Antonio Damasio is one of the world’s leading neurologists and neuroscientists and has made seminal contributions to the understanding of how the brain processes emotion, decision, and consciousness.

Josh Zepps is a correspondent for Bloomberg TV’s Energy Now, reporting on the future of energy and the environment. His show on Discovery Science Channel, Brink, took an irreverent look at the latest breakthroughs on the brink of changing our lives.

Neuroscientist Nancy C. Andreasen is well known for her pioneering work using MRI imaging to explore mental illness and the neural bases for artistic creativity and innovation. She is the author of several books including The Creating Brain: The Neuroscience of Genius.

Recognized mathematician and computer scientist Brian Snow’s early work spans from teaching mathematics and laying the groundwork for a computer science department at Ohio University in the 1960’s, to working as a cryptologic designer and architect at the National Security Agency (NSA) in the 1970s.

Renowned for his groundbreaking contributions to the study of genius, Dean Keith Simonton has provided his expertise to over 400 publications on the topic, including a dozen books entitled Genius, Creativity, and Leadership; Scientific Genius; Greatness; Genius and Creativity; Origins of Genius; and more.

Jürgen Schmidhuber has published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers. His lab’s research on artificial neural nets won several handwriting recognition contests and number one rankings in several computer vision competitions and benchmarks.

Rex Jung is a leading scientist in the emerging field of positive neuroscience, the study of what the brain does well. His groundbreaking research led to the first model describing a network of brain regions critically linked in the service of intellectual pursuits, known as the Parieto-Frontal Integration Theory (or “P-FIT”).

Jakob Trollbäck is the designer and creative director of Trollbäck + Company. A self-taught designer from Sweden, Trollbäck began his artistic career as a DJ in his native Stockholm. Having found a commonality in music and design, he creates pieces that transport his audience to planes of sensorial experience.

Charles Limb is an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, where he specializes in neurotology and skull base surgery.

Aaron Berkowitz is the author of The Improvising Mind: Cognition and Creativity in the Musical Moment, which explores improvisation from the perspectives of cognitive neuroscience, musicology/ethnomusicology, and music pedagogy.

Julie Burstein is a Peabody Award-winning radio producer, best-selling author, and public speaker who has spent her working life in conversation with highly creative people. She is the co-author of Spark: How Creativity Works.

Richard E. Cytowic is a neurologist and coauthor of Wednesday Is Indigo Blue, which won the 2011 Montaigne Medal from the Eric Hoffer Book Awards. Cytowic’s work and writing focus on the intersection of creativity and neurological disorders.

One of the strongest, most expressive voices to have come out of Ireland belongs to Dublin native Susan McKeown. Her 2010 album Singing in the Dark explores creativity and madness with lyrics from poets such as Anne Sexton and Theodore Roethke, who were writing through the lens of depression, mania, and addiction.

Kay Redfield Jamison has been called a “hero of medicine” for turning her own struggle with manic-depression into a lifelong career researching the illness and its treatment.

Michael J. Cirino is the founder, principal, and executive chef of a razor, a shiny knife, a culinary performance art and experience design group. a razor, a shiny knife creates immersive experiences that break the boundaries of theater and restaurant.

Peter Staley has been a long-term AIDS and gay rights activist, first as a member of ACT UP New York, then as the founding director of TAG, the Treatment Action Group. He served on the board of the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) for 13 years.

Heather Berlin is a cognitive neuroscientist, assistant professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Visiting Scholar at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.

Scott Barry Kaufman is scientific director of the Imagination Institute in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. He conducts research on the measurement and development of imagination, creativity, and play.

Agustín Fuentes, trained in Zoology and Anthropology, is a Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. His research delves into the how and why of being human.

Lav Varshney is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Department of Computer Science (by courtesy), and a research affiliate in the Beckman Institute and in the Neuroscience Program, all at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Pilobolus has created and toured over 120 pieces of repertory to more than 65 countries and currently performs its work each year for over 300,000 people across the U.S. and around the world. In 2015, Pilobolus was named one of the Dance Heritage Coalition’s “Irreplaceable Dance Treasures.”

Pilobolus is a rebellious dance company. For 45 years, Pilobolus has tested the limits of human physicality to explore the beauty and the power of connected bodies. They continue to bring this tradition to global audiences through our post-disciplinary collaborations with some of the greatest influencers, thinkers, and creators in the world.

Dr. John R. Smith is an IBM Fellow and Manager of Multimedia and Vision at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. He leads IBM’s Research & Development on Visual Comprehension including IBM Watson Developer Cloud Visual Recognition, Intelligent Video Analytics, and Video Understanding for Augmented Creativity.

Adam Alter is an associate professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business with an affiliated appointment at the NYU Psychology Department where he studies human judgment and decision-making.

Florian Pinel is a Senior Technical Staff Member and Master Inventor in the Watson Content and IoT group at IBM. He is the co-inventor of IBM Chef Watson, an application that uses machine learning and natural language processing to demonstrate computational creativity and suggest original recipe ideas.

Garry Kasparov is widely regarded as the greatest chessplayer in history, becoming the youngest world champion ever at 22 in 1985. His matches against the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue were a landmark for AI, making headlines around the world.

Deirdre Barrett is a Lecturer and dream researcher at Harvard Medical School. She has written five books including Pandemic Dreams and The Committee of Sleep and is the editor of …

Benjamín Labatut is a Chilean author born in the Netherlands in 1980. He is the author of The Maniac, a fictionalized biography of the polymath John von Neumann which explores …