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Renzo Piano is a world renowned Italian architect and recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal, the Kyoto Prize and the Sonning Prize Piano was born into a family of builders in Genoa, Italy in 1937. He studied at Milan Poitechnic Architecture School under the design guidance of Franco Albini. Piano's principal work includes more than 40 world famous projects including museums, galleries, churches, music parks, institutes and national centers, shopping centers, bridges, reconstructions of squares, and airports.

Brown started his career as a farmer, growing tomatoes in southern New Jersey with his younger brother during high school and college. Shortly after earning a degree in agricultural science from Rutgers University in 1955, he spent six months living in rural India where he became intimately familiar with the food/population issue. In 1959 Brown joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service as an international agricultural analyst. Brown earned masters degrees in agricultural economics from the University of Maryland and in public administration from Harvard. Brown has authored or coauthored more than 50 books. One of the world's most widely published authors, his books have appeared in some 40 languages. Among his earlier books are *Man, Land and Food, World Without Borders, and Building a Sustainable Society*. His 1995 book *Who Will Feed China? * challenged the official view of Chinas food prospect, spawning hundreds of conferences and seminars. In November 2001, he published *Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth*, which was hailed by E.O. Wilson as an instant classic. His most recent book is *World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse*. He is the recipient of many prizes and awards, including 23 honorary degrees, a MacArthur Fellowship, the 1987 United Nations' Environment Prize, the 1989 World Wide Fund for Nature Gold Medal, and the 1994 Blue Planet Prize for his "exceptional contributions to solving global environmental problems." More recently, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Italy, the Borgstrm Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry, and appointed an honorary professor of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Maggie Gallagher is president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy. Maggie is a nationally syndicated columnist, the author of three books on marriage (including most recently with University of Chicago Prof Linda Waite, *The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better-Off Financially*), and a leading voice of the new marriage movement. *National Journal* named her to the 2004 list of the most influential people in the same-sex marriage debate.

Alicia Erian is the author of a short story collection, *The Brutal Language of Love*. Her work has appeared in Playboy, Zoetrope, Nerve, The Iowa Review, and other publications. *Towelhead* is her first novel.

Dr. Margot Minardi is an Assistant Professor of History at Reed College in Oregon . Her work centers around commemorative practices associated with Northern slavery and she has a forthcoming book on the subject, New England Slaves in Myth and Memory.

Joyce Chaplin is James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History and Director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History. She has taught at five different universities on two continents and an island, and in a maritime studies program on the Atlantic Ocean. Her research interests include early American history, intellectual history, and environmental history. She is currently writing a 500-year history of around-the-world travel.

Elizabeth Riely is a journalist and food historian whose articles have appeared in *Bon Apptit*, *Gourmet*, the *Boston Globe*, and *The New York Times*. She is editor of the *Radcliffe Culinary Times*, the newsletter of the Schlessinger Library, a contributor to Gastronomica, and the author of the cookbook *A Feast of Fruits*.

Dr. Mustafa Ceric is the Grand Mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina. He is serving his second 7-year term until 2013. He is fluent in Bosnian, English and Arabic, and cites a "passive knowledge" of Turkish, German and French.

Miles, chair of the department of painting and sculpture at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., will give a talk titled "Persuasion and Power: Presidential Portraits Past and Present." The talk is presented as part of the yearlong series "Visual Culture in the 21st Century," and is open to the public. Admission is free. Ellen Miles recently served as co-curator of Gilbert Stuart, an exhibition organized jointly by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Portrait Gallery, and is co-author of the exhibition's catalogue. The Bowdoin College Museum of Art is home to several Gilbert Stuart portraits, including the famous Portrait of Thomas Jefferson and Portrait of James Madison, both painted in 1805-07. Miles is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, and earned her Ph.D. in art history at Yale University. A recipient of a Getty Curatorial Research Fellowship, she was selected the Smithsonian Secretary's Distinguished Research Lecturer in 2004.

Elizabeth Kolbert has been a staff writer at *The New Yorker* since 1999. Her stories for the magazine have included political profiles, book reviews, Comment pieces, and extensive writing on climate change. Her three-part series on global warming, "The Climate of Man," won the 2006 National Magazine Award for Public Interest, the 2005 American Association for the Advancement of Science Journalism Award, and the 2006 National Academies Communication Award. Kolbert came to the magazine from the *New York Times*, where she wrote the "Metro Matters" column and, from 1992 to 1997, was a political and media reporter. She also contributed articles to the *New York Times Magazine* on subjects ranging from the use of focus groups in elections to the New York water supply. From 1988 to 1991, she was the *New York Times* Albany Bureau Chief. Kolbert began working for the *Times* in 1984, as a stringer based in Germany, and moved to the *Metro* desk in 1985. Her first book, *The Prophet of Love: And Other Tales of Power and Deceit*, was published in 2004. Her second book is called *Field Notes from a Catastrophe*.