MEET THE FUTURE-MAKERS

The ideas you hear in my keynotes and the FutureBites podcast don’t come from guesswork, they come directly from the future-makers, the world-leading scientists, innovators, experts and trailblazers who are shaping what’s next.

I love spending time with these extraordinary people and I love bringing their messages to you. Why? Because they are striving to make the world a better place. Because they are creating your future opportunities. And because futurism grounded in evidence, data, and wisdom from the finest minds on the planet is the best way to teach you what’s coming, what’s probable and what’s possible, and to ensure what you take away is reliable, actionable and future-ready.

That’s why I work so hard to connect with them, and why I travel all over the world to meet them. Everything good in my keynotes is enabled by their generosity in letting me into their lives and into their labs.

Scroll down to meet just a few of the extraordinary people who are shaping the breakthroughs and future opportunities you can prepare for today.

(Click images take you to bios, insights and recorded interviews)

Prof Darinka Czischke, Housing and Social Sustainability, Delft University of Technology

Prof Philipp Fürnstahl, Director, Computer-Aided Surgery Lab, Balgrist University Hospital

Prof Rich Sutton, 2025 Turing Laureate, University of Alberta

Prof Andreas Prein, Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zürich

Prof Bradley Nelson, Multi-Scale Robotics Lab, ETH Zürich

Prof Beth Singler, Digital Religion(s), University of Zurich

Dr Vlad Coroama, Director, Roegen Centre for Sustainability

Dr Ott Velsberg, Chief Data Officer, Estonia

Prof Mark Eisenegger, Public Sphere and Society, University of Zurich

Prof Paul Newman, Oxford University

Prof George Church, Harvard and MIT

Dr Elisa Donati, University of Zürich and ETH Zürich

Dr Anthony Atala, Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine

Dr Ben Oakes, Scribe Therapeutics

Prof David Cebon, Cambridge University

Prof Hod Lipson, Columbia University

Prof Kiran Musunuru, UPenn

Prof Ramille Shah, Northwestern University

Prof Rodolphe Barrangou, NC State University

Prof George Crabtree, Argonne National Laboratory

Prof Jan Vijg, Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Prof Kerry Emanuel, MIT

Dr James Poteracki, Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine

Dr James Mancuso, MD Anderson

Joan Mannick, Chief Medical Officer, Restorbio

Prof Alexandre Marcireau, Western Sydney University

Prof Andrew Ng, Stanford University

Prof Bruce Levine, UPenn

Prof Daniela Rus, MIT

Prof William Oliver, MIT

Prof William Red Whittaker, Carnegie Mellon University

Prof Yann LeCun, NYU and Meta

Prof Zdenka Kuncic, University of Sydney

Dr Bo Feng, Argonne National Laboratory

Dr Jonathan Gootenberg, MIT

Dr Omar Abudayyeh, MIT

Dr Xuedong Huang, Microsoft Research

Emily Whitehead, 1st pediatric CAR T-Cell therapy recipient and cancer survivor

Prof David Fajgenbaum UPenn

Dr James Yoo, Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine

Prof Dina Katabi, MIT

Prof Michael Bremner, University of Technology Sydney

Prof Patrick Winston, MIT

Taki Constantinos UMass Memorial Hospital

Will McLean Frequency Therapeutics

Alex Creely, Commonwealth Fusion Systems

Bruce Schneier, Harvard Kennedy School

Dr Anousheh Ansari, XPRIZE

Dr Aykut Demirkol, Harkness Eye Institute, Columbia University Medical Center

Dr Mary Rodgers, Abbot Global Surveillance Program

Dr Spike Narayan, IBM Research

Dr Stan Caldwell, Carnegie Mellon University

Duco Jansen, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor

Ivan Buckley, University of Manchester Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre

Joshua Portlock, Electro.Aero

Laban Coblentz, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor

Mario Merola, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor

Michael Barnard, TFIE Strategy

Prof Atif Ahmad, University of Melbourne

Prof Ben Stanger, UPenn

Prof Cameron Hepburn, Oxford University

Prof Mark Jacobsen, Stanford University

Prof Carl June, UPenn

Prof Dali Kafaar, Macquarie University

Prof Daniel Pauly, University of British Columbia

Prof Andrew Dzurak, University of New South Wales

Prof David Keith, University of Chicago

Prof Don Siegel, UPenn

Prof Guido de Croon, Delf University of Technology

Prof James Baker, University of Manchester Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre

Prof John Helliwell, Uni of British Columbia

Prof Ken Dovey, University of Technology Sydney

Prof Martin Green, University of New South Wales

Prof Michael Gerrard, Columbia University

Prof Paul Chu, Texas Center For Superconductivity

Trent Thomson, CEO Swiss Re

Prof Wendell Wallach, Yale, Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs

Prof William Cheung, University of British Columbia

Steven Gonzalez, NASA

Tim Buckley, Director, Climate Energy Finance

Tom Whitehead, Emily Whitehead Foundation

Zach Hartwig, MIT

Prof Jennifer Kuzma, NC State University

Now you’ve met some of these trailblazers, you know a lot more about what inspires me! These are the people creating a better future! An hour spent with them returns enough energy to keep going for a month!

As a futurist speaker, it’s my purpose to bring their passion to your event, to build on what they share, to brainstorm the opportunities, to think expansively about the social and industrial implications, and to translate all of this into stories that will engage you and help make a better future for YOU.

The best, most actionable futurism minimizes speculation and maximizes reality. What better starting point than with the finest minds on the planet creating our future?

p.s. Don’t forget to continue exploring FutureBites to learn more about these future-makers and to listen to them explain the breakthroughs and why they matter, in their own words.