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Programme Speakers

Sara Abdulla

Title: Chief Commissioning Editor

Organisation: Nature

Home location: UK

Speaker in the following session:

• Meet the editors forum

Andrea Alunni

Title: Seed Investment Manager

Organisation: Isis Innovation

Speaker in the following session:

• Green energy technologies

Gonzalo Argandona

Title: TV producer

Organisation: ESO

Biography: Science journalist with more than 10 years of experience producing science documentaries and TV shows for Latin American and global markets. He has developed several productions for international networks, like Discovery Channel and National Geographic Channel. In Chile, he created three TV series related to technology and innovation: Cazadores de Ciencia (Science Hunters), Explora (Explore!) and Cambio Global (Global Change). Winner of the Grand Prix at the 28th Tekfilm Festival (Czech Republic), the oldest science film festival in Europe, for his documentary “Searching for Supernovas”. Editor of the special series “Senses and Emotions” (IAMS Award for the Best Scientific Dissemination Series, 10th TeleScience Festival, Canada.). In 2005, he joined the European Southern Observatory (ESO), an intergovernmental organisation that operates three astronomical sites in Chile, including the Very Large Telescope (VLT), the most advanced ground-based optical observatory. At ESO, he is responsible for outreach and education programs in Chile.

Speaker in the following session:

• Science on television: Here today, gone tomorrow?

Alain Aspect

Title: Head of the Atom Optics group

Organisation: Institut d'Optique, Orsay

Biography: Alain Aspect is a Distinguished Senior Researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). In the early 1980s, with collaborators in France, he performed the crucial "Bell test experiments" that showed that quantum mechanics’ 'ghostly action at a distance', did in fact appear to be realized when two particles were separated by an arbitrarily large distance. He was deputy director of the French "grande école" SupOptique until 1994. He is a member of the French Academy of Sciences and French Academy of Technologies, and he was recently awarded the gold medal of the CNRS. His current research is in atom optics, including atom lasers and atom mirrors.

Speaker in the following session:

• From Quantum to Cosmos: New frontiers in science

John Beddington

Title: Government Chief Scientific Adviser (GCSA)

Organisation: UK Government

Home location: UK

Biography: Professor John Beddington was appointed as Government Chief Scientific Adviser (GCSA) on 1 January 2008. John's main research interests are the application of biological and economic analysis to problems of Natural Resource Management including inter alia: fisheries, pest control, wildlife management and the control of disease. He has been at Imperial College since 1984, where he headed the main departments dealing with environmental science and technology. He was promoted to Reader in 1987 and was Professor of Applied Population Biology until his appointment as GCSA.

Speaker in the following sessions:

• Recipe for disaster: A growing population and climate change. Can science serve up a solution?
• Science based policy making: Advising Government

Nancy Bell

Title: Head of Conservation

Organisation: The National Archives, Kew

Biography: Nancy Bell, in addition to being the Head of Conservation at the National Archives in Kew is leading a AHRC/EPSRC research project on the costs and risks of current environmental guidelines for cultural heritage in response to a changing climate. Work that will have relevance internationally.

Speaker in the following session:

• Heritage science: What next?

Mike Bevan

Organisation: John Innes Centre

Speaker in the following session:

• Food security and sustainability - can we avert a food crisis?

Boakye Boatin

Title: Research Manager

Organisation: TDR

Speaker in the following session:

• Building research capacity and healthcare solutions in Africa to fight TB, river blindness and malaria

Leszek Borysiewicz

Title: Chief Executive

Organisation: Medical Research Council (MRC)

Home location: UK

Biography: Sir Leszek Borysiewicz was appointed Chief Executive of the MRC in 2007. He was educated at Cardiff High School and attended the University of Wales. He came to London to further his medical training at Hammersmith Hospital, where he was attracted to the research environment and became an MRC training fellow to study viral immunology. Sir Leszek was Deputy Rector at Imperial College London, having joined the College in 2001 as Principal of the Faculty of Medicine. Previously he was Professor of Medicine and Head of the Department of Medicine at the University of Wales, Cardiff. In his role at Imperial, Sir Leszek was responsible for the overall academic and scientific direction of the college, particularly the development of inter-disciplinary research between engineering, physical sciences and biomedicine. As a physician, Sir Leszek specialises in viral immunology, infectious diseases, cell mediated immunity, virus associated malignancy and vaccine development. He is the author of reports for the World Health Organization, the MRC and the Department of Health, and was chair of the Department of Health / Medical Research Council TSE Research Advisory Group that reviewed research and coordinated the human health research strategy on Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. Sir Leszek was knighted in the 2001 New Year's Honours List for his research into developing vaccines, including a vaccine to prevent the development of cervical cancer. He was a founding fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 1996 and Chairman of HEFCE's main Clinical Medicine panel for RAE 2008. He was a member of the Council of Cancer Research UK from 2002 to 2005, a Governor of the Wellcome Trust from 2006 to 2007, a member of the MRC Council from 1995 to 2000 and chair of the MRC's Molecular and Cellular Medicine Board from 1996 to 2000.

Speaker in the following session:

• The science controversy that broke the mould: The media battle for human/animal embryos

Sarah Boseley

Title: Health Editor

Organisation: The Guardian

Home location: UK

Chair of the following session:

• Reporting cancer breakthroughs: Striking the right note

Maxwell Boykoff

Title: Research Fellow and Departmental Lecturer

Organisation: Environmental Change Institute and School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University

Home location: UK

Biography: Maxwell Boykoff is a Departmental Lecturer in the School of Geography and the Environment, and a Research Fellow in the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford. Max’s research interests have been developing along two primary research streams: 1) examinations in the cultural politics of climate change, and 2) analyses of the transformations of carbon-based economies and societies. Cutting across these themes, his research has concentrated on interactions between state and non-state actors at the interface of environmental science, policy and practice. Among his writings, he is currently working on two books: one is called ‘Who Speaks for Climate? Making Sense of Mass Media Reporting on Climate Change’ for Cambridge University Press, and the second is an edited book entitled ‘The Politics of Climate Change’ for Routledge/Europa.

Speaker in the following session:

• Climate change coverage: The messy marriage of science, policy, and politics

Michael Brennan

Title: Ph.D., Senior Adviser for Global Affairs

Organisation: Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation

Speaker in the following session:

• Building research capacity and healthcare solutions in Africa to fight TB, river blindness and malaria

Geoff Brumfiel

Title: Senior News Reporter

Organisation: Nature

Biography: Since 2002, Geoff has written for Nature on everything from nuclear weapons to science and faith. Prior to working at Nature, Geoff wrote for New Scientist, ScienceNOW, and Physical Review Focus, among others. He contributes occasionally to public radio shows including Marketplace and Science Friday. Geoff holds a double-degree in physics and English from Grinnell College in Iowa, and a master's in science writing from John's Hopkins University. In 2007, he moved from Nature's Washington bureau to London, where he now covers physics, space, and policy from a European perspective.

Speaker in the following session:

• Science journalism in crisis?

John Burland

Title: Senior Research Invesigator

Organisation: Imperial College London

Biography: Professor John Burland started his engineering career with Ove Arup in London and went on to become Assistant Director of the Building Research Station where he had worked since 1966. In 1980 he was appointed to the Chair of Soil Mechanics at Imperial College London, where he is now Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Investigator. John has been responsible for the design of many large ground engineering projects such as the underground car park at the Palace of Westminster and the foundations of the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre. He specialises in problems relating to the interaction between the ground and masonry buildings. He was London Underground's expert witness for the Parliamentary Select Committees on the Jubilee Line Extension and has advised on many geotechnical aspects of that project, including ensuring the stability of the Big Ben Clock Tower. He was a member of the international board of consultants advising on the stabilisation of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Mexico City and was a member of the Italian Prime Minister's Commission for stabilising the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Speaker in the following session:

• Heartbreak and hype: The only way to sell an engineering story

Declan Butler

Title: Senior Reporter

Organisation: Nature

Home location: France

Speaker in the following session:

• Advocacy science journalism

Andrew C. Revkin

Title: Environment Reporter

Organisation: The New York Times

Home location: USA

Biography: One of America's most honored science writers, Andrew C. Revkin (nytimes.com/revkin) has spent a quarter century providing ground-breaking coverage of subjects ranging from the Asian tsunami to the assault on the Amazon, from the politics of climate to science at the North Pole. He has been an environment reporter for The New York Times since 1995. His ongoing coverage of climate change received the 2008 John Chancellor Award for sustained journalistic excellence, and won the inaugural National Academies Communication Award for print journalism, presented by the National Academy of Sciences, the United States' preeminent scientific body. He has twice won the Science Journalism Award of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and, along with other prizes, has won an Investigative Reporters & Editors Award. He is a pioneer in multimedia journalism, filing audio, video, and award-winning photography along with his stories from far-flung places. With his Dot Earth blog (nytimes.com/dotearth), which Time Magazine calls a “must read,” Revkin has become what the magazine says is the “de factor moderator” of the national discourse on global warming. Revkin has written several books, including The Burning Season, on the murder of Amazon defender Chico Mendes, which was awarded the Sidney Hillman Foundation Book Prize and a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award and was made into the HBO film of the same name, which won three Golden Globes and two Emmys. His newest book, and first for younger readers, is The North Pole Was Here: Puzzles and Perils at the Top of the World, on the once and future Arctic. He has a biology degree from Brown University and a master's degree in journalism from Columbia. He has taught at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism and Bard College. In scraps of spare time, Mr. Revkin is also a performing songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He accompanies Pete Seeger on occasion at regional shows and performs with his own rural-roots band, Uncle Wade (myspace.com/unclewade). He lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife, who is a science educator, and two sons.

Speaker in the following session:

• Climate change coverage: The messy marriage of science, policy, and politics

James Callow

Organisation: University of Birmingham

Home location: UK

Speaker in the following session:

• Nanotechnology: Addressing the risks, fulfilling the promise

Philip Campbell

Title: Editor-in-Chief

Organisation: Nature

Chair of the following session:

• Science journalism in crisis?

Damian Carrington

Title: Head of Environment

Organisation: Guardian and Observer

Home location: UK

Speaker in the following session:

• Climate change: Gearing up for Copenhagen

May Cassar

Title: Science and Heritage Programme Director

Organisation: HRC/EPSRC

Biography: Professor May Cassar leads on the Science and Heritage programmes development, external coordination and outreach as well as on extensive networking with the national and international research community including non-academic sectors. In addition she is also establishing the base line level of funding across all the research councils and developing a comprehensive map of recent and current research and training activity in heritage science. www.heritagescience.ac.uk

Chair of the following session:

• Heritage science: What next?

Franco Cavalli

Title: Director

Organisation: The Oncology Institute of Southern Switzerland (IOSI)

Home location: Switzerland

Biography: Dr. Franco Cavalli is currently Director of the Oncology Institute of Southern Switzerland (IOSI) and Professor of Medical Oncology at the University of Bern. He is an internationally-renowned specialist in the field of lymphomas. Since 1981 he has organised the International Conference on Malignant Lymphoma in Lugano, Switzerland a leading international forum on basic and clinical research in lymphomas. He has been President of the Swiss Cancer League, Chairman of the Swiss Group for Clinical Cancer Research and President of the International Union Against Cancer (UICC). In addition, for the last two decades, he has served on the scientific committee of the European School of Oncology and is currently, the co-chairman of this committee. In 1989, he founded Annals of Oncology, of which he was Editor-in-Chief until 1999. Author or co-author of more than 500 scientific publications, Dr. Cavalli has received 19 International Awards, among them the Pezcoller Award, the NDDO Honorary Award and the Greidinger Award. He also co-founded the Association for Medical Aid to Central America. Through this association, he has launched numerous projects in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico. In 2006 he was nominated as “Switzerland’s person of the Year” for his work in the fight against cancer in the developing world. He was a member of the Swiss parliament for 12 years, where he focused his interest on health care issues.

Speaker in the following session:

• Reporting cancer breakthroughs: Striking the right note

Rory Cellen-Jones

Title: Technology Correspondent

Organisation: BBC

Speaker in the following session:

• New media tools

Laura Chang

Title: Science Editor

Organisation: The New York Times

Home location: USA

Biography: Laura Chang became science editor at The New York Times in September 2004. Heading a staff of two dozen reporters and editors, she oversees the weekly section Science Times, the daily science and medicine report and the expanded news and consumer offerings on nytimes.com/health. Ms. Chang joined the science department in 1998 and was appointed deputy science editor in 2001. Before that she held various posts on the national desk, starting as a copy editor in May 1990 and becoming special projects editor in 1995. Ms. Chang began her career at The Seattle Times in 1985 working as a wire editor and copy editor. She left to join The New York Times in 1990. Ms. Chang is the editor of “Scientists at Work: Profiles of Today’s Groundbreaking Scientists from Science Times.” (McGraw-Hill, 2000).A native of Seattle, Ms. Chang received a B.S. degree in communications with an emphasis in psychology at the University of Washington in 1984. She served as a copy-editing intern that summer at The Tribune in San Diego.

Speaker in the following session:

• Editors discuss the future of science journalism

George Claassen

Title: Founding Director

Organisation: Sceptic South Africa (SSA)

Home location: South Africa

Biography: George Claassen is the founding director of Sceptic South Africa (SSA) and developed the first course in Science and Technology Journalism at an African university in 1995 when postgraduate students first had the opportunity to specialise in this field at Stellenbosch University. He still teaches the course to BPhil and Master’s students and also a course in science communication to scientists at the University of Cape Town and Stellenbosch. He is the author of the bestselling book on superstition and pseudoscience, Geloof, Bygeloof en Ander Wensdenkery: Perspektiewe op Ontdekkings en Irrasionaliteite (Faith, Superstition and Other Wishful Thoughts: Perspectives on Discoveries and Irrationalities), as well as co-editor of Die Groot Aanhalingsboek (The Large Quotation Dictionary). Between 2001 and 2007 he was the science editor of the Afrikaans daily newspaper, Die Burger, in Cape Town. In 2005 he reported for Media24 from the United Nations in New York on the Sustainable Development Programme. Between 2002 and 2007 he also was the internal ombudsman of Die Burger and a member of the board of the international Organization of Newsombudsmen. In 2007 he was the first winner of South Africa’s National Science and Technology Forum’s SAASTA Award for Science Communication and in 2008 he was elected first president of the newly founded South African Science Journalists’ Association (SASJA). He reports on science for various publications.

Speaker in the following session:

• Promises, promises: The Ethics of unbridled optimism

Michel Claessens

Title: Communication Unit

Organisation: European Commission

Speaker in the following session:

• Getting global coverage for science

John Clare

Title: Managing Director

Organisation: Lions Den Communications

Home location: UK

Biography: JOHN CLARE is an international media and communications consultant with particular expertise in science, medicine and pharmaceuticals. He was a journalist for almost 20 years, working at some of Britain’s leading organisations including ITN, the Daily Mail, TVAM and The Yorkshire Post. In 1992 he founded LionsDen Communications, where he is managing director.

Speaker in the following session:

• Is the growing influence of PR on science journalism in the public interest?

Andrew Cohen

Title: Editor

Organisation: BBC Horizon (UK)

Biography: Andrew Cohen is an Executive Producer for BBC London Factual, managing a wide range of science output across the BBC channels. As Editor of Horizon over the last four years he has overseen the editorial reinvention of this 44 year old science strand, delivering new ways of brining mass audiences to cutting edge science. Alongside Horizon he is currently Executive producer of the 'Prof Regan…' BBC2 consumer science series and the landmark series 'Seven Wonders of the Solar System'. With other projects also in production across BBC1 and BBC 4 Andrew continues to work across a wide range of BBC science output. As a producer Andrew started out on the renowned Tomorrow's World and has an array of award winning productions under his belt, including 'Brain Story', How to Build a Human', 'Edge of Life' and 'Horizon'

Speaker in the following session:

• Science on television: Here today, gone tomorrow?

Stewart Cole

Organisation: Ecole Polyteechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Home location: Switzerland

Biography: Stewart T. Cole, Prof. PhD FRS. Stewart Cole is an international authority in bacterial molecular-genetics and genomics. He has made outstanding contributions in several fields including: bacterial anaerobic electron transport; genome analysis of retroviruses and papillomaviruses; antibiotic resistance mechanisms; and the molecular microbiology of toxigenic clostridia. Prof. Cole was a member of the team of scientists who determined the complete nucleotide sequence of the AIDS virus, HIV1. His studies on isoniazid and multidrug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, together with his pioneering work on the pathogenicity, evolution and genomics of the tubercle and leprosy bacilli, have made him an undisputed leader in the field of mycobacteriology. The findings of his research are of direct relevance to public health and disease-control in both the developing world and the industrialised nations. He has published over 250 scientific papers and review articles, and holds many patents. Prof. Cole studied biology at the University of Wales prior to earning his doctorate from the University of Sheffield in 1979. Subsequently he embarked on a career as a researcher at the University of Umea (Sweden) and the Max-Planck-Institut in Tuebingen (Germany), and then at the Institut Pasteur, where he was in turn a senior research fellow, the head of the bacterial molecular genetics unit, a professor, the Director of Strategic Technologies, and finally, the Institute's Scientific Director. Prof. Cole has received many national and international awards and is a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 2007, Prof. Cole joined the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne where he leads a world-class research unit dedicated to TB drug discovery, and is the Director of the Global Health Institute within the Faculty of Life Sciences.

Speaker in the following session:

• Confronting the killers: European health research leads the fight

Gordon Conway

Title: Chief Scientific Adviser

Organisation: Department for International Development (DFID)

Home location: UK

Biography: Professor Conway was appointed Chief Scientific Adviser to the Department for International Development (DFID) at the beginning of 2005. He also holds the title of Professor of International Development at Imperial College, London. Prior to that he was President of The Rockefeller Foundation from 1998 to 2004 and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex and Chair of the Institute for Development Studies from 1992-1998. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2004 and was made a Knight Commander of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George in 2005. He is a Deputy Lieutenant of the County of East Sussex. He is President of the Royal Geographical Society and Chair of Visiting Arts.

Chair of the following session:

• Recipe for disaster: A growing population and climate change. Can science serve up a solution?

Clive Cookson

Title: Science Editor

Organisation: Financial Times

Home location: UK

Chair of the following session:

• A picture of health? Who shapes public opinion on pharma?

Paddy Coulter

Organisation: Oxford Global Media and Green College, University of Oxford

Home location: UK

Biography: Paddy Coulter is the former Director of Studies at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Green College, Oxford. Paddy previously worked (between 1990 and 2001) as Director of the International Broadcasting Trust (IBT), a specialist independent television production company, producing programmes on global affairs for BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and leading broadcasters around the world. He is currently a Senior Associate at Oxford University's international development centre, Queen Elizabeth House and an Associate Fellow of the University’s Environmental Change Institute. He is also Chair of Broadcasting Support Services (BSS), Trustee of the Media Trust/ Community Channel and Fahamu.

Speaker in the following session:

• A drought or a flood? Climate change reporting around the world

John Davidson

Title: Head of communications

Organisation: UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation

Home location: UK

Speaker in the following session:

• Embargoes in science reporting: Friend or foe?

Kevin Davies

Title: PhD, Editor-in-Chief

Organisation: Bio IT World

Biography: Kevin is the Editor-in-Chief of Bio-IT World, the founding editor of Nature Genetics, and the author of “Cracking the Genome.” Kevin took a degree in Biochemistry from Oxford University, and has a PhD in molecular genetics from the University of London. He endured two years of postdoctoral research at MIT and Harvard Medical School before moving into science publishing. He is currently working on a new book, “The $1000 Genome.”

Speaker in the following session:

• The $1,000 genome is coming: Are we ready?

Giovanni De Santi

Title: Director

Organisation: Institute of Energy, European Commission's Joint Research Centre

Speaker in the following session:

• Green energy technologies

Brian Deer

Title: Journalist

Home location: UK

Speaker in the following session:

• Investigative science reporting: Does it exist?

David Derbyshire

Title: Environment Editor

Organisation: The Daily Mail

Home location: London

Biography: David Derbyshire has been the Daily Mail's Environment Editor since June 2007. He has worked on UK national newspapers since 1996 - first as the Daily Mail's Science Correspondent, then as the Daily Telegraph's Science and Medical Correspondent and more recently as the Daily Telegraph's Consumer Affairs Editor. He spent three years on the Grimsby Evening Telegraph writing mostly about fish.

Speaker in the following session:

• Does science need to be highbrow?

Peter Donnelly

Title: Director

Organisation: Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics (University of Oxford)

Speaker in the following session:

• Human disease genetics and emerging infectious diseases

Paul Drayson

Title: Minister of State for Science and Innovation

Organisation: UK Government

Home location: UK

Biography: Born in 1960, Paul Rudd Drayson was educated at St. Dunstan's College, London and Aston University. In 1982 he took a BSc (Hons) in Production Engineering at Aston sponsored by BL Cars at Longbridge, followed in 1985 by a PhD in Robotics. In 1993 he co-founded vaccine company PowderJect Pharmaceuticals plc in Oxford and was Chairman & Chief Executive until 2003. He floated PowderJect on the London Stock Exchange in 1997 and over ten years he built PowderJect into one of the world's leading vaccine companies with operations in the UK, USA and Scandinavia until selling it for £540 million in 2003. Between 2001 and 2002 he was the Chairman of the BioIndustry Association and was active in the industry's campaign to tackle animal rights extremism. He was Chairman of the Oxford Children's Hospital Fundraising Campaign from 2002-2005. The new Children's Hospital at the John Radcliffe in Oxford opened in early 2007. From 2003-2005, he was Science Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Said Business School, Oxford University involved in the teaching of entrepreneurship to MBA students. He was made a working Peer in May 2004 and was appointed as Minister for Defence Procurement and as Government Spokesman for Defence in the House of Lords in May 2005. In June 2007 he was appointed as Minister of State for Business and Regulatory Reform in addition to his responsibilities in defence and was made a member of the Prime Minister's Business Council. Paul is married to Elspeth and they have five children and live in London and Gloucestershire. In 2004 Paul started racing historic single-seaters and sports cars, moving into modern single-seaters in 2005 in the Formula Palmer Audi championship. In 2006 he raced modern GT cars for the first time with Barwell Motorsport in British GT. In 2007 he competed in the British GT sportscar championship, again with Barwell and team-mate Jonny Cocker, racing a unique bio-ethanol fuelled Aston Martin DBRS9, achieving a historic first win for a bio-fuelled race car, and coming second overall in the championship. In November 2007 he took a leave of absence from the Government to compete in the American Le Mans Series in the United States, a key step towards his goal of racing in the Le Mans 24 Hour endurance race. He remains on the Prime Minister's Business Council.

Speaker in the following session:

• The Big debate: Is the British media the best or worst in the world at covering science?

Ben Duncan

Title: Corporate Communications Officer

Organisation: ECDC

Biography: Ben Duncan ran ECDC’s media relations from 2005, when the organisation started up. Since June 2009 he has been developing the Centre’s corporate communication strategy.

Speaker in the following session:

• Meet the European CDC – a source of data, comment and analysis for science journalists

Fern Elsdon-Baker

Title: Head of Darwin Now

Organisation: British Council

Speaker in the following session:

• Darwin Now Press Briefing

Joseph Emerson

Organisation: Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo

Biography: Joseph obtained his B.Sc. in physics at McGill University in 1993, followed by a Master's degree in experimental nuclear physics from Simon Fraser University. The focus of his Ph.D. degree in theoretical physics, also from SFU, was quantum-classical correspondence for chaotic dynamical systems. After his Ph.D. Joseph worked at MIT, where he studied the interface of randomness, decoherence, and quantum chaos, and developed techniques for understanding and overcoming the challenges confronting the practical implementation of quantum information algorithms. Joseph is currently a faculty member of the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Waterloo, studying quantum computing and the foundations of quantum theory. He is also interested in science communication and serves as a scientific advisor to Perimeter Institute’s award winning outreach department, specifically regarding the creation of “The Quantum Tamers” documentary project.

Chair of the following session:

• From Quantum to Cosmos: New frontiers in science

Hans Engrobb

Organisation: DHI Water Environment Health

Home location: Denmark

Speaker in the following session:

• Nanotechnology: Addressing the risks, fulfilling the promise

Bengt Fadeel

Organisation: Karolinski Institutet

Home location: Sweden

Speaker in the following session:

• Nanotechnology: Addressing the risks, fulfilling the promise

Tom Feilden

Title: Science Correspondent - Today programme

Organisation: BBC

Home location: UK

Speaker in the following session:

• The science controversy that broke the mould: The media battle for human/animal embryos

John Foulkes

Organisation: University of Nottingham

Speaker in the following session:

• Food security and sustainability - can we avert a food crisis?

Daniel Franklin

Title: Executive Editor & Editor-in-Chief

Organisation: The Economist & Economist.com

Biography: Daniel Franklin has been Executive Editor of The Economist since June 2006, when he also became Editor-in-Chief of Economist.com. Since 2003 he has been Editor of The Economist's annual publication, "The World in..."; The World in 2009 was published in November 2008. His special report on corporate social responsibility, “Just good business”, was published in January 2008. He joined The Economist in 1983 to write about Soviet and East European affairs. As the newspaper's Europe Editor from 1986 to 1992 he covered the great European upheavals, from the collapse of communism to the signing of the Maastricht treaty. After a stint as Britain Editor he moved to the United States as Washington Bureau Chief, covering the first Clinton term. In 1997 he moved back to London as Editorial Director of the Economist Intelligence Unit, where he helped to transform a traditional print publisher into an online business providing continuously updated country analysis and forecasts.

Speaker in the following session:

• The death of science magazines: Real or exaggerated?

Sarah Garner

Title: Associate Director (R&D), Clinical and Public Health Directorate

Organisation: National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE)

Home location: UK

Biography: Dr Sarah Garner is the Associate Director for Research and Development at NICE. Sarah is a pharmacist specialising in Health Technology Assessment and has provided technical advice to NICE since 2000. Sarah is on the recently formed Regulation of Medicines Review Panel which carries out independent reviews of licensing authority decisions. The Panel performs the function of the ‘person appointed’ in the Medicines Act 1968 and subsidiary legislation. Sarah is also an Editor for the Cochrane Skin Group. Sarah has a special interest in patient safety and antimicrobials, and previously was Pharmacist Lead for the UK Department of Health Advisory Committee on Antimicrobial Resistance.

Speaker in the following session:

• A picture of health? Who shapes public opinion on pharma?

Jonathan Githens-Mazer

Title: Co-Director

Organisation: Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies

Speaker in the following session:

• Global uncertainties: Security for all in a changing world

Jonathan Glancey

Title: Architecture Correspondent

Organisation: The Guardian

Home location: UK

Chair of the following session:

• Heartbreak and hype: The only way to sell an engineering story

Wolfgang Goede

Title: Science News Editor

Organisation: P.M./Knowledge Matters magazine

Home location: Germany

Biography: Wolfgang C. Goede is a political scientist and communication's scientist as well as science news editor for Germany's leading popular science magazine P.M. / Knowledge matters and co-founder of the World Federation of Science Journalists (WFSJ). He was trained in community organizing by Alinsky disciple Tom Gaudette and worked for various neighborhood organizations in Chicago and San Francisco. He is a member of the Forum Community Organizing (Foco) which engages in introducing and implementing community organizing principles to Germany.

Speaker in the following session:

• Promises, promises: The Ethics of unbridled optimism

Ben Goldacre

Title: Bad Science Columnist

Organisation: The Guardian

Home location: UK

Speaker in the following session:

• Is the growing influence of PR on science journalism in the public interest?

Jeanne P. Goldberg

Title: Director of the Nutrition Communication Program

Organisation: Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University, USA

Biography: Jeanne P. Goldberg, Ph.D., R.D., is professor of nutrition and founding director of the master’s degree program in nutrition communication at the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. She has been co-investigator on several major intervention projects that focus on children and obesity prevention, among them Shape Up Somerville, an obesity-prevention program for elementary school children and their families and on Strong Women: Healthy Hearts, an intervention to reduce cardiovascular disease risk in older women in rural America. She is currently co-investigator on the Balance Project, a replication of Shape Up Somerville that is being disseminated in several cities in the US. For more than 20 years Dr. Goldberg co-authored a nationally syndicated newspaper column on nutrition which ran in more than 160 newspapers in the US as well as in newspapers around the world. Dr. Goldberg directed the Tufts University Nutrition Navigator website project, the first on-line guide to rating nutrition web sites. She also served as Principal Investigator on the project that led to the selection of the Food Guide Pyramid in 1992. She has served on a number of national committees, including the FDA Food Advisory Board and the DRI committee on Nutrition Labeling and Fortification. In April, 2000 Dr. Goldberg served as co-chair of a national Summit on Healthy Eating and Active Living, a conference that brought together a diverse group of experts from the public and private sectors with a shared interest in stemming the rising tide of obesity and other chronic diseases that result from poor food choices and sedentary lifestyles. She currently serves on several advisory boards, among them the Kraft Global Foods Advisory Board, the International Food Information Council Foundation, and the Edelman Public Relations Advisory Board. Dr. Goldberg, a registered dietitian, earned her B.S. degree from Simmons College and her M.Ed. and Ph.D. degrees from Tufts University.

Speaker in the following session:

• Food: The good, the bad and the misreported

Will Goodlad

Title: Editor

Organisation: Penguin

Speaker in the following session:

• ABSW's How to publish a popular science book

John Gribbin

Title: Author

Speaker in the following session:

• ABSW's How to publish a popular science book

Nalaka Gunawardene

Title: Co-Founder and Director

Organisation: Television for Education - Asia Pacific

Home location: Sri Lanka

Biography: Trained as a science writer and development journalist, Nalaka Gunawardene has 20 years of experience in communications, initially in the mainstream print and broadcast media and later in the development sector. He is co-founder and Director of Television for Education - Asia Pacific, a non-profit media foundation, and is on the Boards of Panos South Asia and the Science and Development Network.

Speaker in the following sessions:

• Does science need to be highbrow?
• Covering a disaster from Sichuan to Sri Lanka

Rod Harbinson {panellist}

Title: Head of Environment Programme

Organisation: Panos, UK

Home location: UK

Biography: He focuses on information and communication issues around climate change, agricultural biotechnology and natural resource management. He has been involved in the UN climate change process since its first Conference of the Parties in 1995, organising events, contributing articles and writing policy papers to help bring these issues to the wider world.

Speaker in the following session:

• A drought or a flood? Climate change reporting around the world

Tim Harford

Title: Columnist & Editorial Writer

Organisation: The Financial Times

Chair of the following session:

• Breakonomics, did careless reporting precipitate the global crisis?

Roger Harrabin

Title: Environment Analyst

Organisation: BBC

Home location: UK

Chair of the following session:

• A drought or a flood? Climate change reporting around the world

François Heinderyckx

Title: Professeur Ordinaire

Organisation: ULB

Home location: Belgium

Biography: François Heinderyckx is Professor of media sociology and political communication at Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). He is President of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) and is a member of the Institut des Sciences de la Communication du CNRS (ISCC, Paris).

Speaker in the following session:

• Genetics in the news information in the daily press: a comparison between daily papers in Belgium, Canada and France

Mark Henderson

Title: Science Editor

Organisation: The Times

Biography: Mark Henderson is Science Editor of The Times. He has twice won the Medical Journalists Association / Norwich Union story of the year award, and reports on all aspects of science news. He also writes science columns for the Saturday Review section, and contributes regularly to the comment section. His particular interests include genetics, stem cell research and reproductive medicine. His first book, 50 Genetics Ideas You Really Need To Know, is published by Quercus.

Chair of the following session:

• The $1,000 genome is coming: Are we ready?

Nick Higham

Title: Correspondent

Organisation: BBC News

Home location: UK

Chair of the following session:

• New media, new journalism?

Roger Highfield

Title: Editor

Organisation: New Scientist

Home location: UK

Chair of the following session:

• The Big debate: Is the British media the best or worst in the world at covering science?

Rolf Hilgenfeld

Organisation: University of Lübeck

Home location: Denmark

Speaker in the following session:

• Confronting the killers: European health research leads the fight

Phil Hilts

Title: Director

Organisation: Knight Science Journalism Fellowships - MIT

Home location: UK

Chair of the following session:

• The future of science news?

Annie Hoban

Title: Programme Officer

Organisation: Panos, UK

Speaker in the following session:

• Getting global coverage for science

Hans Hofstraat

Organisation: Philips Research

Home location: Netherlands

Speaker in the following session:

• Nanotechnology: Addressing the risks, fulfilling the promise

Christopher Hood

Title: Chair, Bioethics Working Party on Medical Profiling and Online Medicine

Organisation: Nuffield Council on Bioethics

Biography: Christopher Hood chairs the Nuffield Council on Bioethics Working Party on ‘Medical profiling and online medicine: The ethics of ‘personalised' healthcare in a consumer age. Christopher is Gladstone Professor of Government and Fellow of All Souls College, University of Oxford. He is also Director of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Public Services Research Programme. He is a Fellow of the British Academy (chair of the BA’s Politics Section 2002-2005) and Academician of the Academy of Learned Societies of the Social Sciences. He has previously held chairs at the London School of Economics and the University of Sydney, NSW, and he has also worked at the universities of Glasgow, York, Bielefeld, the National University of Singapore and the City University of Hong Kong. His publications include The Limits of Administration (1976), The Tools of Government (1983) and The Art of the State (1998 and 2000) for which he was awarded the Political Studies Association’s W.J.M. Mackenzie Book Prize in 2000. In 2007, Christopher Hood was awarded the Public Management Research Association's H. George Frederickson Award for Career Contributions to Public Management Research, and was also elected a Fellow of the Sunningdale Institute. In 2008, a prize for Political Theory at the University of Sydney was named in his honour.

Speaker in the following session:

• The $1,000 genome is coming: Are we ready?

Richard Horton

Title: Editor-in-Chief

Organisation: The Lancet

Home location: UK

Biography: Richard Horton is editor-in-chief of The Lancet. A physician by training, he joined The Lancet as an assistant editor in 1990 and has ascended to his current position as editor-in-chief. He was the first president of the World Association of Medical Editors and is the immediate past-president of the U.S. Council of Science Editors. He is an honorary professor both at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and University College London. He is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and a founder fellow of the U.K.’s Academy of Medical Sciences. He currently co-chairs a World Health Organization Scientific Advisory Group on Clinical Trials Registration and is a Council member of the Global Forum for Health Research. He has been a medical columnist for The Observer and writes regularly for the Times Literary Supplementand New York Review of Books. A book about controversies in modern medicine, Second Opinion, was published in 2003.

Speaker in the following session:

• Embargoes in science reporting: Friend or foe?

Saleemul Huq {panellist}

Title: Senior Fellow in the Climate Change Group

Organisation: The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)

Home location: UK

Biography: Expertise in links between climate change and sustainable development, particularly perspectives of developing countries. Current work includes research into vulnerability and adaptation to climate change in the least developed countries. Saleem was a coordinating lead author of the chapter on adaptation in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report (2007).

Speaker in the following session:

• A drought or a flood? Climate change reporting around the world

Alexandra Hyde

Organisation: TARGETS Health Research Consortium

Speaker in the following session:

• Friendship or Friction: How the media relates to the research community

Sania Ibragimova

Organisation: AQUAporin A/S

Home location: Denmark

Biography: Ms. Ibragimova holds a M.Sc. in Nanotechnology Engineering from Lund University and is currently pursuing postgraduate studies at DTU Physics at the Technical University of Denmark. She belongs to the Biomimetic Membrane group led by Claus Helix Nielsen, which is collaborating with Aquaporin A/S, a Danish cleantech company, in a European Commission co-financed MEMBAQ project under the 6th Framework programme in which a novel water membrane concept is developed. Ms Ibragimova has substantial international experience as she has grown up in Russia, Turkey, South Africa and Sweden, spent an exchange semester at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Furthemore, she has carried out her master’s thesis which dealt with solid-supported biomimetic membranes in the group of Professor Marcus Textor at ETH Zurich in Switzerland.

Speaker in the following session:

• Nanotechnology: Addressing the risks, fulfilling the promise

John Ilman

Title: Chair

Organisation: UK Medical Journalists Association

Home location: UK

Biography: John Illman is a freelance journalist, author, university lecturer and trainer. He spent five years as Medical Correspondent on The London Daily Mail; eight years as Health Editor on The London Guardian; and three years as Medical Correspondent on The London Observer. Founder editor of New Psychiatry and a former editor of General Practitioner, he spent six years as chair of the UK Medical Journalists Assn. His reports include The Expert Patient; Pathways to the Mind; Masks and Mirrors of Mental Illness; and Animal Research and Medical Advances (2007). Books include The Body Machine (1981) with heart transplant pioneer Christian Barnard; Use your brain to beat Depression (2004); Use your brain to beat Panic and Anxiety (2005); and Beat Panic and Anxiety (2006). His latest book, Politics, Protest and Progress: 100 years of animal research; The History of the Research Defence Society, was published in 2008.

Speaker in the following session:

• A picture of health? Who shapes public opinion on pharma?

Aisling Irwin

Title: News Editor

Organisation: SciDev.Net

Home location: UK

Speaker in the following sessions:

• Meet the editors forum
• Journalism skills

Alok Jha

Title: Science and Environment Correspondent

Organisation: The Guardian

Home location: UK

Biography: Alok Jha is a science and environment correspondent at the Guardian, specialising in green technologies. In addition to writing news and comment, he presents the Science Weekly podcast and looks after the Guardian's science website. A physics graduate from Imperial College London, he has been at the Guardian since the launch of the science supplement, Life, in 2003.

Speaker in the following sessions:

• Great talent, but are they credible?
• Green energy technologies

Timothy Johnson

Title: RCUK Academic Fellow in Financial Mathematics

Organisation: Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh

Home location: UK

Biography: Tim Johnson is the UK Research Councils' Academic Fellow in Financial Mathematics. Modern finance is increasingly reliant on sophisticated mathematics, frequently using techniques that are more advanced than those typically found in science labs or engineering companies. However, financial firms do not share the scientific ethos of other, technology based, industries. Dr Johnson, from within the Financial Mathematics research community, believes that in order to mitigate future financial crises, science journalists need to be reporting on how finance uses science.

Speaker in the following session:

• Breakonomics, did careless reporting precipitate the global crisis?

Gwyneth Jones

Title: Science Fiction Writer

Home location: UK

Biography: Gwyneth is a writer of science fiction and fantasy, and also writes for children and young adults under the name Ann Halam. Her novels, including White Queen, which deals with first contact with aliens, and Bold as Love and its sequels, a twentyfirst century reworking of Arthurian legend laced with environmental catastrophe and rock and roll, have won many awards, including the James T. Tiptree Jr Award, the World Fantasy Award, and, like her fellow panellists Paul McAuley and Geoff Ryman, the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Philip K. Dick award.

Speaker in the following session:

• As others see us: Science fiction writers on science journalism

Ian Katz

Title: Deputy Editor

Organisation: The Guardian

Speaker in the following session:

• The future of science news?

Fred Kavli

Title: Founder and Chairman

Organisation: The Kavli Foundation

Home location: Norway

Biography: Fred Kavli is founder and chairman of The Kavli Foundation, which is dedicated to advancing science for the benefit of humanity, and promoting increased public understanding and support for scientists and their work. The Foundation's mission is implemented through an international program of research institutes, professorships, symposia and other initiatives in the fields of astrophysics, nanoscience, neuroscience, and theoretical physics. The Foundation also is a founding partner of the Kavli Prizes, which recognize scientists for their seminal advances in astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience. Other initiatives include endowing the Kavli Science Journalism Workshops at the Knight Science Journalism Fellowships at MIT and the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards. A Norwegian-born physicist, entrepreneur, business leader, innovator and philanthropist, Mr. Kavli received his education in physics at the Norwegian Institute of Technology. He later moved to the United States where he would found the Kavlico Corporation, which became one of the world’s largest suppliers of sensors for aeronautic, automotive and industrial applications. The company received many distinguished awards and Mr. Kavli patented numerous technological breakthroughs. He remained CEO and sole shareholder of the company until divesting his interest in 2000 and subsequently founding The Kavli Foundation.

Speaker in the following session:

• How top philanthropists are accelerating science

Douglas Kell

Title: Chief Executive

Organisation: Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)

Speaker in the following session:

• Food security and sustainability - can we avert a food crisis?

Charles Kelly

Organisation: King's College London

Home location: UK

Speaker in the following session:

• Confronting the killers: European health research leads the fight

Sabina Khoza

Title: South African Farmer

Home location: South Africa

Biography: Sabina Khoza is a very proud female farmer. She is the national winner of numerous awards and the international winner of two gold medals. Sabina has also won the Shoprite Checkers Woman of the Year Business Entrepreneurs award in 2004 and is one of the South Africa’s top poultry farmers.

Speaker in the following session:

• Recipe for disaster: A growing population and climate change. Can science serve up a solution?

David King

Title: Director

Organisation: Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University

Home location: UK

Speaker in the following sessions:

• Climate change: Gearing up for Copenhagen
• Sir David King announces The Times/Smith School World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment

Richard Knight

Title: Director

Organisation: Mission21

Biography: Richard Knight is founder and Creative Director of Mission 21, an award-winning communications company with offices in London and Glasgow. Prior to setting up the agency he was unit publicist for Channel 4’s The Big Breakfast, Head of PR for Atlantic 252 (at that time, the world’s largest commercial radio station) and launched Sony’s PlayStation. The Science Museum was Mission 21’s founding client for which Richard launched 15 exhibitions, six permanent galleries and two new buildings. In 2003 Mission 21 won the Institute of Public Relations Excellence Award for “Best Consumer Relationships Campaign” for its work promoting the ‘Grossology’ exhibition. The Agency is best known for its work with science and engineering based organisations. Clients include the Design Council, EADS Astrium (Europe’s largest space company), Engineering Development Trust, EON, Institute of Physics, The Institution of Engineering and Technology, Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Royal Horticultural Society, UK Green Building Council, Learning Grid, Research Councils, UK Space and Wellcome Trust. In the UK, the company promotes National Science and Engineering Week, one of the world’s biggest public science events, for The British Science Association. Mission 21 is also the communications team for Bloodhound SSC, a project to build a 1000mph land speed record car and inspire young people about science and engineering. Richard also directs the Agency’s work on the world’s biggest earth observation programme known as Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES); a joint initiative from the European Commission and European Space Agency. Richard is a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and a member of the Royal Academy of Engineering Communications Committee.

Speaker in the following session:

• Heartbreak and hype: The only way to sell an engineering story

Wayne Koff

Organisation: International AIDS Vaccine Initiative

Biography: Dr. Wayne Koff serves as Senior Vice President for Research and Development (R&D) at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, where he oversees IAVI’s global R&D programs focused on the development of a safe and effective AIDS vaccine. These programs include consortia for HIV vaccine discovery research, laboratories for AIDS vaccine discovery and development, a product development infrastructure for advancing vaccine candidates to clinical trials, and a network of research partnerships for clinical trials and research to expedite AIDS vaccine development. Prior to joining IAVI, Dr. Koff led the NIH AIDS vaccine program (1987-1992), establishing preclinical and clinical trials infrastructure, and served as Vice President, Vaccine Development at United Biomedical, Inc., (1992-1998) where he led the team which conducted the first clinical trials of AIDS vaccines in the developing world.

Speaker in the following session:

• An AIDS vaccine: Mission impossible?

Ralph Kohn

Title: Pharmacologist, entrepreneur, musician and founder of Ralph Kohn Foundation

Biography: Dr Ralph Kohn is a pharmacologist, entrepreneur and musician. He was educated at Manchester University, where he was awarded a BSc, MSc and PhD and received the Wild Prize in Pharmacology. He won postdoctoral fellowships to the Istituto Superiore di Sanità in Rome, where he worked and published with two Nobel Laureates, and to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He subsequently joined the pharmaceutical industry in the Research and Development Division of the U S company Smith Kline & French. After 7 years with the company, he was appointed MD of a Swiss biological company. In 1969 Dr Kohn founded his own company, the first specifically Medical Services company in the UK, specializing in the clinical evaluation of new therapeutic substances. In 1991 Dr Kohn set up the Kohn Foundation, which has supported many scientific, medical and artistic projects. Dr Kohn is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He is an Honorary Fellow of the British Pharmacological Society and the Royal College of Physicians, and a member of Academia Europaea. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society in 2006, and he currently serves on its 350th Anniversary Campaign Board. The Kohn Foundation has supported several important initiatives at the Society, including its Science in Society Programme, the Royal Society Kohn Award for Excellence in Engaging the Public with Science, and the Climate Change Unit of the Royal Society Science Policy Centre.

Speaker in the following session:

• How top philanthropists are accelerating science

Annette Kuesel

Title: Ph.D., Research Manager,

Organisation: TDR

Speaker in the following session:

• Building research capacity and healthcare solutions in Africa to fight TB, river blindness and malaria

Rajendra Kumar Pachauri

Title: Chair

Organisation: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Speaker in the following session:

• Climate change: Gearing up for Copenhagen

Stella Kyriakides

Title: President

Organisation: Europa Donna – The European Breast Cancer Coalition

Home location: Cyprus

Biography: Stella Kyriakides is a Clinical Psychologist specialised in the area of Child and Adolescent Psychology. She worked in the Cyprus Mental health Services until 2006. Special areas of training and interest include child abuse and paediatric psycho-oncology. She has been a member of the WHO working group on the Psycho Social Effects of B Thalassemia, and in the working group on Primary Prevention in Children up to two years of age. She has published widely and presented in a number of conferences in the area of child psychology. She has been a member of the National Committees on Dyslexia, on Violence in the Family, and on Autism. Since being diagnosed with breast cancer in 1996, and again in 2004, she has founded the first Breast cancer Awareness movement in Cyprus, which then became a full member of EUROPA DONNA. She is at present President of EUROPA DONNA Cyprus. Over the past 8 years she has been organising breast cancer awareness activities in her own country, has lobbied parliament , collected thousands of signatures, is a member of the National Screening Committee, and has helped to raise awareness on breast cancer significantly in Cyprus. In 1999 Stella was elected to the European Board of EUROPA DONNA, and was Vice President until 2003 when she was elected to the position of President. She has presented at a number of conferences in Europe, the USA and Australia on breast cancer advocacy and has been a member of many working groups and taught in ESO and Europa Donna Courses on the psychosocial needs of women with breast cancer, the rights of patients and other related topics. In 2006 Stella was elected a Member of the Cypriot Parliament. She is Vice Chair of the Health Committee and a member of the Committees on Human Rights, Equality, and Anti Social behaviour and Drug Abuse. Stella has been honoured with a large number of awards, and was an Olympic Torch bearer for her country for the Athens Olympics. She has currently been nominated as Woman Politician of the year for 2008 and Woman with the greatest NGO contribution in 2008. Stella is married with two sons aged 26 and 22 years.

Speaker in the following session:

• Reporting cancer breakthroughs: Striking the right note

Ray Laflamme

Title: Director

Organisation: The Institute for Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo

Biography: Ray was born in Quebec city and did his undergraduate studies in Physics at Universite Laval. He then moved to Cambridge, England, where did a PhD in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) under the direction of Stephen Hawking. He and Don Page are responsible for having changed Hawking's mind on the reversal of the direction of time in a contracting Universe (see his book "A Brief History of Time"). After his PhD, Ray worked at the University of British Columbia, Cambridge, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. In 2001 he joined the newly founded Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and the University of Waterloo where he and Michele Mosca have started the Institute for Quantum Computing. Ray holds a Canada Research Chair in Quantum Information.

Speaker in the following session:

• From Quantum to Cosmos: New frontiers in science

Lazarus Laizer

Organisation: Habari Maalum Media, Tanzania

Speaker in the following session:

• Friendship or Friction: How the media relates to the research community

Richard Lane

Title: Director of Science

Organisation: Natural History Museum

Home location: UK

Speaker in the following session:

• Strife at the top: Lord May of Oxford in conversation with Tim Radford

Graham Lawton

Title: Deputy Editor

Organisation: New Scientist

Home location: UK

Speaker in the following session:

• Meet the editors forum

Mike Lazaridis

Title: President and Co-CEO

Organisation: Research in Motion (RIM)

Biography: Mike Lazaridis is known in the global wireless community as a visionary, innovator, and engineer of extraordinary talent. He traces his passion for his work to his hometown of Windsor, Ontario where his love of science and fascination with electronics were nurtured in supportive family and school environments. As President and Co-CEO of Research In Motion (RIM), a company Mr. Lazaridis founded while a student at the University of Waterloo, he is responsible for product strategy, research and development, product development, and manufacturing. Mr. Lazaridis is also a leader in his community and a passionate advocate for education and scientific research. He is a member of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Ontario Research and Innovation Council, and a Governor of the Information Technology Association of Canada. Mr. Lazaridis is also a long-standing member of the Board of Governors of the University of Waterloo and, in May 2003, was installed as its Chancellor. Mr. Lazaridis supports his community and country through generous philanthropic gifts made possible by his success in business. He has donated $50 million to the University of Waterloo to help establish the Institute for Quantum Computing. His most noted gift of $100 million established the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Mr. Lazaridis' leadership and tireless effort have generated more than $100 million in additional private and public sector funding for this world centre of excellence, based in Waterloo and affiliated with more than 30 Canadian universities. Since its opening in 2001, Perimeter has attracted the attention of the world's scientific community. In recognition of his technical innovations, the University of Waterloo awarded Mr. Lazaridis with an honorary Doctor of Engineering in 2000 and McMaster University awarded him with an honorary Doctorate in 2005. In 2002, Mr. Lazaridis shared Canada's most prestigious innovation prize, The Ernest C. Manning Principal Award, with RIM colleague Gary Mousseau. Like his engineering and scientific work, Mr. Lazaridis' community achievements have been widely recognized. He was named an Officer to the Order of Canada in 2006 and was listed on the TIME 100 List of Most Influential People in 2005. Mr. Lazaridis is a member of Maclean's Honour Role of distinguished Canadians, is a recipient of the 2002 Kitchener Waterloo Chamber of Commerce Community Leader of the Year Award and has been previously recognized as Canada's Nation Builder of the Year and Ontario's Entrepreneur of the Year.

Speaker in the following session:

• How top philanthropists are accelerating science

David Leigh

Title: Investigations Editor

Organisation: The Guardian

Home location: UK

Biography: David Leigh is the Guardian's investigations editor, whose work was behind the jailing of Jonathan Aitken and the exposure of secret payments by arms company BAE

Speaker in the following session:

• Investigative science reporting: Does it exist?

Malcolm Love

Title: Freelance radio producer; trainer in media skills and science communication

Speaker in the following session:

• Journalism skills

Jan Lublinski

Title: Science journalist, trainer and consultant based in Bonn, Germany

Speaker in the following session:

• Journalism skills

Patrick Luganda

Title: Editor-in-Chief and NECJOGHA Chairman

Organisation: The Farmers Media Link Centre/Farmers Voice Newspaper and NECJOGHA (Network of Climate Journalists of the Greater Horn of Africa)

Home location: Uganda

Biography: Patrick Luganda is a senior science journalist and media trainer based in the Greater Horn of Africa in Kampala, Uganda. He is Chairman of NECJOGHA, the Network of Climate Journalists in the Greater Horn of Africa which covers 10 countries of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Rwanda, Burundi and Somalia. He is the Media Trainer of the ‘Reporting on Women in Agriculture in Africa(RWAA) Project of the International Women’s Media Foundation-IWMF. He is hosts and of Farming Programmes at Vision Voice Radio in Kampala. Patrick Luganda has authored several papers presented at international forums on Climate, The Media and Society. He is a member of the World Federation of Science Journalists where he was an Advisory Board Member of the WFSJ Online Global Science Communication Training Program (SCOOP). Luganda is also an Advisory Member of the Trans Disciplinary e-journal ‘Communication, Cooperation, Participation: Research and Practice for a Sustainable Future( CCP) at The Institute for Environmental and Sustainability Communication (INFU) at the University of Lueneburg, Germany. Luganda won the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) A.H. Boerma global award for exceptional contribution to agricultural journalism in 1998/1999. He served on the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) expert team of End Users of Climate Information for RA 1 (Africa) 2001 to 2006. Luganda is also the CEO of the Farmers Media Link Centre based in Kampala.

Speaker in the following session:

• A drought or a flood? Climate change reporting around the world

Naomi Luxford

Title: PhD student in Heritage Science

Organisation: University of Southampton

Biography: Naomi Luxford is currently finishing her doctorate on Silk Deterioration in Historic Houses. Although environmental control is common within the heritage sector there is little underlying research on the safe limits for the display of many materials.  Silk deterioration is often reported to be caused by light; however research on tapestries found both faded and unfaded silk in the same condition, implying other factors may be important.  Research with English Heritage uses the collection and current display environments to study the critical causes of silk deterioration.  Outcomes include increased understanding of the deterioration mechanisms as well as improved display environments.  Future research may study the deterioration of other materials using similar principles to this project.

Speaker in the following session:

• Heritage science: What next?

Rob Lyons

Title: Deputy Editor

Organisation: Spiked

Speaker in the following session:

• Swine flu or whine flu? Pigging out on scare stories

Gavin MacFadyen

Title: Director

Organisation: Centre for Investigative Journalism

Home location: UK

Speaker in the following session:

• Investigative science reporting: Does it exist?

John Martin

Organisation: Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, UCL Division of Medicine

Speaker in the following session:

• The Big debate: Is the British media the best or worst in the world at covering science?

Luisa Massarani

Organisation: SciDev.Net, Brazil

Speaker in the following session:

• Reporting about climate change

Paul McAuley

Title: Science Fiction Writer

Biography: Paul McAuley is one of a generation of writers who reinvented the genre of “hard” science fiction in the 1980s and 1990s with fiction that incorporated compelling ideas from sciences as far apart as cosmology and molecular biology and characters as diverse as Leonardo da Vinci and a Chinese-Martian messiah. He has won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Philip K. Dick Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Before becoming a full time science fiction writer Paul was a plant biologist working at universities in the UK and the US. His most recent novel is The Quiet War, which was shortlisted for this year’s Arthur C. Clarke Award.

Speaker in the following session:

• As others see us: Science fiction writers on science journalism

Mark McCarthy

Title: Robert Turner Professor of Diabetic Medicine

Organisation: University of Oxford

Speaker in the following session:

• Human disease genetics and emerging infectious diseases

Malcolm McCulloch

Title: University Lecturer

Organisation: University of Oxford

Biography: In 1993 Malcolm moved to Oxford and to start up the Electrical Power Group. The group’s focus is to develop, and commercialise, sustainable energy technologies. Malcolm has active research programmes in the three sectors of transport, domestic consumption and renewable generation. In the transport sector, research is ongoing in developing power trains for hydrogen and electric vehicles, including the LifeCar (a hydrogen sports car developed in conjunction with the Morgan Motor Company). He is also the director of the new Institute for Carbon and Energy Reduction in Transport. The main project in the domestic sector is the development of ultra-smart electricity meters, that useful provides useful information to the home owner on where the energy is being consumed. This has resulted in a spinout company, ISE, which he is a non-exec director. In renewable generation, novel lightweight low speed direct coupled generators are being developed along with a transverse axis tidal turbine. Malcolm has over 50 publications and 15 patent and patent applications.

Speaker in the following session:

• Green energy technologies

Christine McGourty

Title: Science Correspondent

Organisation: BBC

Home location: UK

Chair of the following session:

• Balance not needed? Science journalism and the reporting of creationism

Jenni Metcalfe

Organisation: Australian Science Communicators, E-Connect

Speaker in the following session:

• Reporting about climate change

Stephen Minger

Title: Director of Stem Cell Biology Laboratory

Organisation: Wolfson Centre for Age Related Diseases, King's College London

Home location: UK

Biography: Dr Stephen Minger is the Director of the Stem Cell Biology Laboratory and a Senior Lecturer in the new Wolfson Centre for Age Related Diseases at King's College London. Dr Minger received his PhD in Pathology (Neurosciences) in 1992 from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. From 1992-1994, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, San Diego, where he first began to pursue research in neural stem cell biology. In 1995, Dr Minger was appointed an Assistant Professor in Neurology at The University of Kentucky Medical School. He moved his stem cell research programme to Guy’s Hospital in 1996 and was appointed a Lecturer in Biomolecular Sciences at King's College London in 1998. Over the last 15 years, his research group has worked with a wide range of somatic stem cell populations, as well as mouse and human embryonic stem (ES) cells. In 2002, together with Dr Susan Pickering and Professor Peter Braude, Dr Minger was awarded one of the first two licenses granted by the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority for the derivation of human ES cells. His group subsequently generated the first human embryonic stem cell line in the UK and was one of the first groups to deposit this into the UK Stem Cell Bank.

Speaker in the following session:

• The science controversy that broke the mould: The media battle for human/animal embryos

Steve Mirsky

Organisation: Scientific American

Speaker in the following session:

• New media tools

Martin Moore

Title: Director

Organisation: Media Standards Trust

Home location: UK

Chair of the following session:

• Is the growing influence of PR on science journalism in the public interest?

Oliver Morton

Title: Chief News and Features Editor

Organisation: Nature

Home location: UK

Biography: Oliver Morton is a writer and editor who concentrates on scientific and technological change and their effects. He has been, at various times, the Science and Technology Editor of The Economist, the Editor in Chief of Wired UK and the Chief News and Features Editor at Nature. He has been known to describe his books Mapping Mars and Eating the Sun as “non-fiction SF”.

Chair of the following session:

• As others see us: Science fiction writers on science journalism

Thomas Muster

Organisation: Green Hills Biotechnology

Home location: Austria

Speaker in the following session:

• Confronting the killers: European health research leads the fight

Wayne Myslik

Organisation: PANOS Relay

Speaker in the following session:

• Friendship or Friction: How the media relates to the research community

Gautam Naik

Organisation: Wall St Journal

Home location: USA

Speaker in the following session:

• The challenges of regional reporting

Esther Nakkazi {panellist}

Title: Journalist

Organisation: NECJOGHA (Network of Climate Journalists of the Greater Horn of Africa)

Home location: Uganda

Biography: Esther NAKKAZI is a journalist from Kampala, Uganda and has been a freelance reporter writing in-depth and exclusive regional articles for one of the premier papers on the continent- The East African. She is both a business and health reporter and focuses on issues of Information Communication Technology (ICT), HIV/AIDS and science generally. Esther currently serves as a women’s representative in the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and she is a member of the Media Node –a journalists’ group for ICT writers in her country. Prior to joining the East African, Esther carried out research for the Makerere Institute of Social Research on the impact of ICTs in telecentres in rural communities and has done research on the digital divide in Uganda for the Uganda Communications Commission, a regulator of the communication industry.

Speaker in the following session:

• A drought or a flood? Climate change reporting around the world

Esther Nakkazi

Title: Journalist

Organisation: NECJOGHA (Network of Climate Journalists of the Greater Horn of Africa)

Biography: Esther NAKKAZI is a journalist from Kampala, Uganda and has been a freelance reporter writing in-depth and exclusive regional articles for one of the premier papers on the continent- The East African. She is both a business and health reporter and focuses on issues of Information Communication Technology (ICT), HIV/AIDS and science generally. Esther currently serves as a women’s representative in the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and she is a member of the Media Node –a journalists’ group for ICT writers in her country. Prior to joining the East African, Esther carried out research for the Makerere Institute of Social Research on the impact of ICTs in telecentres in rural communities and has done research on the digital divide in Uganda for the Uganda Communications Commission, a regulator of the communication industry.

Speaker in the following session:

• The challenges of regional reporting

Miles O’Brien

Title: Freelance journalist and former CNN correspondent

Biography: Miles O'Brien is a 26-year broadcast news veteran, including nearly 17 years as CNN’s science, aerospace, technology and environment correspondent and as a network anchor. Following CNN's decision in December, 2008, to disband its science and technology unit, O'Brien became a freelance journalist based in New York City. He now covers the same topics across various media platforms, including his own blog at www.milesobrien.com. He is also an aviation expert and licensed pilot.

Speaker in the following session:

• Science journalism in crisis?

Heinz Ossenbrink

Title: Head of the Renewable Energies Unit

Organisation: Institute of Energy, European Commission's Joint Research Centre

Speaker in the following session:

• Green energy technologies

Willem Ouwehand

Organisation: University of Cambridge

Home location: UK

Speaker in the following session:

• Confronting the killers: European health research leads the fight

Sonia O’Connor

Title: Research Felllow in Conservation

Organisation: University of Bradford

Biography: Dr Sonia O'Connor is a Research Fellow in Conservation (Archaeological Sciences) at the University of Bradford.  Sonia O’Connor’s research areas include the identification, conservation and decay of osseous and keratinous materials, the fabrication of iron mail and radiographic imaging of cultural material. Sonia's research in this area has been utilised widely and recent projects include a five-year research project into the use of X-radiography in the study and conservation of textiles.

Speaker in the following session:

• Heritage science: What next?

Philippe Pajot

Title: Science Journalist

Organisation: French Association of Science Journalists

Home location: France

Speaker in the following sessions:

• The challenges of regional reporting
• Genetics in the news information in the daily press: a comparison between daily papers in Belgium, Canada and France

Penny Park

Organisation: Science Media Centre, Canada

Home location: Canada

Speaker in the following session:

• How to start up a science media centre.. and keep it running in top gear

Rosanna Peeling

Title: Professor of Diagnostics Research

Organisation: London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Speaker in the following session:

• Human disease genetics and emerging infectious diseases

Mark Peplow

Title: News Editor

Organisation: Nature 

Speaker in the following session:

• ABSW's How to publish a popular science book

Jacques Poncins

Title: Scientific Journalist

Home location: Belgium

Biography: Jacques Poncin (60) is now retired after 36 years as science journalist for the belgian newspaper Le Soir. He was specially in charge of the biomedical topics. He is also autor or co-autor of two books, one on solar energy ("Le Soleil, énergie de l'espoir" , Rossel Editions) and one about pain ( "Face à face avec la douleur" , Le Vif Editions). He studied social sciences in the University of Liège (Licencié en sciences politiques et sociales, 1970). He is married and has two children.

Speaker in the following session:

• Genetics in the news information in the daily press: a comparison between daily papers in Belgium, Canada and France

Frank Raes

Title: Head of Unit Climate Change

Organisation: Institute for Environment and Sustainability

Speaker in the following session:

• Green energy technologies

James Randerson

Title: Environment Website Editor

Organisation: Guardian News and Media

Home location: UK

Biography: James Randerson is environment website editor at the Guardian. He has previously worked as science correspondent for the paper and been deputy news editor at New Scientist magazine. He has a PhD in Evolutionary Genetics.

Chair of the following session:

• Investigative science reporting: Does it exist?

Speaker in the following session:

• Balance not needed? Science journalism and the reporting of creationism

Chris Rapley

Title: Director

Organisation: Science Museum; formerly of the British Antarctic Survey and International Polar Year

Speaker in the following session:

• Reporting about climate change

Martin Rees

Title: Astronomer Royal

Organisation: Trinity College, Cambridge

Biography: Martin Rees is Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics and Master of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. He holds the honorary title of Astronomer Royal. He has received many awards, is the author or co-author of more than 500 research papers, mainly on astrophysics and cosmology, as well as seven books (five for general readership), and numerous magazine and newspaper articles on scientific and general subjects. He has broadcast and lectured widely. In 2005 he was appointed to the House of Lords and elected President of the Royal Society.

Speaker in the following session:

• From Quantum to Cosmos: New frontiers in science

John Rennie

Title: Former Editor-in-Chief

Organisation: Scientific American

Home location: USA

Biography: John Rennie was only the seventh editor in chief in the nearly 155-year history of Scientific American magazine. Rennie joined the staff of Scientific American as a member of the Board of Editors in 1989, having previously worked as a science writer covering biology, technology and medicine for a variety of publications. He helped to plan and edit several of Scientific American's distinguished single-topic issues, including Mind and Brain (September 1992, the best selling special issue in SA's history) and Life, Death and the Immune System

Speaker in the following sessions:

• The future of science news?
• The death of science magazines: Real or exaggerated?
• Meet the editors forum
• Editors discuss the future of science journalism

Michael Richards

Title: National Cancer Director

Organisation: NHS England

Home location: UK

Biography: Professor Richards was appointed as the first National Cancer Director in October 1999. In 2000 he led the development of the NHS Cancer Plan, the first comprehensive strategy to tackle cancer in England and was then responsible for overseeing its implementation. More recently he has led the development of the Cancer Reform Strategy (published in December 2007) and the development of the first ever End of Life Care Strategy (published in July 2008). He works closely with ministers, parliamentarians, civil servants, clinicians, managers, patient groups, charities, researchers and industry to achieve the objectives of the plan. Prior to his appointment to the Department of Health, Prof Richards was a Consultant Medical Oncologist at Guy's Hospital specialising in breast cancer (1986 - 1995) and Sainsbury Professor of Palliative Medicine at St Thomas' Hospital (1995 - 1999). He was also Clinical Director of Cancer Services at Guy's and St Thomas' from 1993 to 1999. Mike was closely involved in the establishment of the National Cancer Research Institute in 2001 and has been a board member throughout its first five years. Between April 2006 and March 2008 he was Chairman of the NCRI Board in addition to his role as National Cancer Director. In June 2008 Mike was asked by Alan Johnson, Secretary of State for Health, to lead a review of policy relating to patients who choose to pay privately for drugs that are not funded on the NHS. His recommendations were accepted and his report was published in November 2008. In 2001 he was appointed CBE in the New Year's honours.

Speaker in the following session:

• Reporting cancer breakthroughs: Striking the right note

Geoff Ryman

Title: Author

Biography: Geoff Ryman is a writer who also teaches writing at the University of Manchester. He has written science fiction, fantasy and historical novels, and created one of the first novels conceived specifically as a website, 253. He has won the World Fantasy Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, the James Tiptree Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He is associated with the “Mundane” school of science fiction, which eschews interstellar travel, time machines and the like in favour of the science, promises and threats of the here and now. Geoff has also worked as a public information officer, working on some of the UK government’s first websites. His most recent book is The King’s Last Song, set in Cambodia, and he is currently working on an historical novel set in America.

Speaker in the following session:

• As others see us: Science fiction writers on science journalism

Jonathan Sanderson

Title: Ex-BBC Producer, New Media Expert

Biography: Jonathan trained as a physicist and spent many years as a television producer. He was involved in many landmark children’s science programmes for British television. He is now a media consultant/freelance film-maker, trying to reignite public-service children's media, particularly around science and engineering.

Speaker in the following session:

• Science on television: Here today, gone tomorrow?

Julie Scholes

Title: Professor of Plant and Microbial Sciences

Organisation: University of Sheffield

Biography: Julie Scholes studied for a PhD in Physiological Plant Pathology at the University of Wales, Bangor. In 1986 she moved to the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, at Sheffield University to take up a Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Research Fellowship and in 1987 obtained a Royal Society University Research Fellowship which she held until 1995. She then took up a lectureship in the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences where she is currently Professor of Plant and Microbial Sciences. Julie’s research interests are centred on understanding the physiological and molecular interactions between plants and their parasites. A specific focus of her research is the root parasitic weed Striga which infects the staple cereal crops of sub Saharan Africa causing devastating losses in yield. Her work spans from the ecological to the molecular and encompasses laboratory and field work, the latter in Africa. Her research group exploits a range of genomic and comparative genomic technologies to gain an understanding of the mechanisms underlying susceptibility or resistance in cereal hosts to Striga. More recent interests include investigations of Striga diversity and the nature of host-parasite specificity.

Speaker in the following session:

• Food security and sustainability - can we avert a food crisis?

Christina Scott

Title: African News Editor

Organisation: SciDev.Net

Home location: South Africa

Biography: Christina is a journalist and author in South Africa, where she coordinates SciDev.Net's contributors from 40 sub-Saharan Africa countries. Previously editor of the South African Broadcasting Corporation's science desk, she launched award-winning weekly television and radio science programmes and continues to do live radio. Christina mentors African reporters through the World Federation of Science Journalists. Her latest book, published by Heinemann, is aimed at promoting health in children and teens across Africa.

Speaker in the following sessions:

• Does science need to be highbrow?
• Journalism skills

Chris Shaw

Title: Professor of Neurology and Neurogenetics

Organisation: Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London

Home location: UK

Biography: Christopher Shaw is Professor of Neurology and Neurogenetics, Head of the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Director of the Medical Research Council Centre for Neurodegeneration Research and Director of the Wohl Clinical Neuroscience Institute at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London. He is an Honorary Consultant Neurologist at King's College Hospital where he runs a clinic for patients with motor neuron disease (MND, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). He also runs a clinic at Guy's Hospital for people with inherited neurological disorders. His early training in General Medicine and Neurology was conducted in New Zealand. He came to the UK in 1992 on a Wellcome Trust Fellowship. While studying Neurobiology in Cambridge he met two families with an inherited form of MND. This sparked an interest in hunting down disease-causing gene defects in order to gain a better understanding of what causes motor nerve degeneration and develop new therapies for people with MND. With this goal he moved to the Institute of Psychiatry in 1995. Over the past 14 years his group have discovered two new MND genes and identified a novel disease mechanism. One aspect of his work has been to investigate the potential of embryonic stem cells to model motor neuron disease in the laboratory. Through this he became engaged in the ethical debate about the use of embryonic stem cells in research.

Speaker in the following session:

• The science controversy that broke the mould: The media battle for human/animal embryos

David Shukman

Title: Science Correspondent

Organisation: BBC TV News

Home location: UK

Chair of the following session:

• Climate change: Gearing up for Copenhagen

Simon Singh

Title: Science journalist, broadcaster and author

Biography: Simon Singh grew up in Somerset, and completed his undergraduate work at Imperial College London, and his Ph.D. at Cambridge University and CERN. He has worked with the BBC’'s Science Department since 1990. In 1996, Singh directed the award-winning documentary "Fermat's Last Theorem". The documentary was also nominated for an Emmy under the American title "The Proof". He is the author of three books, including, "Big Bang", a history of cosmology. His first book, "Fermat's Last Theorem", was the first book about mathematics to become a No.1 bestseller in the UK.

Chair of the following session:

• From Quantum to Cosmos: New frontiers in science

Sean Smith

Organisation: Intrinsiq Materials Ltd

Home location: UK

Biography: Sean graduated with an honours degree in Microbiology from the University of Kansas where he also conducted research in molecular biology. He has spent nearly 20 years working in the specialty chemicals, pharmaceuticals and specialty materials industries working extensively within the plastics, personal care, coatings, biocides and pharmaceutical markets. His commercial experience includes a variety of senior roles in sales, marketing, strategic business development, and technology acquisition and licensing. Sean joined Intrinsiq Materials from Ciba in Basel, Switzerland where he lead third party technology acquisitions and licensing for a variety of corporate projects. In addition to working for several other blue chip firms, including Baker Petrolite and Honeywell, Sean also has previous start-up experience with former California-based IP licensing, valuation and strategy firm, pl-x (now part of Access IT).

Speaker in the following session:

• Nanotechnology: Addressing the risks, fulfilling the promise

Chris Smith

Organisation: The Naked Scientists

Home location: UK

Speaker in the following sessions:

• Workshop: Pimp my podcast: Using multimedia to enhance your reporting
• Workshop: Pimp my podcast: Using multimedia to enhance your reporting

Paul Stoffels

Title: Company Group Chairman, Global Research & Development, Pharmaceuticals

Organisation: Johnson & Johnson

Home location: USA

Biography: Dr. Paul Stoffels is Company Group Chairman, Global Research & Development, Pharmaceuticals at Johnson & Johnson. As such, he is focused on leading global teams to discover and develop new and innovative treatments for unmet medical needs in five end-to-end therapeutic areas: oncology, immunology, neuroscience (including pain), internal medicine, and virology. Previously, Dr. Stoffels was Company Group Chairman, Virology, where he led both R&D and commercialization activities for one of the newest business segments of Johnson & Johnson. Dr. Stoffels has more than 15 years global experience in both pharmaceutical and HIV/AIDS R&D. He joined the Janssen Research Foundation (JRF) and worked for four years as Physician/Researcher in Kinshasa (Congo) and Kigali (Rwanda). His research work in Africa was focused on AIDS and infectious diseases. In 1991, he became the head of development for infectious diseases at JRF in Beerse, Belgium, where he was instrumental in the development of antifungal drugs. In 1997, he left Janssen to become CEO of Tibotec-Virco, where he grew the company from a technology-based research company into an integrated pharmaceutical R&D organization focused on the discovery and development of new drugs and diagnostics for HIV/AIDS and infectious diseases. Tibotec-Virco was acquired by Johnson & Johnson in 2002, and is the focal point of R&D of next-generation HIV drugs active on multi-drug resistant virus, including the protease inhibitor PREZISTAÔ, which was launched in 2006, and the NNRTI, INTELENCEÔ, which is approved by the U.S. FDA early 2008. Both during and after his M.D. training, Dr. Stoffels had a special interest for the health care problems in the developing world, especially Africa. He was instrumental in building the relationship between UNAIDS/WHO and the pharmaceutical industry with regard to the provision of HIV drugs in Africa. He has a continued interest to explore solutions for health care problems in the developing world. He also represents Johnson & Johnson for in-depth discussions on Health related matters at the yearly World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Dr Stoffels studied Medicine at the University of Diepenbeek and the University of Antwerp in Belgium and Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium. His application for the Academy’s Board of Governors membership is an expression of his solid belief in the strength of scientific open innovation enhanced by a multitude of global collaborations.

Speaker in the following session:

• A picture of health? Who shapes public opinion on pharma?

Mike Stratton

Title: Head

Organisation: Cancer Genome Project (Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute)

Speaker in the following session:

• Human disease genetics and emerging infectious diseases

Paul Sutherland

Title: Journalist

Home location: UK

Biography: Paul has been a journalist for over 25 years on leading Fleet Street titles including the Daily Mirror, Today and The Sun. His main interest outside work was always amateur astronomy, and, in 2005, he decided to combine his journalistic skills and expertise in space science to take his career in a new direction. Paul's mission statement is simple: To convey the excitement of astronomy and space research to ordinary people accurately but in plain English, avoiding complex jargon. His commissions have included several features for top-selling UK daily newspaper The Sun, but his work has appeared in titles from The Times to the Daily Express. Paul has written a full-colour guide to astronomy since the agency was set up and helped produce a second book that was aimed at children. His latest book, about the solar system, was produced for Reader's Digest Called Where Did Pluto Go?, it is being published in various editions worldwide. He has also edited or contributed to leading astronomy publications, is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and belongs to the Association of British Science Writers.

Speaker in the following session:

• Does science need to be highbrow?

Ed Sykes

Title: Press Officer

Organisation: Science Media Centre, UK

Chair of the following session:

• Swine flu or whine flu? Pigging out on scare stories

Peter Tallack

Title: Literary agent

Organisation: The Science Factory

Speaker in the following session:

• ABSW's How to publish a popular science book

Paul Temple

Title: Uk Farmer and ex-vice President

Organisation: NFU

Home location: UK

Speaker in the following session:

• Recipe for disaster: A growing population and climate change. Can science serve up a solution?

Phil Thomson

Title: Vice President, Corporate Media Relations

Organisation: GlaxoSmithKine plc

Home location: UK

Biography: Phil Thomson is Vice President of Corporate Media Relations at GlaxoSmithKline, responsible for overseeing the company’s engagement with the media. After graduating from Durham University, he joined Glaxo Wellcome as a commercial trainee in 1996, moving from pharmaceutical brand marketing to product communications. In 1999 he became a Director of Media Relations for Glaxo Wellcome plc and in 2001, took up the position of Director, Investor Relations for GSK. In 2004, he returned to Corporate Media Relations as Vice President. During his time with GSK, Phil has worked on various matters related to corporate strategy and performance, product and data announcements, and matters related to GSK’s reputation.

Speaker in the following session:

• Reporting cancer breakthroughs: Striking the right note

Kip Thorne

Title: Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics

Organisation: California Institute of Technology (Caltech)

Biography: Born in Logan Utah in 1940, Kip Thorne received his B.S. degree from Caltech in 1962 and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1965. He returned to Caltech where he is now The Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics. Thorne's research has focused on Einstein's general theory of relativity and on astrophysics, with emphasis on relativistic stars, black holes and especially gravitational waves. He was cofounder (with R. Weiss and R.W.P. Drever) of the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) Project, with which he is still associated. He has received many awards, including the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award for his book for nonscientists, "Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy".

Speaker in the following session:

• From Quantum to Cosmos: New frontiers in science

Susanna Thorpe

Organisation: WrenMedia

Speaker in the following session:

• Friendship or Friction: How the media relates to the research community

Alan Thorpe

Title: Chair-elect

Organisation: Research Councils UK (RCUK)

Speaker in the following session:

• UK research: Excellence with impact

Neil Turok

Title: Director

Organisation: Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

Biography: Dr. Neil Turok earned his PhD at Imperial College. After a postdoctoral fellowship in Santa Barbara, he was appointed Associate Scientist at Fermilab before moving to Princeton University where he became full Professor of Physics in 1994. In 1997 he was appointed to the Chair of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge University. In October, 2008, he moved to the Perimeter Institute as its new Director. Dr. Turok has worked in a number of areas of theoretical physics and cosmology, focusing on developing fundamental theories and new observational tests. Born in South Africa, in 2003, Dr. Turok founded the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences. Based in Cape Town, this postgraduate educational centre supports the development of mathematics and science across the African continent. For this work and for his contributions to theoretical physics, in 2008 Dr. Turok was awarded a TED Prize and a “Most Innovative People” award at the World Summit on Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Speaker in the following session:

• From Quantum to Cosmos: New frontiers in science

Axel Ullrich

Title: Director

Organisation: Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute of Biology

Home location: Germany

Speaker in the following session:

• Reporting cancer breakthroughs: Striking the right note

Fran Unsworth

Title: Head of Newsgathering

Organisation: BBC

Home location: UK

Speaker in the following session:

• Editors discuss the future of science journalism

Saskia Walcott

Title: Head of Communications

Organisation: ESRC

Speaker in the following session:

• Global uncertainties: Security for all in a changing world

Pawel Walewski

Title: Medical Journalist

Organisation: Polityka

Home location: Poland

Biography: Pawel Walewski is a Polish medical journalist based in Warsaw. After qualifying as a doctor at Silesian Medical University Pawel Walewski gave up medicine to start studying journalism at Warsaw University. Since 1996 he has worked as a journalist for the weekly news magazine Polityka. He works in the Science Section and has responsibility for reporting on diverse medical issues including the pharmaceutical market and healthcare reforms. He also works on a freelance basis for a number of health magazines. Over the past few years he has been awarded several prestigious grants and prizes in recognition of the quality of his journalistic work (Grand Press (2003), Personality of the Year in Polish Health System (2003), Embrace Journalism Award (2005), ESO’s Best Cancer Reporter Award (2007) and the Association of German Medical Journalists’ European Journalists’ Prize (2008)).

Speaker in the following session:

• Reporting cancer breakthroughs: Striking the right note

Mark Walport

Title: Director

Organisation: Wellcome Trust

Speaker in the following session:

• The $1,000 genome is coming: Are we ready?

Fergus Walsh

Title: Medical Correspondent

Organisation: BBC

Speaker in the following session:

• Swine flu or whine flu? Pigging out on scare stories

Geoff Watts

Title: Presenter

Organisation: BBC Radio 4, science programme Leading Edge

Home location: UK

Chair of the following session:

• Building research capacity and healthcare solutions in Africa to fight TB, river blindness and malaria

Speaker in the following session:

• Embargoes in science reporting: Friend or foe?

Robin Weiss

Organisation: University College London

Biography: Robin A. Weiss PhD, FRS, is Professor of Viral Oncology at University College London and was previously Director of the Institute of Cancer Research, London. Robin is a virologist with an interest in emerging infections and a special interest in retroviruses. Earlier in his career, he discovered endogenous retroviral genomes and identified CD4 as the cell surface receptor for HIV. He currently co-ordinates an international research consortium on neutralizing antibodies to HIV which is part of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Collaboration on AIDS Vaccine Discovery. Robin is President of the Society for General Microbiology.

Speaker in the following session:

• An AIDS vaccine: Mission impossible?

Jon West

Organisation: Rothamsted Research

Speaker in the following session:

• Food security and sustainability - can we avert a food crisis?

Chris Whitty

Title: Head of DFID Research

Organisation: Department for International Development (DFID) http://www.dfid.gov.uk

Chair of the following session:

• Friendship or Friction: How the media relates to the research community

Robyn Williams

Title: Producer

Organisation: ABC

Home location: Australia

Chair of the following session:

• Great talent, but are they credible?

Brendan Wren

Organisation: London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Biography: Brendan Wren studied for a PhD in Physical Chemistry at Leicester University, before changing subject area to Medical Microbiology and moving St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London. In 1999 he became Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis at The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and has been Head of the Pathogen Molecular Biology Unit since 2001. His research interests include determining the genetic basis by which bacteria cause disease especially foodborne pathogens such as Campylobacter jejuni, Listeria moncytogenes, Clostridium difficile and the enteropathogenic Yersinia. His research group exploits a range of post genome research strategies to gain a comprehensive understanding of how these pathogens function and how they interact with their respective hosts. More recent interests include emerging infectious diseases and understanding the evolution of bacterial virulence.

Speaker in the following session:

• Food security and sustainability - can we avert a food crisis?

Mohammed Yahia

Title: Former Editor

Organisation: Health & Science section, IslamOnline (Egypt)

Home location: Egypt

Speaker in the following session:

• Meet the editors forum

Maureen Young

Title: Stone Heritage scientist

Organisation: Historic Scotland

Biography: Dr Maureen Young, at Historic Scotland, specialises in built environment research and her main fields of interest lie in the investigation and treatment of factors involved in the deterioration of building sandstones and granites. Her work has included a range of built environment research projects including stone cleaning, biocide and conservation treatments, building stone decay and damp problems.

Speaker in the following session:

• Heritage science: What next?

Anton Zeilinger

Title: Professor of physics

Organisation: University of Vienna

Biography: Anton Zeilinger is Director of the Vienna branch of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He is renowned for his realization of quantum teleportation with photons, and he has performed many experiments with entangled photons, including quantum cryptography, all-optical one-way quantum computation and a number of quantum gates. He has held positions at the Technical University of Vienna, M.I.T., the Technical University of Munich, the University of Innsbruck, the Collége de France, the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He has received many awards for his scientific work, among the most recent being the King Faisal Prize (2005), and the first Newton Prize of the Institute of Physics (2007).

Speaker in the following session:

• From Quantum to Cosmos: New frontiers in science