Topic: Future Technologies

Luc Julia

Luc Julia is an innovator at heart, conceived, built and deployed complex digital media desktop products, scalable Mobile and Internet applications (500M+ users), worked on big data and distributed architectures. Built and led large, multidisciplinary, multi-sites engineering and research teams. Interested in all kinds of technologies to improve human lives with a special twist for data fusion, home automation, wearable devices and the next generation of context-based Human Computer Interactions.

 Luc directed Siri at Apple, was Chief Technologist at HP and co-founded a number of start-ups in the Silicon Valley. He holds dozens of patents and is recognised as one of the top 100 most influential French developers in the digital world.

As CTO and VP Innovation for Samsung from 2012 to 2017, Dr Luc Julia led the company’s vision and strategy for the Internet of Things.
Now, as Technical Director and SVP and besides is group in Silicon Valley, he is developing the new Artificial Intelligence Lab of Samsung in Paris (SAIL) where he focuses on making everyday products smarter for everyone by defining a new generation of objects.

After graduating from Pierre et Marie Curie University (Paris) and receiving a Ph.D. in computer science from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications (Paris), he moved to Silicon Valley to start his career at SRI International to create the "Computer Human Interaction Center" (CHIC). He developed alongside his team the first smart refrigerators and smart vehicles.

Dr. Luc Julia also participated in the launch of Nuance Communications in 1994, the world leader in speech recognition. Nuance develops solutions for a variety of sectors such as healthcare and automotive industries, financial services and public administration.

After ten years of research, he spent the following ten years building several start-ups in Silicon Valley. Over the past ten years, he worked for big companies such as HP, Apple and Samsung to lead development teams.

He is the author of "Artificial intelligence does not exist" published by First editions (2019), to demystify the concept of AI and replace it by “augmented intelligence”. Through the pages of his book, Luc Julia shakes up conventional thinking utterly shared by mass media and Hollywood about AI purposes and the potential future threat that means to humans.

Luc Julia insists that he is not "clairvoyant" because he doesn’t pretend to predict the future. However, he dedicates himself to knock the common idea about AI because, according to Luc Julia, it is based solely on data provided by man and can’t supplant his intelligence, nor his ability to create and innovate.

Nell Watson

Nell Watson is an engineer, entrepreneur, and futurist thinker who grew up in Northern Ireland. She has a longstanding interest in the philosophy of technology, and how extensions of human capacity drive emerging social trends.
Nell lectures globally on Machine Intelligence, AI philosophy, Human-Machine relations, and the Future of Human Society, serving as Associate Faculty at Singularity University and a member of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT.
She has had an unusual career, including teaching post-grad Computer Science at the age of 24, and later co-founding a successful Graffiti arts company. Her ability to bridge the world of technology and the Humanities makes it easy for her to translate complex subjects so that they can be clearly understood.
In 2010 Nell founded Poikos, a machine learning-driven ‘AI for for body measurement’. Nell’s patented technology ‘dematerialises’ the 3D body scanner, by providing accurate 3D scans of the body with only 2D camera hardware, such as that found within smartphones, or laptops. This may then be applied to a range of markets, such as mass customisation, and health.
She is also Co-Founder of OpenEth.org, a machine ethics research company. OpenEth have a vision of building a safer and more just world, by enabling humans and machines to make better decisions.
In her spare time Nell enjoys coding games, such as her startup life simulator, Founder Life. Founder Life attempts to teach the mindfulness and psychological habits necessary for entrepreneurs to consistently execute under pressure.
Possessing a long-term mindset, Nell serves as Senior Advisor to The Future Society at Harvard, as well as serving as an advisory technologist to several startups, accelerators, and venture capital funds.

Daniel Kraft

Daniel Kraft is a Stanford and Harvard-trained physician-scientist, inventor, entrepreneur, and innovator. With over 25 years of experience in clinical practice, biomedical research and healthcare innovation, Kraft has served as faculty chair for Medicine at Singularity University since its inception in 2008, and in 2011 founded NextMed Health (previously called Exponential Medicine) a program and community that explores convergent, rapidly developing technologies and their potential in biomedicine and healthcare. He serves as Chair of the XPRIZE Pandemic & Health Alliance.

Following undergraduate degrees from Brown University and medical school at Stanford, Daniel was Board Certified in both Internal Medicine & Pediatrics after completing a Harvard residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital & Boston Children's Hospital, and fellowships in hematology, oncology, and bone marrow transplantation at Stanford.

Daniel is a member of the Inaugural class of the Aspen Institute Health Innovators Fellowship and is member of the Kaufman Fellows Society. He is a partner with Continuum Health Ventures which is focused on funding early stage digital health companies enabling the democratization of health and improved healthspan.

He is often called upon to speak to the future of health, medicine and technology and has given four TED and two TEDMED Talks and has delivered keynotes to a diverse array of organizations.

He has multiple scientific publications (including in Nature and Science) and medical device, immunology, and stem cell-related patents through NIH-funded faculty positions with Stanford University School of Medicine and as clinical faculty for the pediatric bone marrow transplantation service at the University of California San Francisco.

Daniel's academic research has focused on: stem cell biology and regenerative medicine, stem cell-derived immunotherapies for cancer, bioengineering human T-cell differentiation, and humanized animal models. His research has been published in journals that include Nature and Science. His clinical work has focused on: bone marrow / hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for malignant and non-malignant diseases in adults and children, medical devices to enable stem cell based regenerative medicine, including marrow derived stem cell harvesting, processing and delivery.

He is heavily involved in digital health, founded Digital.Health, and is on the board of Healthy.io and advises several Fortune-50 and digital health-related startups. Daniel recently founded IntelliMedicine, focused on personalized, data-driven, precision medicine. He is also the inventor of the MarrowMiner, an FDA-approved device for the minimally invasive harvest of bone marrow, and founded RegenMed Systems, a company developing technologies to enable adult stem cell-based regenerative therapies.

Daniel is an avid pilot and has served in the Massachusetts and California Air National Guard as an officer and flight surgeon with F-15 & F-16 fighter Squadrons. He has conducted research on aerospace medicine that was published with NASA, with whom he was a finalist for astronaut selection.

Brad Templeton

Brad Templeton is a developer of and commentator on self-driving cars, software architect, board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, internet entrepreneur, futurist lecturer, writer and observer of cyberspace issues, hobby photographer, and an artist. Templeton has been a consultant on Google’s team designing a driverless car and lectures and blogs about the emerging technology of automated transportation. He is also noted as a speaker and writer covering copyright law and political and social issues related to computing and networks. He is a director of the futurist Foresight Nanotech Institute, a think tank and public interest organization focused on transformative future technologies.
Templeton was founder, publisher and software architect at ClariNet Communications Corp., which in the 1990s became the first internet-based business, creating an electronic newspaper. He has been active in the computer network community since 1979, participated in the building and growth of USENET from its earliest days, and in 1987 founded and edited a special USENET conference devoted to comedy.
Templeton has been involved in the development of important pieces of software including VisiCalc, the world’s first computer spreadsheet, and Stuffit for archiving and compressing computer files. In 1996, ClariNet joined the ACLU and others in opposing the Communications Decency Act, part of the Telecom bill passed during Clinton Administration. The U.S. Supreme Court sided with the plaintiffs and ruled that the Act violated the First Amendment in seeking to impose anti-indecency standards on the internet.
Professional Activities: - Founder of ClariNet, the world’s first internet-based business (first dot-com) - Director and chairman for 10 years of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an organization created to “confront cutting-edge issues defending free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights today.” - Developer of many packaged software products in the microcomputer era. - Published first large e-book anthology of current fiction. - Leader of internet/USENET community, creating rec.humor.funny which was the most widely read publication on the internet from 1988 to 1995.

George Church

George Church is Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Director of PersonalGenomes.org, which provides the world's only open-access information on human Genomic, Environmental & Trait data (GET). His 1984 Harvard PhD included the first methods for direct genome sequencing, molecular multiplexing & barcoding. These led to the first genome sequence (pathogen, Helicobacter pylori) in 1994.
His innovations have contributed to nearly all "next generation" genome sequencing methods and companies. This plus chip-based DNA synthesis and stem cell engineering resulted in founding additional application-based companies spanning fields of medical diagnostics & synthetic biology / therapeutics. He has also pioneered new privacy, biosafety, environmental & biosecurity policies. He is director of NIH Center for Excellence in Genomic Science. His honors include election to NAS & NAE & Franklin Bower Laureate for Achievement in Science. He has coauthored 370 papers, 60 patents & one book, Regenesis.
When his book, Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves, was published last April, its release was a standard event in the world of publishing, except for one copy that was published in a peculiar though perfectly suited method to Church’s research. He had each word and image of his book converted into binary code, translated the code into nucleotides, and sequenced them through artificial gene synthesis. In a single, pin-sized spot on a tiny piece of paper, 20 million copies of the book exist.
His trailblazing is not limited to new avenues of book publishing. As Professor of Genetics at Harvard and Director of the Center for Computational Genetics, Church is the visionary behind the Human Genome Project. Founded in 1984, the Genome Project allows humans to share their genes, traits, and environmental data with everyone in the world. This led to the Harvard University Personal Genome Project, an effort he spearheaded in 2005 to sequence and publish complete genomes and medical records of 100,000 willing participants so that their data is open to everyone. Not surprisingly, he also was the project’s first volunteer.
Church’s current research focuses on melding personal genomics and synthetic biology with biosystems-modeling (the modeling of all living organisms through biological sciences). Additionally, he’s a contributor for President Obama’s BRAIN Initiative, taking our knowledge of the human genome – much of which Church himself set in motion – and applying it toward the brain. The initiative spans five federal agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, in an effort to understand the brain at an unprecedented level in hopes of advancing neuroscience while also finding applicable treatments for brain disorders.
As if looking toward the future wasn’t enough, Church is also interested in the past – through a biogenetics lens, of course. He’s working toward reviving the extinct woolly mammoth by inserting three genes from mammoths into Asian elephant cells, thus creating a hybrid of the two species.
A regular participant on television for programs like NOVA, Charlie Rose, and The Colbert Report, Church has also served in advisory roles for 12 journals, 22 biotech companies, and 5 granting agencies.

Mary Spio

Mary Spio is best known for creating and holding patents on the technology used to digitally release feature films over satellite and for demographically targeted distribution of cinema content (alternate endings).

Mary is the founder of Next Galaxy Corp, a leading content and technology solutions company creator of CEEKARS – the first 4D audio headphones for virtual reality and CEEK – a fully immersive social platform for accessing virtual reality experiences.

She was president and co-founder of Gen2Media Corp., now called Vidaroo, an Orlando an Internet-oriented video production and distribution company that helps companies produce and put video online. Mary Spio was once a deep space engineer designing satellites at Boeing. She currently holds four patents, one of which allowed for the digital transfer of Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones to theaters when it was released.

Spio started her own online dating magazine with a social networking environment, One2One Living.

Spio was also working on a project that crosses the voyeurism of reality shows like “America’s Got Talent” with the get-in-there-and-do-it-yourself of Xbox Rock Band players.

The technology was commercialized via Boeing Digital Cinema and Lucas Films. Today the technology is widely used as an accepted, cost saving, modern alternative for scores of major films.

Spio’s companies have created content and or technology for global titans including Microsoft XBOX, Coca Cola Company, Tribune News Company (Parent of LA Times, Chicago Times etc.), Emmis Communications, Billboard Awards, Lincoln-Ford and scores of iconic celebrities, retailers, radio station groups and much more.

Ms. Spio is an Innovation and entrepreneurship evangelist who works with the US Department of State in a global outreach program. Spio has spoken or visited countries including China, Mexico, Pakistan, Ukraine, South Africa & more. She is named alongside Oprah in NBC News’s 100 History makers in the making.

Mary holds a Masters in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Syracuse University. Spio is a recipient of the prestigious Yueh-Ying Hu Memorial National Award for Innovation, Boeing Outstanding Achievement in Electrical Engineering Award and Essence Magazine’s New Power Generation.

An accomplished author, Mary Spio is a contributor to the New York Times Bestselling Series, Chicken Soup for the Soul. Mary Spio is the author of the novel A Song for Carmine and the Author of It’s Not Rocket Science – 7 Game-Changing Traits for Achieving Uncommon Success (Penguin Books, 2015).

She was awarded Top 40 Under 40 in 2012 and Women Who Men Business in 2013.