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Dr. Spellberg is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and is based in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. His promotion to Associate Professor will become effective July of 2009. He received his BA in Molecular Cell Biology- Immunology in 1994 from UC Berkeley. He then attended medical school at the Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, where he received numerous academic honors, including serving as the UCLA AOA Chapter Co-President, and winning the prestigious Stafford Warren award for the topic academic performance in his graduating class. Dr. Spellberg completed his Residency in Internal Medicine and subspecialty fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, where he received the Department of Medicine Subspecialty Fellow of the Year award. He co-founded NovaDigm Therapeutics, Inc., a biotechnology company, to translate the vaccine from the bench to the bedside. Dr. Spellberg is also developing genetically engineered white blood cells that recapitulate neutrophil functions and can be used to overcome the technical barriers to neutrophil transfusion therapy for neutropenic infections. Finally, Dr. Spellberg established the first auditable, peer-reviewed dataset that confirms the decline in new antibiotic development over the last two decades, underscoring the need for development of new immune-based therapies for infections.

Ernest Darkoh is the chairman and founding partner of BroadReach and former operations manager of Botswana's Treatment Program for HIV/AIDS. Ernest Darkoh has been at the forefront of what has been called the most important public health experiment on the African continent today, leading the charge to fight AIDS in the African nation of Botswana and building a nationwide health system from the ground up in the process. Born in the USA, Darkoh grew up in Kenya and Tanzania. There, pervasive poverty and the absence of effective government services made a deep impression on him. Encouraged by his parents, he returned to America as a young adult, first to triple-major in chemistry, biochemistry and molecular biology, then to attend Harvard Medical School. He added a master's degree in public health followed by an MBA, after which he took a job at McKinsey & Co., one of America's leading management consulting firms. Darkoh signed on to set up Masa, Africa's first national antiretroviral (ARV) Program. Through BroadReach, Darkoh is already deeply involved in expanding public access to antiretroviral drugs in South Africa, the nation with the world's highest number of HIV-positive citizens. Darkoh is working to tap excess capacity in this private system to treat public patients too. That means devising a medically sound yet affordable way to manage the treatment of individuals far beyond the direct reach of these specialists. Working with private treatment partners like South African-based Aid for AIDS, and Netcare, and with financing from the USA's PEPFAR fund and the UN's Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Darkoh's team has set up a network of private physicians who are willing to take on public patients. They have also trained groups of non-expert activists who can go into remote communities to identify uninsured people who appear to be HIV-positive and need treatment. Once these individuals are identified, BroadReach then sends in frontline health-care workers to supply the missing link.

Larry Klein was a teaching assistant in American history at the University of Maryland and the theater supervisor of The American Film Institute at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts before beginning his career as a documentary filmmaker. Over the past two decades, Klein has produced scores of programs for commercial and cable television broadcast as well as several award-winning PBS specials including: *Lewis Mumford: Toward Human Architecture* and the critically acclaimed, Peabody Award-winning series *Building Big with David Macaulay*. Klein has written and produced a variety of nationally-broadcast programs for WGBH TV in Boston including *Bridges in the Building Big* series and the NOVA presentations: *Mind of a Serial Killer*, *What's Killing the Children* and the Emmy Award-winning, *Why the Towers Fell*. He has produced individual programs for two WGBH mini-series: *A Natural History of the Senses* and *A Science Odyssey*, and he has also produced and directed a series of successful PBS family specials based on highly popular books by award-winning author-illustrator, David Macaulay. One of those specials, *Roman City*, also won a national, Prime-Time Emmy Award in 1994.

After graduating from Brown University in 1966, Marilynne Robinson enrolled in the graduate program in English at the University of Washington. While writing her dissertation, Robinson began work on her first novel, *Housekeeping* (1981). *Housekeeping* received the PEN/Hemingway award for best first novel and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. After the publication of *Housekeeping*, Robinson began writing essays and book reviews for *Harper's*,* Paris Review*, and *The New York Times Book Review*. She also started teaching, serving as writer-in-residence and visiting professor at numerous colleges and universities, including the University of Kent in England, Amherst College, and the University of Massachusetts. From an essay she wrote for Harper's, entitled "Bad News from Britain", Robinson wrote the controversial book *Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State and Nuclear Pollution* (1989), a finalist for the National Book Award. In the tradition of 19th century novelists who turned to the essay, Robinson published a critically acclaimed collection in 1998 called *The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought*. Through essays on topics ranging from John Calvin to Darwinism to Freud and 20th century psychologists, the book examines and critiques the ideas our culture has handed down to us. Although Robinson has published only three books, she is widely regarded as one of America's best contemporary writers.

Gail Willumsen produces, directs and writes long-form documentary films and videos for clients like *National Geographic* Television, WGBH/*NOVA*, Vulcan Productions, and the Discovery Channel. Through her company Gemini Productions, and with her producing partner Jill Shinefield, Willumsen has chased down stories all over the world, on a wide range of topics. Her expertise and personal interests lie in projects that explore the human experience, especially these themes: the complex and enduring bond between people and animals the unraveling of humankind's roots and history through archaeology and anthropology

Millie Rahn is a Massachusetts based folklorist who has done extensive fieldwork throughout New England and beyond. Her research interest include food traditions, traditional music, 1960s folk music revival, oral history, and industrial communities of New England. She has developed long and short term projects and events involving living cultural traditions for cultural and educational organizations, government and economic development agencies and the tourism and heritage industries. She has curated exhibits for many regional folk festivals, including the annual Lowell Folk Festival, the American Folk Festival in Bangor, Maine, the Boston Cultural Heritage Festival and the Working Waterfront Festival in New Bedford, MA.