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Astronomer Jill Tarter is Director of the Institute's Center for SETI Research, and also holder of the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI. She is one of the few researchers to have devoted her career to hunting for signs of sentient beings elsewhere, and there are few aspects of this field that have not been affected by her work. Jill was the lead for Project Phoenix, a decade-long SETI scrutiny of about 750 nearby star systems, using telescopes in Australia, West Virginia and Puerto Rico. While no clearly extraterrestrial signal was found, this was the most comprehensive targeted search for artificially generated cosmic signals ever undertaken. Now Jill heads up the Institute's efforts to build and operate the Allen Telescope Array, a massive new instrument that will eventually comprise 350 antennas, each 6 meters in diameter. This telescope will be able to enormously increase the speed, and the spectral search range, of the Institute's hunt for signals. Indeed, being as much of an icon of SETI as Jill is, perhaps it is not surprising that the Jodie Foster character in the movie *Contact* is largely based on this real-life researcher.

Daniel C. Dennett, the author of *Breaking the Spell (Viking, 2006), Freedom Evolves (Viking Penguin, 2003) and Darwin's Dangerous Idea (Simon &Schuster, 1995)*, is a university professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He was born in Boston in 1942 and received his BA in philosophy from Harvard in 1963. He then went to Oxford to work with Gilbert Ryle, under whose supervision he completed the D.Phil. in philosophy in 1965. He taught at U.C. Irvine from 1965 to 1971, when he moved to Tufts, where he has taught ever since, aside from periods visiting at Harvard, Pittsburgh, Oxford, and the cole Normale Suprieure in Paris. His first book, *Content and Consciousness*, appeared in 1969, followed by *Brainstorms (1978), Elbow Room (1984), The Intentional Stance (1987), Consciousness Explained (1991), Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995), Kinds of Minds (1996), and Brainchildren: A Collection of Essays 1984-1996 (MIT Press and Penguin, 1998). Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness*, was published in 2005 by MIT Press. He co-edited *The Mind's I* with Douglas Hofstadter in 1981. He is the author of over three hundred scholarly articles on various aspects on the mind, published in journals ranging from Artificial Intelligence and Behavioral and Brain Sciences to Poetics Today and the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. He gave the John Locke Lectures at Oxford in 1983, the Gavin David Young Lectures at Adelaide, Australia, in 1985, and the Tanner Lecture at Michigan in 1986, among many others. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Science. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1987. He was the co-founder (in 1985) and co-director of the Curricular Software Studio at Tufts, and has helped to design museum exhibits on computers for the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Science in Boston, and the Computer Museum in Boston.

Ms. Lopez is a playwright and actress. Her *Sonia Flew* won the Elliot Norton Award for Best New Play and the *IRNE (Independent Reviewers of New England)* for Best Play and Best Production. It has been produced at the Huntington Theatre, Coconut Grove Playhouse, the Contemporary American Theatre Festival, Laguna Playhouse, the Summer Playwrights Festival in New York, the Milagro Theatre and the Steppenwolf Theatre. It was also broadcast on NPR's "The Play's The Thing!" Her other award-winning plays include *God Smells Like a Roast Pig* (Women on Top Festival, Elliot Norton Award--Outstanding Solo Performance,) *Midnight Sandwich/Medianoche *(Coconut Grove Playhouse),* The Order of Things *(CentaStage, Kennedy Center Fund for New Plays), and * How Do You Spell Hope?* (Underground Railway Theatre). Lopez was the first recipient of the Charlotte Woolard Award, given by the Kennedy Center to a promising new voice in American Theatre. Lopez is also an actress who has appeared in regional theatres across the country, and works in film and radio. She has served as a panel member for the National Endowment for the Arts and has enjoyed residencies with Sundance and The New York Theatre Workshop. She teaches theatre and performance at Wellesley College and playwriting at Boston University.

Amy Smith, who has a master's degree in mechanical engineering and teaches at MIT, isn't interested in building faster computers or bigger jetliners. She's thinking about how to cook dinner in a Haitian slum. Smith and her students have developed a way to turn this plentiful (and otherwise useless) material into clean-burning charcoal by carbonizing it in a covered oil drum. Smith, a practitioner of humanitarian engineering, wants to solve everyday problems for rural families in the developing world: where to find clean water, how to preserve vegetables for market, how to do laundry without electricity or plumbing. Smith's inventions include a hammer mill for grinding grain into floura task African women usually do by hand and a portable kit to test drinking water for contaminating bacteria. Smith, who was awarded a Macarthur Fellowship in 2004, runs MIT's IDEAS Competition, for which teams of student engineers design projects to make life easier in the developing world.

Dr. Paula A. Johnson is a cardiologist, the Executive Director of the Connors Center for Women's Health and Gender Biology and Chief of the Division of Women's Health at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. At Brigham and Women's Hospital, Dr. Johnson has built the leading program in women's health in the United States. Dr. Johnson is a clinical epidemiologist and is recognized as an international expert in the area of defining and understanding the quality of cardiology care for women and minorities. She founded the Center for Cardiovascular Disease in Women at Brigham and Women's Hospital that is dedicated to developing new sex- and gender-specific strategies for prevention, treatment and rehabilitation of coronary heart disease in women. Dr. Johnson is the recipient of many awards recognizing her contributions in women's and minority health and is featured as a national leader in medicine by the National Library of Medicine. The Mayor of the City of Boston appointed Dr. Johnson as a Commissioner and Chair of the Board of the Boston Public Health Commission in 2007.

Conor Walsh, winner of a competition to be the IDEAS from the Next Generation speaker at the conference, is a Ph.D candidate in mechanical engineering at MIT. His winning idea is a high-tech medical device called Robopsy, a robotic surgical aid for doctors performing biopsies that could make the procedure safer and more accurate. It has already received $80,000 in prize and development money and a provisional patent. Walsh's goal to develop practical engineering technologies that directly help humanity is realized in the lightweight, disposable plastic structure that holds and manipulates a biopsy needle.

Eric von Hippel is a professor and head of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He specializes in research related to the nature and economics of distributed and open innovation. He also develops and teaches about practical methods that firms can use to improve their product and service development processes.

Barry Zuckerman is a medical professor and chair of pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine and chief of pediatrics at Boston Medical Center. Also a co-founder of Reach Out and Read, a national program that has put more than 20 million free books in the hands of children through doctor's offices. He is currently serving as chairman of the Read Early, Read Aloud campaign sponsored by the Southern California First 5 Children and Families Commission. Dr. Zuckerman has been a national leader in expanding pediatric health care to more effectively address the needs of low income and minority children. In addition to Reach Out and Read, he started the Medical-legal Partnership for Children (MLPC) at Boston Medical Center, which uses legal advocacy to address the social causes of the health and developmental problems in low-income children. He also co-founded the Healthy Steps Program for Children, a strategic program designed to keep pediatricians informed of new findings in early childhood development. An author of more than 200 scientific publications, Dr. Zuckerman has also served as the editor for nine books. He has served on prestigious national committees, including the National Commission on Children and the Carnegie Commission on Meeting the Needs of Young Children. Dr. Zuckerman has been a consultant for UNICEF, providing technical assistance to Turkey and Bangladesh as they strengthen their child health services.

Wayne Franklin is a Davis Distinguished Professor of American Literature who was recently awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his work on American writer James Fennimore Cooper. Franklin is Northeastern's second English faculty member in its history to garner such an award and was one of 185 grantees chosen from among 3,200 applicants to the Guggenheim Foundation in New York City. Franklin's Guggenheim fellowship will enable the continuation of his work and research on American writer James Fenimore Cooper, the American novelist credited with the invention of the frontier novel, the sea novel, and the American historical romance.