Press Room

JONATHAN FOLEY, PHD
Dr. Jonathan Foley is the Executive Director of Project Drawdown, the world’s leading source of science-based climate solutions. A world-renowned scientist, his work focuses on the sustainability of our planet and the climate, ecosystems and natural resources we depend on. Throughout his career, he has made major contributions to our understanding of worldwide changes in climate, ecosystems and global food systems. Foley has won numerous awards and honors, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (awarded by President Bill Clinton); the National Science Foundation's Faculty Early Career Development Award; the J.S. McDonnell Foundation's 21st Century Science Award; an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellowship; and the Sustainability Science Award from the Ecological Society of America. In 2014, he was named winner of the prestigious Heinz Award for the Environment. A noted science communicator, Foley has written many popular articles, op-eds, and essays in publications like National Geographic, Scientific American, the New York Times, The Guardian, Ensia, Yale's Environment 360, and bioGraphic, among others. His presentations on global environmental issues have been featured at hundreds of venues, including the Aspen Environmental Forum, the Chautauqua Institution, and TED.

Ken Gabriel is the President and CEO of The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc., an independent not-for-profit research institution that develops innovative solutions to some of the nation’s most critical problems in national security, space, biomedical systems and energy.

Ken was most recently the deputy director of the Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group at Google, which he helped establish when he joined the organization in 2012 as Corporate Vice President at Google/Motorola Mobility. From 2009 to 2012, Ken was the Deputy Director, and then Acting Director, of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the Department of Defense, an agency with an annual budget of $3B leading projects to both create and avoid technology surprise.

Widely regarded as the architect of the micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) industry, Gabriel was the Co-Founder, Chairman and Chief Technology Officer of Akustica, a fabless semiconductor company that commercialized MEMS audio devices and sensors between 2002 and 2009, the year it was acquired.

Ken has been a tenured professor in both the Robotics Institute and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. He holds SM and ScD degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Christof Koch is an American neuroscientist best known for his studies and writings exploring the basis of consciousness. Trained as a physicist, Koch was for 27 years a professor of biology and engineering at the California Institute of Technology. He is now President and Chief Scientific Officer at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, leading a ten year, large-scale, high through-put effort to build brain observatories to map, analyze and understand the mouse and human cerebral cortex.

On a quest to understand the physical roots of consciousness before his brain stops functioning, he published his first paper on the neural correlates of consciousness with the molecular biologist Francis Crick a quarter of a century ago.

He is a frequent public speaker and writes a regular column for Scientific American Mind. Christof is a vegetarian who lives in Seattle and loves big dogs, climbing, rowing, and biking.

Lisa Randall studies theoretical particle physics and cosmology at Harvard University, where she is Frank J. Baird, Jr. Professor of Science. Randall’s research connects theoretical insights addressing puzzles in our understanding of the properties of matter, the Universe, and space.. Her latest book Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs is a sweeping overview of the evolution of the Universe, the Milky Way, the Solar System, and of life.   Professor Randall earned her PhD from Harvard University and held professorships at MIT and Princeton University before returning to Harvard in 2001. Randall is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,  the American Physical Society, and is an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy and an Honorary Fellow of the British Institute of Physics. Professor Randall’s studies have made her among the most cited and influential theoretical physicists and she is the recipient of many awards and honors for her accomplishments.  In addition, Professor Randall was on the list of Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People" of 2007 and was one of 40 people featured in The Rolling Stone 40th Anniversary issue in Newsweek's "Who's Next in 2006." She is also the recipient of honorary degrees from Brown University, Duke University, Bard College, and the University of Antwerp.

Randall’s books: Warped Passages (2005), and Knocking on Heaven’s Door (2011) were featured on the New York Times’ lists of “100 Notable Books.” Her e-book, Higgs Discovery: The Power of Empty Space, was published in 2012.

Martin Rees is a cosmologist and space scientist. His research interests have included galaxy formation, active galactic nuclei, black holes, gamma-ray bursts, and more speculative aspects of cosmology. He is based in Cambridge, where he has been Director of the Institute of Astronomy, a Research Professor, and Master of Trinity College. He was President of the Royal Society during 2005-2010. He was appointed to the House of Lords as a cross-bencher in 2005 and to the Order of Merit in 2007. He has received many international awards for his research. He belongs to numerous foreign academies including the US National Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy, the Japan Academy and the Pontifical Academy. He holds honorary degrees from numerous universities, including Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Yale .He is a former trustee of the British Museum, the Science Museum, NESTA and the Gates Cambridge Trust, and is on the Board of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study. He has served on many bodies connected with education, space research, arms control and international collaboration in science.. He lectures, writes and broadcasts widely for general audiences. His books include 'Before the Beginning', 'Our Final Century?' 'Just Six Numbers', 'Our Cosmic Habitat', 'Gravity's Fatal Attraction' (with M Begelman) , and 'From Here to Infinity: Scientific Horizons', an expanded version of his BBC Reith Lectures. A further book, 'What we still don't know' is forthcoming.

Ever since his book 'Our Final Century?' was published, he has been concerned with the threats stemming from humanity's ever-heavier 'footprint' on the global environment, and with the runaway consequences of ever more powerful technologies. These concerns led him to join with colleagues in setting up a Centre for the Study of Existential Risks (CSER). This is based in Cambridge but has a strong international advisory board.