and he
began performing professionally at private parties by the age
of thirteen. By the age of twenty-three, Blaine had created,
directed, and produced an original television program titled
Street Magic, which garnered rave reviews by critics and
revolutionized the way magic is portrayed on television.
Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller called Street Magic “the best
TV magic special ever done” and “the biggest breakthrough
in our lifetime.” The New York Times noted that David has
“taken a craft that’s been around for hundreds of years
and done something unique and fresh with it.” The New
Yorker claimed that “he saved magic.” Since then, Blaine
has produced nine additional primetime specials.
Blaine has performed magic privately for U.S.
Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Gates, Henry Kissinger, Mayor
Bloomberg, Mark Zuckerberg, and Muhammad Ali, as
well as President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia and other
international leaders. He also performed alongside Michael
Jackson, and during the Super Bowl halftime show.
In 2010, Blaine performed magic for 72 hours
straight in Times Square, raising nearly $100,000 for
relief efforts following the earthquake in Haiti.
Blaine resides in New York City with his
fiancée, Alizee Guinochet. The couple welcomed a
magical daughter into the world on January 27, 2011.
MICHAEL GLEN BLOCK
Michael Glen Block (born May 25, 1982) is an American
cellist, composer, arranger, and solo artist hailed as “the
ideal musician of the twenty-first century” by cultural icon
Yo-Yo Ma. Mike Block has worked with Yo-Yo Ma, Bobby
McFerrin, Lenny Kravitz, Shakira, The National, Joe Zawinul,
Alison Krauss, Rachel Barton Pine, Mark O’Connor, and
other notable musicians. Block currently plays with the
Silk Road Ensemble. He has appeared on Late Night with
Conan O’Brian, National Public Radio’s St. Paul Sunday,
Regis and Kelly, VH1, the Disney Channel, WNBC-TV
with Chuck Scarborough, and the CBS Early Show.
Block is most famous for playing second cello
alongside Yo-Yo Ma. He performed in Mark O’Connor’s
Appalachia Waltz trio for three years. His performances
have been described as “vital, rich-hued solo playing”
by the New York Times, and “a true artist ... a sight
to behold” by the Salt Lake City Desert News.
Mike Block’s Cello Concerto,
Movement 1 was completed in 2009.
Mr. Block’s classical compositions have
been performed at the Bremen MusikFest, Tribeca
New Music Festival, the Kimmel Center series “Fresh
Ink,” and the MATA Festival, at which he performed
as soloist in his own Cello Concerto in 2009.
His non-classical writing has been
featured at festivals such as Rockygrass, Delfest,
Celtic Connections, and Wintergrass.
Mike Block has served as musical director to
cellist Yo-Yo Ma, singer Bobby McFerrin, ballet star Damien
Woetzel, jookin dancer Lil’ Buck, actor/comedian Bill Irwin,
jazz trumpeter Marcus Printup, world-music group The Silk
Road Ensemble, and classical orchestra The Knights.
A frequent guest lecturer, Mr. Block has presented
at Stanford University, Princeton University, Harvard
University, New York University, Berklee College of Music,
Cleveland Institute of Music, Belmont University, Southern
Methodist University, Sam Houston State University,
Illinois State University, Illinois Wesleyan University, and
University of Arkansas. In 2006, he received Suzuki method
certification in music education from the New York Citybased
School for Strings, under Pamela Devenport.
In 2009 Mike founded The Mike Block String
Camp, which takes place in multiple locations each summer.
The camp’s goal is to empower musicians of all ages/
levels to perform, improvise, compose, and arrange their
own music - all by ear. The first location debuted in 2010
in Vero Beach, Florida, followed in 2011 with Fayetteville,
Arkansas, and Saline, Michigan in 2012. The world-class
faculty has included Darol Anger, Hanneke Cassel, Joe
Craven, Rushad Eggleston, Brittany Haas, Natalie Haas,
Jeremy Kittel, Clay Ross, Kimber Ludiker, Jefferson
Hamer, Victor Lin, Emy Phelps, and Lauren Rioux.
Since 2009, Mike has been the Lead Teaching Artist
for Silk Road Connect, a partnership between the Silk Road
Project and schools in New York City and Boston areas.
The Mike Block Band presents an exciting
and genre-bending combination of rock, classical,
jazz, and folk music through original songs and
instrumental compositions, featuring quirky yet
honest lyrics, and a variety of musical influences.
Mike Block has also worked with notable musicians
such as Edgar Meyer, Mike Marshall, Zakir Hussain, My
Brightest Diamond, Bon Iver, Tim O’Brien, Marcel Khaliffe,
Goran Bregovic, Kayhan Kalhor and Bruce Molsky.
Triborough Trio—Featuring Mike Block
(cello), Hans Holzen (guitar), and Kyle Kegerreis
(bass), the trio’s mission is to put their personal spin on
traditional and contemporary music from around the
world in well-crafted and creative arrangements.
Mike is also the Artistic Director and host
of GALA Brooklyn: “Global Art - Local Art:”, a Music
Festival in Brooklyn featuring a diverse array of
musicians and artists in unique collaborations.
Notable guests include Anthony Mcgill (Metropolitan
Opera), Aoife O’Donovan (singer for Crooked Still), Aaron
Dugan (guitarist for Matisyahu), Multi-genre violinist/
composer Todd Reynolds, Grammy-Nominated classical artists
Anastasia Khitruk (violin), and the Enso Quartet, Marcus
Printup from Jazz at Lincoln Center, and jazz saxophonist
Seamus Blake, and singer-songwriter Amy Correia.
Performed on WNYC’s
Soundcheck with John Schaefer.
Mike has also worked with director Yaron Zilberman
as a Music Consultant for “A Late Quartet”, a 2011 movie
starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Christopher Walken.
On April 4, 2009, Mike Block was struck by
a NYC Taxi while walking at the corner of W85th St.
and West End Ave, in Manhattan. Injuries included
broken rib, jaw, cheek, nose, and he lost nine teeth. His
reconstruction required multiple surgeries, and his missing
teeth were eventually restored on February 15, 2012.
ADAM B LY
Adam Bly (born 1981 in Montreal, Canada) is founder
and CEO of Seed. He is the editor of “Science is Culture:
Conversations at the New Intersection of Science +
Society” (published by HarperCollins) and the creator
of the data visualization platform Visualizing.org.
He began his career at the age of 16 as the youngest
researcher at the National Research Council of Canada, where
he spent three years studying the biochemistry of cancer,
specifically the role of cell adhesion in metastasis. Out of the
lab, he founded Seed—tag-lined “Science is Culture™”—and
served as its Editor-in-Chief. “The best comparison for Seed,”
wrote a media critic at the time of the magazine’s launch in
2001, “is the early years of Rolling Stone, when music was less a
subject than a lens for viewing culture.” Under his leadership,
the magazine earned critical acclaim for modernizing
scientific publishing and for bridging long-standing divides
between science and society—from art and design to politics
and religion. Together with Paola Antonelli he co-founded a
monthly gathering of scientists, architects, and designers
that laid the foundation for Design and the Elastic Mind,
an exhibition about science and design at The Museum
of Modern Art.
In 2007, Bly was named a Young Global Leader
by the World Economic Forum. He is a recipient of the
Golden Jubilee Medal from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
and his achievements have been highlighted by Canadian
Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, “for showing people the
scope and power of science not just as an object of study
but as a key to understanding the world around us.”
Bly has lectured around the world on the future of
science and its role in society, including at the World Economic
Forum, the National Academies of Science, the Royal Society,
the National Institutes of Health, the State Department,
NASA, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, The
Museum of Modern Art, and The Academy of Sciences for the
Developing World, before the National Science Board and the
U.S. House of Representatives, and at universities including
Harvard, MIT, and Beijing. He has served on the nominating
committees and juries of the Buckminster Fuller Challenge,
the Earth Award, and the TED Prize, and sits on the Science
Advisory Committee of the World Economic Forum, the
External Advisory Board of the University of Michigan’s Risk
Science Center, the American Committee of the Weizmann
Institute of Science, the Communications Advisory Board
of the National Academy of Sciences, and as an advisor to
OECD’s Global Project on Measuring the Progress of Societies.
Bly was recently named Vice Chair of the World
Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Design
Innovation and Partner to the Executive Coordination
Office for the Rio+20 United Nations Conference
on Sustainable Development.
SCOTT BOLTON
Dr. Scott Bolton is the Director of the Space Sciences
Department at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San
Antonio, Texas. Dr. Bolton is also the Principal Investigator
for the Juno project, a project within NASA’s New Frontiers
Program. Prior to being Director at SwRI, Dr. Bolton was a
senior scientist and manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
(JPL) for over 25 years. During his tenure as Director of Space
Science at SwRI, Dr. Bolton oversaw the launches of New
Horizons and IBEX, the selection of Juno, the confirmation
of MMS, and the delivery of hardware for a number of non-
NASA programs related to national security. As director of
SwRI’s Space Science Department, Dr. Bolton is responsible
for the approximately 150 engineers and scientists working on
over a dozen programs including new proposals, instrument
development, mission operations and scientific data analysis.
As Principal Investigator of Juno, Dr. Bolton is
responsible for all aspects of the Juno program including
project management by JPL, spacecraft development
at Lockheed Martin, all science instruments, launch
vehicle development and operation, and the resulting
scientific analysis throughout the life of the project. Dr.
Bolton has more than 30 years experience in the field of
aerospace and space science. Dr. Bolton received his B.S.
in Aerospace Engineering from U. Michigan in 1980, and
a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from U.C. Berkeley in 1990.
Dr. Bolton is a Co-Investigator on a number of NASA
missions including experiments on the Cassini mission. Dr.
Bolton chaired the Titan science group for the Cassini-Huygens
mission and was responsible for the formulation of the
scientific investigation of Saturn’s moon Titan. Dr. Bolton has
been a Principal Investigator with NASA on various research
programs since 1988. His research includes the modeling of the
Jovian and Saturnian radiation belts, atmospheric dynamics
and composition, and the formation and evolution of the
solar system. He has authored over 150 scientific papers, five
book chapters, and consulted/appeared in five space science
documentaries. He received the NASA Outstanding Leadership
Medal in 2012, Exceptional Achievement Medal in 2002; the
NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal in 1994. He
also received JPL Individual Awards for Exceptional Excellence
in Leadership in 2002, 2001, and 1996, and Excellence in
Management in 2000; and has received sixteen NASA Group
Achievement Awards. Dr. Bolton maintains a relationship
with JPL and the California Institute of Technology through
a special appointment as a Senior Staff Scientist.
Dr. Bolton also leads a number of educational
programs aimed at developing science, math and art skills for
children from elementary to high school and college level.
As part of the NASA Juno educational Outreach Program,
Dr. Bolton has dedicated developed educational programs
involving both formal and informal education including the
creation of science and math curriculum driving new national
standards for elementary level education (an age bracket
known to be underserved in this area). Dr. Bolton has worked
with a number of corporate sponsors dedicated to space
science educational programs, including Lego, Universal,
Sony, and Time-Warner. Dr. Bolton helped develope an
innovative educational program, in partnership with the
Lewis Center for Educational Excellence, that provides an
opportunity for elementary to high school level children to
experience the scientific and engineering process directly.
This program trains teachers on science and math education
and provides access to NASA research facilities and scientists
for hundreds of schools around the country. Through his
private company, Artistic Sciences, Inc, Dr. Bolton’s has
produced a number of musical concerts, art exhibits, scientific
documentaries and videos aimed at inspiring and motivating
children in academic studies. He has worked with a number
of musical artists developing both educational and musical
programs. He is one of the founding members of the Vangelis
Foundation in Athens, Greece dedicated to the combined
study of Science, Math, Art, Music and Philosophy.
DAVID BROOKS
David Brooks (born August 11, 1961) is a political and cultural
commentator who writes for The New York Times. He worked as
an editorial writer and film reviewer for the Washington Times;
a reporter and later op-ed editor for The Wall Street Journal;
a senior editor at The Weekly Standard from its inception; a
contributing editor at Newsweek and The Atlantic Monthly;
and as a commentator on National Public Radio. He is
now a columnist for The New York Times and commentator
on PBS NewsHour.
Brooks, who is Jewish, was born in Toronto,
Canada—his father was a U.S. citizen living in Canada at the
time—and grew up in New York City in Stuyvesant Town. He
graduated from Grace Church School in New York City, Radnor
High School (located in a Main Line suburb of Philadelphia)
in 1979 and from the University of Chicago, with a degree
in history, in 1983.
Brooks edited a 1996 anthology of writings by
new conservative writers, Backward and Upward: The New
Conservative Writing. He wrote a book of cultural commentary
titled Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They
Got There, published in 2000, and followed it four years later
with On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have)
in the Future Tense.
He also authored The Social Animal: The Hidden
Sources of Love, Character and Achievement. The book was
excerpted in The New Yorker magazine in January 2011
and received mixed reviews upon its full publication, by
Random House, in March of that year. The book has been a
commercial success, reaching the #3 spot on the Publishers
Weekly best-sellers list for non-fiction in April 2011.
Brooks was a visiting professor of public policy at
Duke University’s Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, and
he taught an undergraduate seminar there in the fall of 2006.
He and his wife live in the Cleveland Park
neighborhood of Northwest Washington, DC.
Brooks describes himself as being originally a liberal
before “coming to my senses.” In 1983, he wrote a parody
of conservative pundit William F. Buckley Jr., which said
“In the afternoons he is in the habit of going into crowded
rooms and making everybody else feel inferior. The evenings
are reserved for extended bouts of name-dropping.”
Buckley admired the parody and offered Brooks
a job with National Review. A turning point in Brooks’s
thinking came later that year in a televised debate with
Milton Friedman, which, as Brooks describes it, “was
essentially me making a point, and he making a twosentence
rebuttal which totally devastated my point.”
Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Brooks argued
forcefully for American military intervention, echoing the
belief of commentators and political figures that American
and British forces would be welcomed as liberators. In the
spring of 2004, some of his opinion pieces suggested that
he had tempered his earlier optimism about the war.
Brooks’ public writing about the U.S. wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq is similar to those by neoconservatives,
according to a Salon article by Glenn Greenwald, that labels
Brooks as a neoconservative. His angry dismissal of the
conviction of Scooter Libby as being “a farce” and having “no
significance” was derided by political blogger Andrew Sullivan.
On August 10, 2006, Brooks wrote a column for The
New York Times titled “Party No. 3”. The column proposed
the idea of the McCain-Lieberman Party, or the fictional
representation of the fictional moderate majority in America.
Ottawa Citizen commentator David Warren has
identified Brooks as the sort of conservative pundit that
liberals like, someone who is “sophisticated” and “engages
with” the liberal agenda, in contrast to a real conservative like
Charles Krauthammer. Brooks has long been a supporter of
John McCain; however, he did not show a liking for McCain’s
2008 running mate, Sarah Palin, calling her a “cancer” on
the Republican Party. He has referred to her as a “joke,”
unlikely to ever win the Republican nomination. But he later
admitted during a CSPAN interview that he had gone too far
in his previous “cancer” comments about Palin, which he
regretted, and simply stated he was not a fan of her values.
In a March 2007 article published in The New
York Times titled “No U-Turns”, Brooks explained that the
Republican Party must distance itself from the minimalgovernment
conservative principles that had arisen
during the Abraham Lincoln, Barry Goldwater, Ronald
Reagan and Calvin Coolidge eras. He claims that these
core concepts had served their purposes and should
no longer be embraced by Republicans in order to win
elections, which he considers the most important purpose
of a political party designed to serve the political class.
Brooks has been a frequent admirer of President
Barack Obama. In an August 2009 profile of Brooks, The
New Republic describes his first encounter with Obama, in the
spring of 2005: “Usually when I talk to senators, while they
may know a policy area better than me, they generally don’t
know political philosophy better than me. I got the sense he
knew both better than me. […] I remember distinctly an image
of—we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his
pant leg and his perfectly creased pant, and I’m thinking,
a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good
president.” Two days after Obama’s second autobiography,
The Audacity of Hope, hit bookstores, Brooks published a
column in The New York Times, titled “Run, Barack, Run”,
urging the Chicago politician to run for president. However as
of December 2011 in a CSPAN interview, Brook’s opinion of
Obama’s presidency was more tempered, giving Obama only
a “B-” rating, and said that Obama’s chances of reelection
would be less than 50-50 if elections were held at that time.
In writing for The New York Times in January 2010,
Brooks described Israel as “an astonishing success story”.
He wrote that “Jews are a famously accomplished group,”
who, because they were “forced to give up farming in the
Middle Ages... have been living off their wits ever since”. In
Brooks’ view, “Israel’s technological success is the fruition
of the Zionist dream. The country was not founded so stray
settlers could sit among thousands of angry Palestinians
in Hebron. It was founded so Jews would have a safe place
to come together and create things for the world.”
Brooks opposes what he sees as self-destructive
behavior, such as teenage sex and divorce. His view is that
“sex is more explicit everywhere barring real life. As the
entertainment media have become more sex-saturated,
American teenagers have become more sexually abstemious”
by “waiting longer to have sex…[and] having fewer partners.”
He sees the culture war as nearly over, because “today’s
young people…seem happy with the frankness of the left
and the wholesomeness of the right.” As a result, he
is optimistic about the United States’ social stability,
which he considers to be “in the middle of an
amazing moment of improvement and repair.”
Brooks also broke with many in the conservative
movement when, in late 2003, he came out in favor of samesex
marriage in his New York Times column. He equated
the idea with traditional conservative values: “We should
insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous
that two people could claim to love each other and not
want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity.…
It’s going to be up to conservatives to make the important,
moral case for marriage, including gay marriage.”
Regarding abortion, Brooks has advocated for
pro-choice government regulations: abortion should be
legal, with parental consent for minors, during the first four
or five months, and illegal afterward, except in extremely
rare circumstances. (New York Times, April 22, 2002.)
MARK CUBAN
When Mark Cuban purchased the Dallas Mavericks on
January 14, 2000, the face of the organization began to
change immediately. Once again Mavericks games had
a party atmosphere as Reunion Arena rocked with the
return of the “Reunion Rowdies.” Mavericks games
became more than just ordinary NBA games—
they were a total entertainment experience.
Cuban was not only successful at instilling a sense
of pride and passion into Mavericks fans by presenting himself
as the ultimate role model by cheering from the same seats he
had in years past, but he also became the first owner in team
sports to encourage fan interaction through e-mail on his
personal computer. It was through this personal touch that
fans throughout the Metroplex, and around the world, began
to notice Cuban’s energetic personality and take notice of
the Mavericks. He has personally responded to thousands
of emails, and several suggestions from fans have led to
innovative changes such as a new three-sided shot clock,
which allows line of site to the 24-second clock from
anywhere in the arena.
Cuban’s whatever-it-takes attitude and commitment
to winning has everyone’s attention. From his first introduction
to the team to the end of his first season as owner, the players
responded with a 31-19 record, including a 9-1 mark in April
2000. In addition to hiring special coaches for offense,
defense and shooting, Cuban has promised to do everything
in his power to improve the team. This goal was achieved as
the club finished the 2000-01 season with a 53-29 record en
route to their first playoff appearance in 11 years where they
became just the sixth team in NBA history to be down 0-2 and
come back to win a five-game series vs. Utah in Round 1.
Before the start of the 2001-02 season, American
Airlines Center, the Mavs new home, opened and Cuban
co-founded HDNet, an all high-definition television network
on DIRECTV channel 199 which launched in September
2001. As with his other ventures, Cuban is revolutionizing
the television industry with HDNet. He is planning to expand
HDNet to include three more networks showing high-def
sports, movies and entertainment by the end of 2002.
During the Mavs 2001-02 campaign, the team
continued their winning ways by finishing the season with
a franchise-best record of 57-25 and an NBA-best road
record of 27-14, advancing to the postseason for the
second-consecutive year.
Prior to his purchase of the Mavericks, Cuban cofounded
Broadcast.com, the leading provider of multimedia
and streaming on the Internet, in 1995, selling it to Yahoo!
in July of 1999. Before Broadcast.com, Cuban co-founded
MicroSolutions, a leading National Systems Integrator,
in 1983, and later sold it to CompuServe.
Today, in addition to his ownership of the Mavericks,
Cuban is an active investor in leading and cutting-edge
technologies and continues to be a sought-after speaker.
ANTONIO DAMASIO
Antonio Damasio (born February 25, 1944 in Lisbon, Portugal)
is a University Professor (an award based on multi-disciplinary
interests and significant accomplishments in several
disciplines) and David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience at
the University of Southern California, where he heads USC’s
Brain and Creativity Institute. Prior to taking up his posts at
USC, in 2005, Damasio was M.W. Van Allen Professor and
Head of Neurology at the University of Iowa Hospitals and
Clinics from 1976 to 2005. He is also Adjunct Professor
at the Salk Institute.
Damasio is the author of several best-selling
books which describe his scientific thinking. “As a leading
neuroscientist, Damasio has dared to speculate on
neurobiological data, and has offered a theory about the
relationship between human emotions, human rationality,
and the underlying biology.”
Damasio was born in Lisbon and studied medicine
at the University of Lisbon Medical School in Portugal, where
he also did his neurological residency and completed his
doctorate. He worked as a research fellow at the Aphasia
Research Center in Boston in 1967, prior to receiving his
MD in Lisbon. His work there on behavioural neurology
was done under the supervision of the late Norman
Geschwind, the Harvard neurologist who created the field.
As a researcher, Damasio’s main field is the
neurobiology of the mind, especially neural systems which
subserve emotion, decision-making, memory, language and
consciousness. Damasio’s seeks to demonstrate that emotions
play a critical role in high level cognition, an idea that ran
counter to dominant 20th century views in psychology,
neuroscience and philosophy. He showed that emotions and
their biological underpinnings are involved in decision-making
(both positively and negatively, and often non-consciously);
provide the scaffolding for the construction of social cognition;
and are required for the self processes which undergird
consciousness. “Damasio provides a contemporary scientific
validation of the linkage between feelings and the body by
highlighting the connection between mind and nerve cells…
this personalized embodiment of mind.”
He formulated the somatic markers hypothesis,
which captures the essence of these ideas. This idea has
inspired many systems-neuroscience experiments carried out
in laboratories in the U.S. and Europe, and has had a major
impact in contemporary science and philosophy. His articles
on this topic include: Bechara A, Damasio AR, Damasio H,
Anderson S. Insensitivity to future consequences following
damage to human prefrontal cortex. Cognition. 50:7-15. 1994;
Bechara A, Damasio H, Tranel D, Damasio AR. Deciding
advantageously before knowing the advantageous strategy.
Science. 275:1293-1294. 1997; Anderson SW, Bechara A,
Damasio H, Tranel D, Damasio AR. Impairment of social
and moral behaviour related to early damage in human
prefrontal cortex. Nature Neuroscience. 2:1032-1037. Damasio
has been named by the Institute of Scientific Information as
one of the most highly cited researchers in the past decade).
Current work on the biology of moral decisions, neuroeconomics,
social communication, and drug-addiction,
has been strongly influenced by Damasio’s hypothesis.
Damasio also proposed that emotions are part of
homeostatic regulation and are rooted in reward/punishment
mechanisms. He recovered James’ perspective on feelings as
a read-out of body states, but expanded it with an “as-if-bodyloop”
device which allows for the substrate of feelings to be
simulated rather than actual (foreshadowing the simulation
process later uncovered by mirror neurons). He demonstrated
experimentally that the insular cortex is a critical platform
for feelings, a finding that has been widely replicated, and
he uncovered cortical and subcortical induction sites for
human emotions, e.g. in ventromedial prefrontal cortex
and amygdala. He also demonstrated that while the
insular cortex plays a major role in feelings, it is not
necessary for feelings to occur, suggesting that brain
stem structures play a basic role in the feeling process.
He has continued to investigate the neural basis of
feelings and demonstrated that although the insular cortex is
a major substrate for this process it is not exclusive, suggesting
that brain stem nuclei are critical platforms as well. He
regards feelings as the necessary foundation of sentience.
In another development, Damasio proposed that
the cortical architecture on which learning and recall depend
involves multiple, hierarchically organized loops of axonal
projections that converge on certain nodes out of which
projections diverge to the points of origin of convergence
(the convergence-divergence framework). This architecture
is applicable to the understanding of memory processes
and of aspects of consciousness related to the access
of mental contents.
In “The Feeling of What Happens”, Damasio lays
the foundations of the “enchainment of precedences”: “the
nonconscious neural signaling of an individual organism
begets the protoself which permits core self and core
consciousness, which allow for an autobiographical self,
which permits extended consciousness. At the end of the
chain, extended consciousness permits conscience.
Damasio’s research depended significantly on
establishing the modern human lesion method, an enterprise
made possible by Hanna Damasio’s structural neuroimaging/
neuroanatomy work complemented by experimental
neuroanatomy (with Gary Van Hoesen and Josef Parvizi),
experimental neuropsychology (with Antoine Bechara, Ralph
Adolphs, and Dan Tranel) and functional neuroimaging (with
Kaspar Meyer, Jonas Kaplan, and Mary Helen Immordino-
Yang). The experimental neuroanatomy work with Van Hoesen
and Bradley Hyman led to the discovery of the disconnection
of the hippocampus caused by neurofibrillary tangles in the
entophinal cortex of patients with Alzheimer’s disease.
As a clinician, he and his collaborators
have studied and treated disorders of behaviour
and cognition, and movement disorders.
Damasio’s books deal with the relationship between
emotions and feelings, and what their brain substrates. His
1994 book, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human
Brain, won the Science et Vie prize, was a finalist for the
Los Angeles Times Book Award, and is translated in over 30
languages. It is regarded as one of the most influential books
of the past two decades. His second book, The Feeling of What
Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness,
was named as one of the ten best books of 2001 by the New
York Times Book Review, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of
the Year, a Library Journal Best Book of the Year, and has
over 30 foreign editions. Damasio’s Looking for Spinoza: Joy,
Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain, was published in 2003. In it,
Damasio suggested that Spinoza’s thinking foreshadowed
discoveries in biology and neuroscience views on the mindbody
problem. Spinoza was a protobiologist. His latest book
is Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. In
it Damasio suggests that the self is the key to conscious
minds and that feelings, from the kind he designates as
primordial to the well-known feelings of emotion, are the
basic elements in the construction of the protoself and core
self. The book received the Corinne International Book Prize.
Damasio is a member of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute
of Medicine, and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Damasio has received many awards including the Prince of
Asturias Award in Science and Technology, the Honda Prize,
the Kappers Neuroscience Medal, the Beaumont Medal from
the American Medical Association, the Nonino Prize and the
Reenpaa Prize in Neuroscience. He has received honorary
doctoral degrees (Doctor honoris causa) from the University
of Aachen (2002), University of Aveiro (2003), University
of Copenhagen (Copenhagen Business School; 2009),
University of Leiden (2010), University Ramon Llull,
Barcelona (2010), University of Coimbra (2011) and
from the EPFL, Lausanne (2011).
His current work involves the social emotions,
consciousness and the creative interface between
neuroscience and the arts, especially music and
film. The role of feelings states on sentience.
Damasio is married to Dr. Hanna Damasio,
his colleague and frequent co-author.
Damasio himself notes, in fallibilist fashion,
“I have a difficult time seeing scientific results, especially in
neurobiology, as anything but provisional approximations”’.
Whether despite or because of that fallibilism, Damasio
writes in the belief that ‘scientific knowledge can
be a pillar to help humans endure and prevail’.
OUR HOST
JACK DANGERMOND
Jack Dangermond is the founder and president of Esri, the
world’s fourth largest privately held software company.
Founded in 1969 and headquartered in Redlands, California,
Esri is widely recognized as the technical and market leader
in geographic information systems, or GIS, pioneering
innovative solutions for working with spatial data.
Esri has more than one million users in over 350,000
organizations representing government; nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs); academia; and industries such as
utilities, health care, transportation, telecommunications,
homeland security, retail, and agriculture.
Dangermond is recognized not only as a pioneer
in spatial analysis methods but also as one of the most
influential people in GIS. He actively manages Esri and is
closely connected to projects, clients, and company vision.
He takes a leadership role in national and global initiatives to
facilitate standards for data access and sharing across agencies
and organizations. He is personally committed to applying
GIS methods for environmental stewardship and
sustainable communities.
Dangermond is the recipient of numerous
fellowships, honorary degrees, and awards. He has
authored hundreds of papers on GIS in such diverse
fields as photogrammetry, computer science, planning,
environmental science, and cartography. He delivers keynote
addresses at meetings and conferences around the globe.
Dangermond’s current work is focused on helping
organizations deploy spatial data in enterprise environments,
Web-based services, and mobile computing systems as well
as enhancing applications, models, and tools that can be
used for optimized routing, intelligent site selection, crime
and disease analysis, location-based services, infrastructure
management, public safety, and homeland security.
DAVE GALLO
David Gallo is an American oceanographer and Director
of Special Projects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution—a preeminent, globally recognized scientific
laboratory. For more than 25 years, Dr. Gallo has been at the
forefront of ocean exploration, participating in and being
witness to the development of new technologies and scientific
discoveries that shape our view of planet earth. He has been
described by TED Conferences as “an enthusiastic ambassador
between the sea and those of us on dry land.” With more than
8 million views his TED presentation “Underwater
Astonishments” is among the top 5 TED Talks viewed to date.
David has participated in expeditions to all of
the world’s oceans and was one of the first scientists to
use a combination of robots and submarines to explore
the deep seafloor. Most recently he co-led an expedition
to create the first detailed and comprehensive map of the
RMS Titanic and he co-led the successful international
effort to locate the remains of Air France flight 447.
Dr. Gallo is currently active in planning a series of
challenging expeditions and is encouraging the development
of new technologies for ocean exploration. He is a member
of James Cameron’s Deep Ocean Task Force and the
XPrize Ocean Advisory Board. Almost every expedition
into the deep provides results that are often surprising,
sometimes startling and in many cases revolutionary.
David is becoming increasingly outspoken about
the relationship between humanity and the sea. He feels
strongly that instead of taking the oceans for granted we need
to recognize the oceans critical role in providing the air we
breath, the water we drink, and the food we eat. At the same
time, Dr. Gallo feels that human activity has impacted the
ocean on a global scale and with significant consequences.
The oceans hold the clues to our past and the key to our future
yet they remain mostly unexplored and poorly understood.
Dr. Gallo is personally committed to conveying
the excitement and importance of ocean exploration to the
public-at-large. He has lectured internationally to audiences
ranging from children to CEO’s with the goal of awakening
the little bit of Jacques Cousteau and Jules Vernes that resides
in each of us. He has given more than 10 TED and TEDx
presentations and has appeared in numerous documentaries
(Discovery Channel, History Channel, National Geographic)
and has been featured on numerous televised news programs
(Weather Channel , PBS Need to Know, MSNBC Ed Show,
and NBC Today show).
In recognition of his efforts in exploration and science
communications, David was recently elected a fellow of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science. He
is a National Fellow of the Explorer’s Club, a member of the
American Geophysical Union, and active on several boards
including the Marine Environmental Research Institute, the
One World One Ocean Campaign, and the Terramar Project.
FRANK GEHRY
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 five decades
and produced public and private buildings in America, Europe
and Asia. Hallmarks of Mr. Gehry’s work include a particular
concern that people exist comfortably within the spaces that
he creates, and an insistence that his buildings address the
context and culture of their sites and the budgets of his clients.
His work has earned Mr. Gehry several of the most
significant awards in the architectural field. He was inducted
into the College of Fellows of the American Institute of
Architects in 1974, and his buildings have received over 100
national and regional A.I.A. awards. In 1977, Mr. Gehry was
named recipient of the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize
in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and
Letters. In 1989, he was awarded the Pritzker Architecture
Prize, perhaps the premiere accolade of the field, honoring
“significant contributions to humanity and the built
environment through the art of architecture.” In 1992, he
received the Wolf Prize in Art (Architecture) from the Wolf
Foundation. In the same year, he was named the recipient of
the Praemium Imperiale Award by the Japan Art Association
to “honor outstanding contributions to the development,
popularization, and progress of the arts.” In 1994, he became
the first recipient of the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Award for
lifetime contribution to the arts. In 1998, Mr. Gehry received
the National Medal of Arts, and he became the first recipient
of the Friedrich Kiesler Prize. In 1999, Mr. Gehry received the
Lotos Medal of Merit from the Lotos Club, and he received
the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects.
In 2000, Mr. Gehry received the Gold Medal from the Royal
Institute of British Architects, and he received the Lifetime
Achievement Award from Americans for the Arts. In 2002,
Mr. Gehry received the Gold Medal for Architecture from
the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Mr. Gehry
was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
Letters in 1987, a trustee of the American Academy in Rome
in 1989, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences in 1991. In 1994, he was bestowed with the title of
Academician by the National Academy of Design. In 1998, he
was named an Honorary Academician by the Royal Academy
of Arts. In 2003, Mr. Gehry was inducted into the European
Academy of Sciences and Arts and he was designated as
a Companion to the Order of Canada. In 2005 Mr. Gehry
received the Ordre National de Legion d’honneur Chevalier
from the French Government. In 2006 he was a first year
inductee into the California Hall of Fame. In 2008, Mr. Gehry
received the Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement Award at
the Venice Biennale. In 2010, Mr. Gehry received the John
Singleton Copley Award from the American Associates of
the Royal Academy Trust, and he received the Cooper Union
for the Advancement of Science and Art Award in New York.
Mr. Gehry has received honorary doctoral degrees from
Occidental College, Whittier College, the California College
of Arts and Crafts, the Technical University of Nova Scotia,
the Rhode Island School of Design, the California Institute
of Arts, the Southern California Institute of Architecture,
the Otis Art Institute at the Parsons School of Design, the
University of Toronto, the University of Southern California,
Yale University, Harvard University, and the University of
Edinburgh. Mr. Gehry has held teaching positions at some of
the world’s most prestigious institutions including Harvard
University, University of Southern California, University
of California Los Angeles, Sci-Arc, University of Toronto,
Columbia University, the Federal Institute of Technology in
Zurich, and at Yale University where he still teaches today.
Notable projects include: the Guggenheim Museum
in Bilbao, Spain; the DZ Bank Building in Berlin; Nationale-
Nederlanden Building in Prague; the Jay Pritzker Pavilion and
BP Bridge in Millennium Park in Chicago, Illinois; Maggie’s
Centre, a cancer patient center in Dundee, Scotland; Hotel
Marques de Riscal in El Ciego, Spain; Lou Ruvo Brain Institute
in Las Vegas, Nevada; Princeton University Peter B. Lewis
Science Library in Princeton, New Jersey; Art Gallery of
Ontario Renovation in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; the New
World Symphony in Miami, Florida; the Eight Spruce Street
Residential Tower located in New York City; and the Walt
Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California. Projects under
construction include the Signature Theatre in New York City;
the Ohr O’Keefe Museums in Biloxi, Mississippi; the Make
it Right Foundation in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Puente
de Vida Museum of Biodiversity in Panama; the Frederick
R. Weisman Art Museum Expansion at the University of
Minnesota; and the Foundation Louis Vuitton Museum in
Paris, France. Mr. Gehry is also completing work on the
Guggenheim Abu Dhabi; LUMA Foundation in Arles, France
and the University of Technology, Sydney in Sydney, Australia.
2006 / 200 lbs ago
MATT GROENING
Matt Groening was born in Portland, Oregon, on February
15, the third of five children. His father, Homer, was a
cartoonist and filmmaker. From an early age, Matt created
his own cartoons, amusing his friends and annoying his
teachers. Groening attended Evergreen State College
in Washington State, where he studied philosophy and
continued his interest in cartoons, comics and music.
After his graduation in 1977, Groening headed to
Los Angeles where he struggled in immobilizing but irksome
poverty. Increasingly frustrated by the traffic, smog, and
his landlords, Matt began to vent his angst to his friends by
sending them cartoons starring a bug-eyed rabbit named
Binky. Groening soon began to publish and sell these cartoons
at the record shop where he worked. Their popularity
encouraged Matt to syndicate, and in April 1980, Life In Hell®
formally debuted in the Los Angeles Reader. It was there that
he met his future wife, Deborah Caplan, and together
they formed Acme Features Syndicate, which today
circulates Life in Hell® to more than 250 newspapers
around the world in a half-dozen languages.
Life in Hell® has also been collected in a bestselling
series of books with over two million copies in print,
including Love is Hell, Work is Hell, School is Hell, Childhood
is Hell, Akbar & Jeff ’s Guide to Life, Greetings From Hell, The
Big Book of Hell, With Love From Hell, How to Go to Hell, The
Road to Hell, Binky’s Guide to Love, and Love is Still Hell.
In 1987 James L. Brooks approached Matt about
creating animated shorts to fit between sketches of “The
Tracey Ullman Show.” Matt agreed, but instead of using the
Life in Hell® characters, he created an entirely new cast:
The Simpsons, which bear the names of his family members,
Homer, Marge, Lisa and Maggie (Bart is an anagram for brat).
The Simpsons were soon spun off into a half-hour
animated series which first aired on December 17, 1989
with a Christmas special, followed by the series premiere
on January 14, 1990. It has since gone on to become
the longest running prime-time animated show in
television history. An international hit, the series has
also spawned a licensing and merchandising empire.
Books based on The Simpsons include The Simpsons
Xmas Book, Greetings From The Simpsons, The Simpsons
Rainy Day Fun Book, The Simpsons Uncensored Family Album,
Maggie Simpson’s Alphabet Book, Maggie Simpson’s Counting
Book, Maggie Simpson’s Book of Colors & Shapes, Maggie
Simpson’s Book of Animals, The Simpsons Fun in the Sun Book,
Making Faces With The Simpsons, The Ultra-Jumbo Rain-
Or-Shine Fun Book, Cartooning With The Simpsons, Bart’s
Guide To Life and The Simpsons: A Complete Guide To Our
Favorite Family, a campanion book to the television series.
Groening is also creator and publisher
of Bongo Comics and Zongo Comics.
HERBIE HANCOCK
Herbie Hancock is a true icon of modern music. Throughout
his explorations, he has transcended limitations and
genres while maintaining his unmistakable voice. With an
illustrious career spanning five decades and 14 Grammy®
Awards, including Album of the Year for River: The Joni
Letters, he continues to amaze audiences across the globe.
There are few artists in the music industry
who have had more influence on acoustic and electronic
jazz and R&B than Herbie Hancock. As the immortal
Miles Davis said in his autobiography, “Herbie was
the step after Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, and I
haven’t heard anybody yet who has come after him.”
Born in Chicago in 1940, Herbie was a child
piano prodigy who performed a Mozart piano concerto
with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at age 11. He
began playing jazz in high school, initially influenced
by Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans. He also developed a
passion for electronics and science, and double-majored
in music and electrical engineering at Grinnell College.
In 1960, Herbie was discovered by trumpeter Donald
Byrd. After two years of session work with Byrd as well as
Phil Woods and Oliver Nelson, he signed with Blue Note
as a solo artist. His 1963 debut album, ‘Takin’ Off ’, was an
immediate success, producing the hit “Watermelon Man.”
In 1963, Miles Davis invited Herbie to join the
Miles Davis Quintet. During his five years with Davis, Herbie
and his colleagues Wayne Shorter (tenor sax), Ron Carter
(bass), and Tony Williams (drums) recorded many classics,
including ‘ESP’, ‘Nefertiti’ and ‘Sorcerer’. Later on, Herbie
made appearances on Davis’ groundbreaking ‘In a Silent Way’
and ‘Bitches Brew’, which heralded the birth of jazz-fusion.
Herbie’s own solo career blossomed on Blue Note,
with classic albums including ‘Maiden Voyage’, ‘Empyrean
Isles’, and ‘Speak Like a Child’. He composed the score to
Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film ‘Blow Up’, which led to
a successful career in feature film and television music.
After leaving Davis, Herbie put together a new
band called The Headhunters and, in 1973, recorded ‘Head
Hunters.’ With its crossover hit single “Chameleon,”
it became the first jazz album to go platinum.
By mid-decade, Herbie was playing for stadium-sized
crowds all over the world and had no fewer than four albums in
the pop charts at once. In total, Herbie had 11 albums in the pop
charts during the 1970s. His ’70s output inspired and provided
samples for generations of hip-hop and dance music artists.
Herbie also stayed close to his love of acoustic
jazz in the ’70s, recording and performing with VSOP
(reuniting him with his Miles Davis colleagues), and in
duet settings with Chick Corea and Oscar Peterson.
In 1980, Herbie introduced the trumpeter Wynton
Marsalis to the world as a solo artist, producing his debut
album and touring with him as well. In 1983, a new pull to the
alternative side led Herbie to a series of collaborations with
Bill Laswell. The first, ‘Future Shock’, again struck platinum,
and the single “Rockit” rocked the dance and R&B charts,
winning a Grammy for Best R&B Instrumental. The video of
the track won five MTV awards. ‘Sound System’, the follow-up,
also received a Grammy in the R&B instrumental category.
Herbie won an Oscar in 1986 for scoring the
film “’Round Midnight”, in which he also appeared as
an actor. Numerous television appearances over the
years led to two hosting assignments in the 1980s: “Rock
School” on PBS and Showtime’s “Coast To Coast”.
After an adventurous 1994 project for Mercury
Records, ‘Dis Is Da Drum’, he moved to the Verve label,
forming an all-star band to record 1996’s Grammywinning
‘The New Standard’. In 1997, an album of
duets with Wayne Shorter, ‘1+1’, was released.
The legendary Headhunters reunited in 1998,
recording an album for Herbie’s own Verve-distributed
imprint, and touring with the Dave Matthews Band. That
year also marked the recording and release of ‘Gershwin’s
World’, which included collaborators Joni Mitchell, Stevie
Wonder, Kathleen Battle, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra,
Wayne Shorter and Chick Corea. ‘Gershwin’s World’ won three
Grammys in 1999, including Best Traditional Jazz Album
and Best R&B Vocal Performance for Stevie Wonder’s
“St. Louis Blues.”
Herbie reunited with Bill Laswell to collaborate
with some young hip-hop and techno artists on
2001’s FUTURE2FUTURE. He also joined with Roy
Hargrove and Michael Brecker in 2002 to record a live
concert album, ‘Directions In Music: Live at Massey
Hall’, a tribute to John Coltrane and Miles Davis.
‘Possibilities’, released in August 2005, teamed
Herbie with many popular artists, such as Sting, Annie Lennox,
John Mayer, Christina Aguilera, Paul Simon, Carlos Santana,
Joss Stone and Damien Rice. That year, he played a number
of concert dates with a re-staffed Headhunters,
and became the first-ever Artist-In-Residence at
the Tennessee-based festival Bonnaroo.
In 2007, Hancock recorded and released ‘River: The
Joni Letters’, a tribute to longtime friend and collaborator Joni
Mitchell featuring Wayne Shorter, guitarist Lionel Loueke,
bassist Dave Holland and drummer Vinnie Colaiuta and coproduced
by Larry Klein. He enlisted vocalists Norah Jones,
Tina Turner, Corinne Bailey Rae, Luciana Souza, Leonard
Cohen and Mitchell herself to perform songs she wrote or was
inspired by. The album received glowing reviews and was a
year-end Top 10 choice for many critics. It also garnered three
Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year; Herbie is one
of only a handful of jazz musicians ever to receive that honor.
In 2010 Hancock released the critically-acclaimed
CD, ‘Herbie Hancock’s The Imagine Project,’ winner of two
20ll Grammy Awards for Best Pop Collaboration and Best
Improvised Jazz Solo. Utilizing the universal language of
music to express its central themes of peace and global
responsibility, the ‘Imagine’ project was recorded around
the world and features a stellar group of musicians
including Jeff Beck, Seal,Pink, Dave Matthews, The
Chieftains, Lionel Loueke, Oumou Sangare, Konono
#l, Anoushka Shankar, Chaka Khan, Marcus Miller,
Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Tinariwen, and Ceu.
Herbie Hancock also maintains a thriving career
outside the performing stage and recording studio. Recently
named by the Los Angeles Philharmonic as Creative Chair
For Jazz, he currently also serves as Institute Chairman of the
Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, the foremost international
organization devoted to the development of jazz performance
and education worldwide. Hancock is also a founder of
The International Committee of Artists for Peace, and was
recently awarded the much esteemed “Commandeur des Arts
et des Lettres” by French Prime Minister Francois Fillon.
In July of 2011 Hancock was designated a UNESCO
Goodwill Ambassador by UNESCO Director-General Irina
Bokova. Recognizing Herbie Hancock’s “dedication to the
promotion of peace through dialogue, culture and the arts,”
the Director-General has asked the celebrated jazz musician
“to contribute to UNESCO’s efforts to promote mutual
understanding among cultures, with a particular emphasis on
fostering the emergence of new and creative ideas amongst
youth, to find solutions to global problems, as well as ensuring
equal access to the diversity of artistic expressions.” UNESCO’s
Goodwill Ambassadors are an outstanding group of celebrity
advocates who have generously accepted to use their talent
and status to help focus the world’s attention on the objectives
and aims of UNESCO’s work in its fields of competence:
education, culture, science and communication/information
Now in the fifth decade of his professional life,
Herbie Hancock remains where he has always been: in the
forefront of world culture, technology, business and music.
Though one can’t track exactly where he will go next, he is
sure to leave his inimitable imprint wherever he lands.
DANNY HILLIS
William Daniel “Danny” Hillis (born September 25, 1956,
in Baltimore, Maryland) is an American inventor, scientist,
engineer, entrepreneur, and author. He co-founded Thinking
Machines Corporation, a company that developed the
Connection Machine, a parallel supercomputer designed
by Hillis at MIT. He is also co-founder of the Long Now
Foundation, Applied Minds, Metaweb Technologies,
Applied Proteomics, and author of The Pattern on the
Stone: The Simple Ideas That Make Computers Work.
Danny Hillis was born in Baltimore, Maryland
in 1956. His father, William Hillis, was a US Air Force
epidemiologist studying hepatitis in Africa and relocated with
his family through Rwanda, Burundi, Republic of the Congo,
and Kenya. He spent a brief part of his childhood in Calcutta,
India when his father was a visiting faculty at ISI, Calcutta.
During these years the young Hillis was home schooled by his
mother Aryge Briggs Hillis, a biostatistician, and developed an
early appreciation for mathematics and biology. His younger
brother is David Hillis, a professor of evolutionary biology
at the University of Texas at Austin, and his sister is Argye E.
Hillis, a professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins University.
In 1978 Hillis graduated from MIT with a BS degree
in mathematics, followed in 1981 with an MS
degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer
Science (EECS), specializing in robotics.
During this time Hillis worked at the MIT Logo
Laboratory developing computer hardware and software for
children. He designed computer-oriented toys and games
for the Milton Bradley Company, and co-founded Terrapin
Software—a producer of computer software for elementary
schools. He also built a digital computer composed of
Tinkertoys that is on display at the Museum of Science, Boston.
Hillis’ major research, however, was into parallel
computing. Hillis designed the Connection Machine, a
parallel supercomputer; in 1983 Hillis co-founded Thinking
Machines Corporation to produce and market supercomputers
based on this design. In 1988, continuing this research, Hillis
received a PhD in EECS from MIT under doctoral advisers
Gerald Jay Sussman, Marvin Minsky and Claude Shannon.
Hillis co-founded Thinking Machines Corporation in
1983 while doing his doctoral work at MIT. The company was
to develop Hillis’ Connection Machine design into commercial
parallel supercomputers, and to explore computational
pathways to building artificial intelligence. Hillis’ ambitions
are represented by the company’s motto: “We’re building
a machine that will be proud of us,” and Hillis’ parallel
architecture was to be the main component for this task:
Clearly, the organizing principle of the brain is
parallelism. It’s using massive parallelism. The information
is in the connection between a lot of very simple parallel
units working together. So if we built a computer that was
more along that system of organization, it would likely
be able to do the same kinds of things the brain does.
At Thinking Machines Corporation, Hillis
built a technical team with many people that would
later become leaders in science and industry including
Brewster Kahle, Guy Steele, Sydney Brenner, David
Waltz, Jack Schwartz, and Eric Lander. He even recruited
Richard Feynman to spend his summers there. For many
years, Thinking Machines Corporation connection
machines were the fastest computers in the world.
During 1994, however, Thinking Machines filed for
bankruptcy. In 1996, after a short stint as a professor at the MIT
Media Lab, Hillis joined The Walt Disney Company full time
in the newly created role of Disney Fellow and Vice President,
Research and Development, Walt Disney Imagineering,
which Hillis claimed was an early ambition of his:
I’ve wanted to work at Disney ever since I was a
child…I remember listening to Walt Disney on television
describing the ‘Imagineers’ who designed Disneyland.
I decided then that someday I would be an Imagineer.
Later, I became interested in a different kind of magic—
the magic of computers. Now I finally have the perfect
job—bringing computer magic into Disney.
At Disney, Hillis developed new technologies as well
as business strategies for Disney’s theme parks, television,
motion pictures, Internet and consumer products businesses.
He also designed new theme park rides, a full sized walking
robot dinosaur and various micro mechanical devices.
Hillis left Disney in 2000, taking with him Bran
Ferren, President of the Walt Disney Imagineering, R&D
Creative Technologies division. Together, Ferren and Hillis
founded Applied Minds, a company aimed at providing
technology and consulting services to firms in an array of
industries, including aerospace, electronics, and toys. In
July 2005, Hillis and others from Applied Minds initiated
Metaweb Technologies, Inc. to develop a semantic data storage
infrastructure for the Internet, and Freebase, an “open,
shared database of the world’s knowledge”. When Metaweb
was acquired by Google, the technology became the basis
of Google’s Knowledge Graph. Hillis, together with
Dr. David B. Agus, cofounded a spinoff of Applied Minds
called Applied Proteomics Inc which designed and
prototyped a machine that measures the level of proteins
in the blood for medical diagnosis.
Hillis’ work with Agus on cancer led to the
founding of the University of Southern California
Physical Sciences-Oncology Center (USC PS-OC),
funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Hillis
is the principle investigator of this program.
In 1993, with Thinking Machines facing its demise,
Hillis wrote about long-term thinking and suggested a
project to build a clock designed to function for millennia:
When I was a child, people used to talk about
what would happen by the year 2000. Now, thirty years
later, they still talk about what will happen by the year
2000. The future has been shrinking by one year per year
for my entire life. I think it is time for us to start a longterm
project that gets people thinking past the mental
barrier of the Millennium. I would like to propose a large
(think Stonehenge) mechanical clock, powered by seasonal
temperature changes. It ticks once a year, bongs once a
century, and the cuckoo comes out every millennium.
This clock became the Clock of the Long
Now, a name invented by the songwriter and composer,
Brian Eno. Hillis wrote an article for Wired magazine
suggesting a clock that would last over 10,000 years.
The project led directly to the founding of the Long Now
Foundation in 1996 by Hillis and others, including Stewart
Brand, Brian Eno, Esther Dyson, and Mitch Kapor.
Hillis asserts that parallelism itself is approximately
the main ingredient of intelligence; that there is not
anything else required to make a mind result from a
distributed network of processors. Hillis believes that
…intelligence is just a whole lot of little
things, thousands of them. And what will happen is
we’ll learn about each one at a time, and as we do it,
machines will be more and more like people. It will
be a gradual process, and that’s been happening.
This is not so different from Marvin Minsky’s Society
of Mind theory, which holds that mind is a collection of agents,
each one taking care of a particular aspect of intelligence,
and communicating with one another, exchanging
information as required.
Some artificial intelligence theorists have other
opinions—that it’s not the underlying computational
mode that’s crucial, but rather particular algorithms
(of reasoning, memory, perception, etc.). Others
argue that the right combination of “little things” is
needed to give rise to the overall emergent patterns of
coordinated activity that constitute real intelligence.
Hillis is one of a small number of people
who have made a serious attempt to create such a
“thinking machine” and his ambitions are clear:
“I’d like to find a way for consciousness to
transcend human flesh. Building a thinking machine is
really a search for a kind of Earthly immortality. Something
much more intelligent than we can exist. Making a
thinking machine is my way to reach out to that.”
Hillis’ 1998 popular science book The Pattern on the
Stone attempts to explain concepts from computer science for
laymen using simple language, metaphor and analogy. It moves
from Boolean algebra through topics such as information
theory, parallel computing, cryptography, algorithms,
heuristics, Turing machines, and promising technologies
such as quantum computing and emergent systems.
BJARKE INGELS
QUINCY JONES
Bjarke Ingels started BIG Bjarke Ingels Group in 2005 after
co-founding PLOT Architects in 2001 and working at OMA
in Rotterdam. Through a series of award-winning design
projects and buildings, Bjarke has developed a reputation
for designing buildings that are as programmatically
and technically innovative as they are cost and resource
conscious. Bjarke has received numerous awards and
honors, including the Danish Crown Prince’s Culture Prize
in 2011, the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2004,
and the ULI Award for Excellence in 2009. In 2011, the Wall
Street Journal awarded Bjarke the Architectural Innovator
of the Year Award. In 2012, the American Institute of
Architects granted the 8 House its Honor Award, calling it
“a complex and exemplary project of a new typology.”
Alongside his architectural practice, Bjarke
taught at Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia
University, and Rice University and is an honorary professor
at the Royal Academy of Arts, School of Architecture in
Copenhagen. He is a frequent public speaker and has
spoken in venues such as TED, WIRED, AMCHAM, 10
Downing Street, and the World Economic Forum.
An impresario in the broadest and most creative sense
of the word, Quincy Jones’ career has encompassed the
roles of composer, record producer, artist, film producer,
arranger, conductor, instrumentalist, TV producer, record
company executive, magazine founder, multi-media
entrepreneur and humanitarian. As a master inventor of
musical hybrids, he has shuffled pop, soul, hip-hop, jazz,
classical, African and Brazilian music into many dazzling
fusions, traversing virtually every medium, including
records, live performance, movies and television.
Celebrating more than 60 years performing and
being involved in music, Quincy’s creative magic has spanned
over six decades, beginning with the music of the postswing
era and continuing through today’s high-technology,
international multi-media hybrids. In the mid-50’s, he was
the first popular conductor-arranger to record with a Fender
bass. His theme from the hit TV series Ironside was the first
synthesizer-based pop theme song. As the first black composer
to be embraced by the Hollywood establishment in the 60’s,
he helped refresh movie music with badly needed infusions of
jazz and soul. His landmark 1989 album, Back On The Block—
named “Album Of The Year” at the 1990 Grammy Awards—
brought such legends as Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah
Vaughan and Miles Davis together with Ice T, Big Daddy Kane
and Melle Mel to create the first fusion of the be bop and hip
hop musical traditions; while his 1993 recording of the critically
acclaimed Miles and Quincy Live At Montreux, featured
Quincy conducting Miles Davis’ live performance of the
historic Gil Evans arrangements from the Miles Ahead, Porgy
and Bess and Sketches of Spain sessions, garnered a Grammy
Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Performance. As producer
and conductor of the historic “We Are The World” recording
(the best-selling single of all time) and Michael Jackson’s
multi-platinum solo albums, Off The Wall, Bad and Thriller
(the best selling album of all time, with over 50 million copies
sold), Quincy Jones stands as one of the most successful and
admired creative artist/executives in the entertainment world.
His 1995 recording, Q’s Jook Joint, again showcased
Quincy’s ability to mold the unique talents of an eclectic
group of singers and musicians, in what resulted in a
retrospective of his broad and diverse career from that of
a seasoned Jazz musician, to skilled composer, arranger,
and bandleader, to acclaimed record producer.
A reference to the backwoods club houses of rural
America in the 1930’s, 40’s, and 50’s, the platinum selling
Q’s Jook Joint featured performances by artists such as
Bono, Brandy, Ray Charles, Phil Collins, Coolio, Kenny
“Babyface” Edmonds, Gloria Estefan, Rachelle Ferrell, Aaron
Hall, Herbie Hancock, Heavy D., Ron Isley, Chaka Khan, R.
Kelly, Queen Latifah, Tone Loc, the Luniz, Brian McKnight,
Melle Mel, Shaquille O’Neal, Joshua Redman, the Broadway
musical troupe Stomp, SWV, Take 6, newcomer Tamia,
Toots Thielemans, Mervyn Warren, Barry White, Warren
Wiebe, Charlie Wilson, Nancy Wilson, Stevie Wonder, Mr.
X, and Yo-Yo, among others, and garnered seven Grammy
nominations. His recording, From Q, With Love, featured a
collection of 26 love songs that he recorded over the last 32
years of his more than 50 year career in the music business.
Named by Time Magazine as one of the most
influential jazz musicians of the 20th century, Quincy Jones
was born on March 14, 1933, in Chicago and brought up
in Seattle. While in junior high school, he began studying
trumpet and sang in a gospel quartet at age 12. His musical
studies continued at the prestigious Berklee College of
Music in Boston, where he remained until the opportunity
arose to tour with Lionel Hampton’s band as a trumpeter,
arranger and sometime-pianist. He moved on to New York
and the musical “big leagues” in 1951, where his reputation
as an arranger grew. By the mid-50’s, he was arranging and
recording for such diverse artists as Sarah Vaughan, Ray
Charles, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Big Maybelle, Dinah
Washington, Cannonball Adderly and LeVern Baker.
In 1957, Quincy decided to continue his musical
education by studying with Nadia Boulanger, the legendary
Parisian tutor to American expatriate composers such as
Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copeland. To subsidize
his studies he took a job with Barclay Disques, Mercury’s
French distributor. Among the artists he recorded in Europe
were Charles Aznavour, Jacques Brel and Henri Salvador,
as well as such visitors from America as Sarah Vaughan,
Billy Eckstine and Andy Williams. Quincy’s love affair with
European audiences continues through the present: in 1991,
he began a continuing association with the Montreux Jazz
and World Music Festival, which he serves as co-producer.
Quincy won the first of his many Grammy’s in
1963 for his Count Basie arrangement of “I Can’t Stop
Loving You.” Quincy’s three-year musical association as
conductor and arranger with Frank Sinatra in the mid-60’s
also teamed him with Basie for the classic Sinatra At The
Sands, containing the famous arrangement of “Fly Me To
The Moon,” the first recording played by astronaut Buzz
Aldrin when he landed upon the moon’s surface in 1969.
When he became vice-president at Mercury Records
in 1961, Quincy became the first high-level black executive
of an established major record company. Toward the end of
his association with the label, Quincy turned his attention
to another musical area that had been closed to blacks--the
world of film scores. In 1963, he started work on the music
for Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker and it was the first of
his 33 major motion picture scores. In 1985, he co-produced
Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Alice Walker’s The Color
Purple, which garnered eleven Oscar nominations, introduced
Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey to film audiences, and
marked Quincy’s debut as a film producer. In 1991 Quincy
helped launch NBC-TV’s hit series, The Fresh Prince Of
Bel Air, for which he served as an executive producer.
In 1990, Quincy Jones formed Quincy Jones
Entertainment (QJE), a co-venture with Time Warner, Inc. The
new company, which Quincy served as CEO and chairman,
had a broad ranging, multi-media agenda which encompassed
programming for current and future technologies, including
theatrical motion pictures and network, cable and syndicated
television. QJE produced NBC Television’s Fresh Prince Of
Bel Air (now in syndication), and UPN’s In The House and
Fox Television’s Mad TV, among other syndicated shows and
television specials. In 1991 Jones founded VIBE Magazine,
and with his publishing group VIBE Ventures, would go on to
acquire SPIN Magazine before divesting his magazine interests.
In January 1992, Quincy Jones executive produced
the An American Reunion concert at Lincoln Memorial,
an all-star concert and celebration that was the first
official event of the presidential inaugural celebration
and drew widespread acclaim as an HBO telecast.
On March 25, 1996, Quincy Jones, executive
produced the most watched awards show in the
world, the 68th Annual Academy Awards. The show
received widespread acclaim as one of the most
memorable Academy Award shows in recent years.
In 1997, Quincy Jones formed the Quincy Jones
Media Group. QJMG’s feature film projects in development
include such highly anticipated films as the adaptations of the
Ralph Ellison novel Juneteeth, David Halberstam’s The Children
for Home Box Office in association with producers Kathleen
Kennedy and Frank Marshall, a bio-pic on the 19th century
Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, Pimp and Seeds of Peace for
Showtime, among others. For television, QJMG is developing
the sit-com The White Guy. QJMG is also active in live
entertainment, direct response marketing, and cross-media
projects for home entertainment and educational applications.
As a record company executive, Quincy remained
highly active in the recording field throughout the 1990s as the
guiding force behind his own Qwest Records, which boasted
such important artists as New Order, Tevin Campbell, Andre
Crouch, Patti Austin, James Ingram, Siedah Garrett, Gregory
Jefferson and Justin Warfield. New Order’s album, Substance
earned Qwest a gold album in 1987. Tevin Campbell’s T.E.V.I.N
was both a critical sensation and major commercial success,
and the label’s release of the Boyz N The Hood soundtrack
album was among the most successful soundtrack recordings
of 1991. Qwest Records has also released soundtrack albums
from the major motion pictures Sarafina! and Malcolm X.
In 1994, Quincy Jones led a group of businessmen,
including Hall of Fame football player Willie Davis, television
producer Don Cornelius, television journalist Geraldo Rivera
and businesswoman Sonia Gonsalves Salzman in the formation
of Qwest Broadcasting, a minority controlled broadcasting
company which purchased television stations in Atlanta and
New Orleans for approximately $167 million, establishing it
as one of the largest minority owned broadcasting companies
in the United States. Quincy served as chairman and CEO of
Qwest Broadcasting. In 1999, taking advantage of the rapid
escalation of broadcast station values, Jones and his partners
sold Qwest Broadcasting for a reported $270 million.
The laurels, awards and accolades have been
innumerable: Quincy has won an Emmy Award for his score
of the of the opening episode of the landmark TV miniseries,
Roots, seven Oscar nominations, the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences’ Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award,
27 Grammy Awards, and N.A.R.A.S.’ prestigious Trustees’
Award and The Grammy Living Legend Award. He is the alltime
most nominated Grammy artist with a total of 79 Grammy
nominations. In 1990, France recognized Quincy with its most
distinguished title, the Commandeur de la Legion d’ Honneur.
He is also the recipient of the French Ministry of Culture’s
Distinguished Arts and Letters Award. Quincy is the recipient
of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music’s coveted Polar
Music Prize, and the Republic of Italy’s Rudolph Valentino
Award. He is also the recipient of honorary doctorates from
Howard University, the Berklee College of Music, Seattle
University, Wesleyan University, Brandeis University,
Loyola University (New Orleans), Clark Atlanta University,
Claremont University’s Graduate School, the University of
Connecticut, Harvard University, Tuskegee University, New
York University, University of Miami and The American
Film Institute, among others. In 2001, Jones was named a
Kennedy Center Honoree, for his contributions to the cultural
fabric of the United States of America. He was recognized by
the National Endowment for the Arts as a Jazz Master—the
nation’s highest jazz honor, and was most recently bestowed
the National Medal of Arts, our nation’s highest artistic honor.
In 1990, his life and career were chronicled in
the critically acclaimed Warner Bros. film, Listen Up: The
Lives of Quincy Jones, produced by Courtney Sale Ross,
a film which helped illuminate not only Quincy’s life and
spirit, but also revealed much about the development of
the African American musical tradition. Reflecting on
the changes in pop music over the years, Quincy says, “If
there are any common denominators, they are spirit and
musicality. I go for the music that gives me goose bumps,
music that touches my heart and my soul.” Over the years,
Quincy Jones has reached the essence of music and art:
the ability to touch people’s feelings and emotions.
In 2001, Quincy Jones added the title “Best
Selling Author” to his list of accomplishments when his
autobiography Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones entered
the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal
Best-Sellers lists. Released by Doubleday Publishing, the
critically acclaimed biography retells Jones’ life story from
his days as an impoverished youth on the Southside of
Chicago through a massively impressive career in music,
film and television where he worked beside legends such
as Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, Dizzy Gillespie, Count
Basie, Ella Fitzgerald and Michael Jackson, among many
others. In conjunction with the autobiography, Rhino
Records released a 4-cd boxed set of Jones’ music, spanning
his more than 5 decade career in the music business,
entitled “Q: The Musical Biography of Quincy Jones.”
The audio recording of “Q: The Autobiography
of Quincy Jones,” (Simon & Schuster) earned Jones
his 27th Grammy Award, in the Best Spoken Word
Category, while “Q: The Musical Biography of Quincy
Jones” garnered him a 15th NAACP Image Award,
in the category of Outstanding Jazz Artist.
In 2008 The Complete Quincy Jones: My Journey &
Passions, (Palace Press) examined the virtuosity of the man
Frank Sinatra named “Q,” celebrating his prolific contribution
to American art and culture. The book included a foreword
by Clint Eastwood, preface from Bono, an introduction by
Maya Angelou and an afterword by Sidney Poitier. Comprised
of personal interviews and recollections from Jones, this
collection peers behind the veil of celebrity, with extraordinary
access to his creative inspirations and achievements.
Jones next projects include the forthcoming
release of Soul Bossa Nostra, an album featuring some of
today’s biggest recording artists and producers such as
Usher, Ludacris, Akon, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Hudson, Mary
J. Blige, T-Pain, Robin Thicke, LL Cool J, John Legend,
Snoop Dogg, Wyclef Jean, Q-Tip, Talib Kweli, Three 6 Mafia,
David Banner, Bebe Winans, Mervyn Warren, Jermaine
Dupri, DJ Paul, and Scott Storch, among others, who have
joined together to celebrate the music of the multi-Grammy
winning producer, composer and arranger by recording
contemporary versions of popular recordings from his
massive catalog; the book Q on Producing which recounts
his six-decade long career working in the recording studio
with music icons such as Count Basie, Duke Ellington,
Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson, among
many others; a duets album with Stevie Wonder and Tony
Bennett; as well as multiple projects for film and television.
With a long history of humanitarian work which
began in the 1960’s and 70’s, Jones was one of the key
supporters of Jesse Jackson’s Operation P.U.S.H. In 1985, he
pioneered the model of using celebrity to raise money and
awareness for a cause with “We Are the World.” The song
remains the best-selling single of all-time, and raised more
than $63 Million for Ethiopian famine relief. More importantly,
however, it shined a spotlight on the Ethiopian drought and
U.S. Government responded with over $800 million in aid.
In 1999 Quincy Jones joined Bono and Bob
Geldof during a meeting with Pope John Paul II as a part of
the Jubilee 2000 delegation to end third world debt. The
delegation’s visit resulted in $27 billion in third world debt
relief for Bolivia, Mozambique, and the Ivory Coast.
In 2004, in front of a live audience of more than
a half-million spectators, Jones launched the We Are the
Future initiative with a concert featuring Carlos Santana,
Alicia Keyes, Josh Groban, Oprah Winfrey, Norah Jones
and a host of other entertainers from around the world.
The initiative has established Municipal Child Centers
in the cities of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Asmara (Eritrea),
Freetown (Sierra Leone), Kigali (Rwanda) and Nablus
(Palestine) where youth are being trained to run childbased
programs in health, nutrition, Information and
Communication Technology (ICT), Sports and Arts.
In 2007, Jones and the Harvard School of Public
Health joined forces to advance the health and well-being of
children worldwide through Project Q, a strategic initiative
of School’s Center for Health Communication. Through
the strategic use of media, Project Q challenges leaders
and citizens of the world to provide essential resources
to enable young people to achieve their full potential.
A centerpiece of Project Q is the Q Prize, which
recognizes extraordinary leadership by public figures and social
entrepreneurs who are championing the needs of children.
The inaugural Q Prize was awarded in January 2007 to Scott
Neeson, founder of the Cambodian Children’s Fund, and over
$600,000 was raised in support of Neeson’s work. The 2008
Q Prize will be awarded on October 23 in New York City.
Through his personal foundation, The Quincy
Jones Foundation, Jones raises awareness and financial
resources for initiatives that support global children’s
issues in areas of conflict, malaria eradication, clean
water and efforts to restore the Gulf Coast (post-Katrina).
Philanthropic partners include Malaria No More, Millennium
Promise, and R&B singer Usher’s New Look Foundation.
MARY JORDAN
JON KAMEN
Mary Catherine Jordan (born November 10, 1960) is a Pulitzer
Prize-winning American journalist for the Washington Post.
She is currently the editor of Washington Post Live, which
organizes political debates, conferences and news events
for the media company. She has written on U.S. politics,
the American education system and many other subjects.
With her husband, Post journalist Kevin Sullivan, Jordan
ran the newspaper’s bureaus in Tokyo, Mexico City and
London. Jordan has written from nearly 40 countries and
also been a frequent commentator on BBC Television.
Jordan, a daughter of Irish immigrants, was
born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. She graduated from
Georgetown University in 1983 and earned a master’s
degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of
Journalism in 1984. In 1989–90, Jordan was awarded
a Nieman Fellowship by Harvard University.
Jordan began her Post career as an intern
for the Style section, crisscrossed the country writing
about colleges and schools as the national education
reporter, and covered Virginia and national politics.
For a year at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, she
studied William Butler Yeats and other Irish poets. She was
given her first job in the newspaper business by legendary Irish
author and editor Tim Pat Coogan, who hired her to write a
column in the Irish Press. She enrolled in Japanese language
classes at Georgetown University before moving to Tokyo for
four years and studied Spanish on a post-graduate fellowship
at Stanford University before moving to Mexico for five years.
Currently, Jordan moderates many high-profile
forums for the Washington Post including the “The 40th
Anniversary of Watergate” in June 2012 that featured key
Watergate figures including including former White House
counsel John Dean, Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee,
and reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
She hosted the 2010 Maryland gubernatorial
debate between Governor Martin O’Malley and former
Governor Robert Ehrlich, and moderated a rare sitdown
with Redskin owner Dan Snyder, Capital’s owner Ted
Leonsis, and other owners of Washington’s sports teams.
Among the many newsmakers she has interviewed:
Legendary singer and songwriter Paul McCartney, Colombian
novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nobel Prize winner Henry
Kissinger, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and
Benjamin Arellano Felix, one of Mexico’s most notorious
drug kingpins. Jordan has written extensively about injustices
and discrimination against women around the world
including articles about the exceedingly low conviction
rate of rape in Britain and the unfortunate girls in India
denied schooling solely because they were not born male.
Jordan and Sullivan won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for
International Reporting for their Post series on the “horrific
conditions in Mexico’s criminal justice system and how
they affect the daily lives of people,” as the Pulitzer Board
described. Along with four Post photographers, Jordan and
Sullivan were also finalists for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for
International Reporting for their series of stories on the
difficulties women face around the world. The Pulitzer jury
called the series a “sensitive examination of how females in
the developing world are often oppressed from birth to death,
a reporting project marked by indelible portraits of women
and girls and enhanced by multimedia presentations.”
Jordan and Sullivan authored The Prison Angel:
Mother Antonia’s Journey from Beverly Hills to a Life of Service
in a Mexican Jail (The Penguin Press, 2005). In 2006, the
book won the Christopher Award, which “salutes media
that affirm the highest values of the human spirit.”
Jordan and Sullivan have also won numerous other awards
including the George Polk Award for their coverage of the 1997
Asian Financial Crisis and awards from the Overseas Press
Club of America and the Society of Professional Journalists.
@radical.media creates some of the world’s most innovative
content across all platforms of media. Originally renowned
for its commercial and advertising success, it has transformed
and grown to develop, produce, and distribute television,
feature films, music programming, live events, digital
content and design. As the founding Chairman and CEO
of @radical.media, Jon continues to expand @radical’s
capabilities within this ever-evolving media landscape.
Beyond an Executive, Jon is a Producer and Executive
Producer of groundbreaking projects. Amongst @radical’s
major achievements, @radical.media has been recognized
for producing multiple award-winning projects including
the Academy Award and Independent Spirit Award for the
documentary The Fog of War; and a Grammy for the Concert
for George. This past year, @radical produced the Academy
Award and Emmy-nominated HBO documentary Paradise
Lost 3 and the Emmy-nominated A&E documentary following
Paul Simon’s Graceland journey, Under African Skies.
@radical is currently in production on a Ron Howarddirected