Forum Network

Christiane Amanpour is CNN's chief international correspondent based in New York. In her 18 years as an international correspondent, Amanpour has reported on all the major crises from the world's many hotspots. Amanpour joined CNN in 1983 as an entry-level assistant on the network's international assignment desk in Atlanta. She worked her way up to correspondent in CNN's New York bureau before becoming an international correspondent in 1990. Her first major assignment was the Gulf War, and she has since covered wars, famine, genocide and natural disasters around the globe. She has secured exclusive interviews with world leaders from the Middle East to Europe to Africa and beyond, including Iranian Presidents Mohammad Khatami and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as well as the presidents of Afghanistan, Sudan and Syria, among others. After 9/11 she was the first international correspondent to interview British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Her body of work has earned an inaugural Television Academy Honor, nine News and Documentary Emmys, four George Foster Peabody Awards, two George Polk Awards, three duPont-Columbia Awards, the Courage in Journalism Award, an Edward R. Murrow award and other major journalism awards as well as honorary degrees from The American University of Paris, Georgetown University, New York University, Smith College, Emory University and the University of Michigan. In 2007, Amanpour was made a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE), by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for her "highly distinguished, innovative contribution" to the field of journalism. In 1998, the City of Sarajevo named her an honorary citizen for her "personal contribution to spreading the truth" during the Bosnia war from 1992 to 1995. Amanpour graduated summa cum laude from the University of Rhode Island with a bachelor of arts in journalism.

Born in 1925, Engelbart grew up during the Great Depression near Portland, Oregon. During World War II, he served in the Navy, which sent him to the Philippines for two years as an electronic/radar technician. In 1948 he received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering and went to work for NACA Ames Laboratory (forerunner of NASA). He then applied to the graduate program in electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley and obtained his Ph.D. in 1955. He stayed on at Berkeley as an acting assistant professor but a year later he left to work for Stanford Research Institute, or SRI Intl. Douglas. At SRI, Engelbart earned a dozen patents in two years, working on magnetic computer components, fundamental digital-device phenomena, and miniaturization scaling potential. In 1962 he published his seminal work, "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework," under contract prepared for the Director of Information Sciences of the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research. This outlined his visionary ideas for using computers to complement humans' intelligence. Many shrugged off his ideas at the time; for most it was too difficult to grasp what he was describing because the concepts were too futuristic.

James W. Stigler is Professor of Psychology at UCLA. He is co-author of *The Teaching Gap* (with James Hiebert, 1999) and *The Learning Gap* (with Harold Stevenson, 1992). He directed the TIMSS video studies (1993-2003), and in 1998 founded LessonLab Inc., a company whose mission was to study and improve classroom teaching, which became part of Pearson Education in 2003. He received his A.B. from Brown University in 1976, a Masters in Education from the University of Pennsylvania in 1977, and a Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of Michigan in 1982. Before moving to Los Angeles in 1991, he served eight years on the faculty of the University of Chicago. He has received numerous awards for his research, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the QuEST award from the American Federation of Teachers. Dr. Stigler is best known for his observational work in classrooms, and has pioneered the use of multimedia technology for the study of classroom instruction.

Dr. Joshua Sparrow is assistant professor in psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, supervisor of inpatient psychiatry at Children's Hospital, Boston, and associate director of the Brazelton Touchpoints Center. He has served as associate professor of psychiatry at the School of Medicine of the University of Marseille in France. He is co-author with Dr. T. Berry Brazelton of six books: *Touchpoints Three to Six: Your Child's Emotional and Behavioral Development*, and the five books in the nationally best-selling "Brazelton Way" series: *Calming Your Fussy Baby*, *Discipline*, *Sleep*, *Feeding Your Child*, and *Toilet Training*. He writes a weekly *New York Times* Syndicate column, "Families Today." Dr. Sparrow is also the author of numerous scholarly papers published worldwide and has lectured extensively in the United States, Europe, and Brazil on child and adolescent development. His work with the Brazelton Touchpoints Center has included consultation on child development and parenting to the Harlem Children's Zone and the American Indian Early Head Start Programs. He consulted to parents and schools in New York City in response to the September 11 disaster. He has also served as a consultant to the Fox Family television show* Brazelton on Parenting*, as well as other children's educational programs and the I Am Your Child Foundation video on "Discipline". A graduate of Yale Medical School, Dr. Sparrow went through residency training and child psychiatry fellowship at Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals and is board certified in child/adolescent and general psychiatry.

A concert pianist, architect and inventor since age eight, Brian Hubert has a track record of accomplishments in diverse fields. Hubert was awarded the Lemelson MIT Student Prize in 2001. While working on his doctoral thesis, Hubert created a universal nano-assembly machine, capable of picking up and assembling thousands of atoms of almost any material at one time. His device could potentially be used for moving and patterning segments of DNA strands, ultimately enabling doctors to discover genetic related diseases in a matter of minutes, long before the patient showed any symptoms. Hubert received his BS, MS and PhD in mechanical engineering from MIT. After graduating from MIT, Hubert co-founded Kovio Inc. in Sunnyvale, California, a nano-technology company developing technologies for manufacturing microelectronics, where he serves as CTO.

Betsy McAlister Groves, founder of the nationally recognized Child Witness to Violence Project at Boston Medical Center, dramatically disproves the myth that very young children are not affected by violence. Drawing on her experiences with the project, Groves contends that many children in the US witness violence at home, in school and on television, and that adults can, and should, help these children cope with their reactions.

Fernando M. Reimers is the Ford Foundation Professor of International Education and Director of Global Education and of International Education Policy at Harvard University. He teaches courses on the relationship between education policy, democratic citizenship and instructional improvement. His course 'Education Policy Analysis and Research in Developing Countries' focuses on some of the core education challenges in the development field. His course 'Education, Poverty and Inequality in Latin America' is an examination of the options to improve learning opportunities in high poverty schools in Latin America. He recently completed a study evaluating a national program to promote literacy instruction in Mexico as part of a large evaluation of major education policies of the Federal Government in Mexico, a project for which he was principal investigator, involving 8 faculty members at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This research led to a recently published book Aprender Mas y Mejor. Politicas, Programas y Oportunidades en Educacion Basica en Mexico (Fernando Reimers editor. Fondo de Cultura Economica) He also served recently on a Panel Review of the National Academy of Sciences evaluating Title VI, Fulbright-Hays and other Federally Funded Programs to promote the Internationalization of American Universities. A fellow of the International Academy of Education and member of the Council of Foreign Relations and of the Advisory Board of the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, National Academy of Sciences, Professor Reimers is best known for his theory of 'Informed Dialogue', an approach to bridge scientific research and education policy through the mapping and mobilization of social networks. Professor Reimers is also known for his studies on the quality of education in developing countries and for his research on the relationship between education policy and instructional improvement in high poverty schools. He is the Director and creator of the International Education Policy Program at Harvard University. Prior to joining the Faculty at the Graduate School of Education in 1997 he was Senior Education Specialist at the World Bank. He also worked as Research Associate, Institute Associate and Fellow at the Harvard Institute for International Development and on the faculty at Universidad Central de Venezuela. He has extensive experience in the area of international development assistance with the United States Agency for International Development, the World Bank, the InterAmerican Development Bank and other Development Organizations. He has worked in Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan and most countries in Latin America.