Professor Nic Smith is Head of Department, Biomedical Engineering, at Kings College, University of London. His research group is focused on the development of computational models of the heart with the capacity to integrate multiple measurement types. The goal of this work is to use these tools to develop new ways to assess patients and personalize treatments based on information about the individual. Research applications include the imaging of coronary blood flow, embedding pacemakers and understanding flow in the heart. Previously Professor Smith has held positions at the Universities of Auckland and Oxford and currently is the visiting Professor of Computational Physiology, at the University of Oxford.
Christine L. Borgman is Professor and Presidential Chair in Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She is a co-principal investigator for the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) and for the Alexandria Digital Earth Prototype (ADEPT) project, both funded by the National Science Foundation. She is the author of more than 150 publications in the fields of information studies, computer science, and communication. Her book, From Gutenberg to the Global Information Infrastructure: Access to Information in a Networked World (MIT Press, 2000), won the Best Information Science book of the year award from the American Society for Information Science and Technology.
Richard Manning is a Senior Research Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. He works closely with Paul Collier on a series of research questions, largely focused on economic development and health policy in sub-Saharan Africa. Previously Richard was at the Centre for the Study of African Economies in the Department of Economics. Richard is an independent consultant on international development. He is also chairman of the board of the Institute of Development Studies, vice-chairman of the current Replenishment of the Global Fund for Aids, TB and Malaria and Coordinator of the Replenishment of the AfDB’s soft fund.
Richard served in the UK Department for International Development and its predecessors from 1965-2003. He was a director general from 1996-2003, in which capacity he supervised the production of the first two white papers on international development of the Labour government. In the then Overseas Development Administration (ODA), from 1993-96 he served as principal finance officer and he was under-secretary for Asia from 1988-93. His assignments also included secondment to the British High Commission, Lagos, from 1968-1970, where he was involved in the relief effort at the end of the civil conflict, to the UK Permanent Representation to the European Communities in Brussels from 1973-75, where he was in particular engaged with the negotiations of the first Lome Convention, and to the British Embassy in Washington from 1984-86, where he was also alternate executive director at the World Bank. Richard was head of the South-East Asia Development Division of from 1977-80.
From June 2003 to January 2008, Richard was chair of the OECD's Development Assistance Committee. He was co-chair of the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness which met in Paris in 2005 and agreed the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness.
James Martin founded the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford in 2005 to foster and facilitate innovative, interdisciplinary research on the problems, dangers and opportunities of the near future. Martin is the largest individual benefactor to the University of Oxford in its 900-year history. Martin has written 104 textbooks, many of which have been seminal in their field. Martin is renowned for his electrifying lectures about the future.
