Timo Hannay
Web publishing director, Nature Publishing Group, United Kingdom
Research Interest
Web-enabled science, bioinformatics and neuroscience
Profile
Timo Hannay is the director of web publishing at Nature Publishing Group. He is responsible for NPG’s new initiatives in the areas of scientific databases, social software and audio–visual content. He holds a degree in biochemistry from Imperial College, London, and a doctorate in neurophysiology from the University of Oxford.
http://blogs.nature.com/wp/nascent

Katsuhiko Umehara
Mayor of Sendai City, Japan
Research Interest
Collaborations between companies, research institutes and government organizations in the region and aiming to create a world-class industry cluster for various technological fields
Profile
Katsuhiko Umehara graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Tokyo in 1978 and joined the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MITI) in the same year. He spent a year (1986–1987) as deputy director of the Agency of Industrial Science and Technology, on the Human Frontier Science Program, three years as the representative of the Asia-Pacific Region, Japan Overseas Development Corporation at the Bangkok office (1996–1999) and a further three years as the director of the Regional Cooperation Division at the International Trade Policy Bureau, MITI (1999–2002). In 2002 he became a minister of the Embassy of Japan, in Washington DC, and in 2004 he joined the Policy Bureau, at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. He has been mayor of Sendai City since August 2005.
http://www.sendai.city.jp/index-e.html

Atsushi Sunami
Director of the Science and Technology Program and associate professor, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies; affiliated fellow, National Institute of Science and Technology Policy, MEXT; senior fellow, Center for Research and Development Strategy, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Japan
Research Interest
A comparative analysis of national innovation systems with a particular focus on China and India and an evolutionary approach in the science and technology policy-making process
Profile
Atsushi Sunami is an associate professor and director of the Science and Technology Program at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Japan. He is also an affiliated fellow of the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, MEXT) and a co-director of the Japan Research Center at Beijing University since 2006. Also in 2006, he was appointed senior fellow at the Japan Science and Technology Agency (CRDS) and a council member of the Honda Foundation and the Okayama Institute for Quantum Physics, among others. He is serving in the advisory committee on international affairs for the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.
Sunami holds a BSFS from Georgetown University. He also obtained an MIA and a PhD in Political Science from Columbia University. From 2001 to 2003, he was a fellow at the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry, established by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan. He was a visiting researcher at the Research Center for Advanced Economic Engineering, University of Tokyo, Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex and Tsinghua University, China.
At present, he is working on a book titled Era of Open Innovation and China (in Japanese, NTT Publishing) due to go on sale in the summer of 2007.
http://www.grips.ac.jp

Ian Foster
Director, the Computation Institute, Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago, United States
Research Interest
Distributed computing, computational science and eScience
Profile
Ian Foster received his BSc at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and his PhD at Imperial College, London, both in Computer Science. He is now director of the Computation Institute at Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago, where he is also the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor of Computer Science. He has crossed the Pacific on a sailboat once and on airplanes too many times to count.
http://ianfoster.typepad.com
Speech Abstract
Rapid advances in both science and information technology are driving the emergence of 'eScience'. Grid technologies play a crucial role in eScience by enabling resource and service federation across organizational boundaries, supporting on-demand access to computing resources and allowing the formation and operation of distributed, multi-organizational collaborations. eScience and Grid technologies also require new tools, infrastructure and policies. I will discuss opportunities, achievements and challenges in these related areas.

Hiroaki Kitano
Director, Sony Computer Science Laboratories; president, Systems Biology Institute, Japan
Research Interest
Systems biology, artificial intelligence and robotics
Profile
Hiroaki Kitano is a director of Sony Computer Science Laboratories, president of the systems biology institute, and a project director on ERATO-SORST Kitano Symbiotic Systems Project of Japan Science and Technology Agency. He is also a visiting professor of the University of Tokyo and Keio University. He received a BA in physics from the International Christian University, Tokyo, and a PhD in computer science from Kyoto University. Since 1988, he has been a visiting researcher at the Center for Machine Translation at Carnegie Mellon University. Kitano received the Computers and Thought Award from the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence in 1993, as well as the Prix Ars Electronica 2000.
www.symbio.jst.go.jp/symbio2/

Masao Ito
Former director of RIKEN Brain Science Institute; president of the Human Frontiers Science Program, Japan
Research Interest
Neuroscience
Profile
Masao Ito is the special advisor to the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan. He received the Fujiwara Prize (1981), the Academy Prize and Imperial Prize (1986), the Robert Dow Neuroscience Award (1993), the IPSEN Foundation Award (1993), the Person of Cultural Merit (1994), an Honorary Degree of Science from the University of Southern California (1995) and Torino University (1996), the Japan Prize (1996), an Order of Culture (1996), and the Peter Gruber Neuroscience Prize (2006). He discovered the inhibitory action of cerebellar Purkinje cells, and the characteristic synaptic plasticity, long-term depression, in these cells. Based on these findings, he developed a theory that the cerebellum is a general learning machine for acquiring not only motor skills, but also implicit memory in thought. Ito is now President of the Human Frontier Science Program, a non-profit foundation based in Strasbourg that supports international interdisciplinary basic research on the complex mechanisms in living organisms. The programme was initiated by Japan but now receives funding from several countries worldwide.
http://www.hfsp.org/

Mathukumalli Vidyasagar
Executive vice president, Tata Consultancy Services, India
Research Interest
Control theory, statistical learning and computational biology
Profile
Mathukumalli Vidyasagar was born in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, on 29 September 1947. He received his BS, MS and PhD degrees in electrical engineering, from the University of Wisconsin, in 1965, 1967 and 1969, respectively. Between 1969 and 1989, he worked as a professor of electrical engineering at various universities in the USA and Canada. His last overseas job was with the University of Waterloo, Canada, between 1980 and 1989.
In 1989 he returned to India as the director of the newly created Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR), under the auspices of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), Ministry of Defence, Government of India. In that capacity he built up CAIR into a leading research laboratory consisting of about 40 scientists working on various cutting-edge areas, such as aircraft control, robotics, neural networks, and image processing.
In 2000 he joined Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India's largest IT firm, as an executive vice president in charge of Advanced Technology. In this capacity he created the Advanced Technology Centre (ATC), which currently consists of about 60 engineers and scientists working on e-security, bioinformatics, and open source/Linux.
In addition to his academic positions, he has held visiting positions at several universities, including MIT, California (Berkeley), California (Los Angeles), CNRS Toulouse, France, the Indian Institute of Science, the University of Minnesota and the Tokyo Institute of Technology.
http://www.imahal.com/interviews/vidyasagar_05_00/biography.htm

Lee Dirks
Director, Scholarly Communications, Technical Computing Initiative, Microsoft, United States
Research Interest
Preservation of digital information, interoperability of digital archives/repositories and open access to research data
Profile
Lee Dirks is the director of Scholarly Communications for Microsoft's Technical Computing Initiative, where he manages research programs related to open access to research data, interoperability of archives and repositories and the preservation of digital information. Lee holds an MLIS degree from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, as well as a post-masters degree in Preservation Administration from Columbia University. In addition to positions at Columbia and then with OCLC (Preservation Resources), Lee has held a variety of roles at Microsoft since joining in 1996.
http://www.microsoft.com/science