Steve Wozniak is a pioneer of the digital age, he was one of the three founders of Apple Computer, setting up in Steve Jobs' garage in 1976. Woz, as he is almost universally known, designed the hardware, circuit boards and operating system for the Apple I. After a plane crash in 1981, Wozniak played a reduced role at Apple, ending full time employment in 1987. Since then he's been a regular character on the technology scene, founding several tech companies working on remote controls, GPS technology, Lego robots and data storage among other things. He wrote his autobiography, iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon, in 2007 and continues to provide schools in his neighbourhood with funding, technical support and advice. Wozniak is a founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the recipient of the National Medal of Technology, the Heinz Award, and numerous honorary doctorate degrees.

Mitch Altman has been putting together electronic hardware in his own unique style for nearly thirty years. He was an early virtual reality pioneer at VPL with Jaron Lanier and one of the very first Silicon Valley start-up founders, establishing RAID controller company 3Ware in 1997. Altman's latest role has been as a founder of the San Francisco hackerspace Noisebridge, where he helps people learn how to solder and program microcontrollers. Altman was a leading light of Maker Faire and Make magazine, designing their most popular kit, Trip Glasses, parting ways with them earlier this year in protest at their acceptance of a DARPA grant. (He also left VPL when the company started winning military contracts). His coolest invention is the TV-B-Gone, a one button remote control for shutting off TVs in public places.

Alexander Asseily is founder and Chairman of London-based startup STATE, an opinion network. Alexander was the founding CEO of Jawbone and continues to serve as its Chairman. Jawbone (aka Aliph) is the world leader in mobile lifestyle products including Jawbone Icon & Era headsets, the Jambox wireless speaker line and UP personal health solutions. Alexander grew up in Beirut and London before receiving his BSc & MSc in Engineering Design at Stanford University.

Bart Becks is a Belgian internet and media entrepreneur.In 2010, he launched SonicAngel together with Maurice Engelen (Praga Khan, Lords of Acid & Antler Subway Records). One year later, SonicAngel has an artist roster of 30 artists across 5 countries rapidly expanding .Previously, Bart Becks was CEO of Belgacom Skynet, and thereby at the forefront of free and high-speed internet, online media and digital television revolutions. Next, he became chief innovation & new media of the SBS Europe Group, which was acquired in 2008 by pan-European media giant ProSiebenSat1. Since then he was involved in a series of startups in Europe and the US, such as Netlog, Storify and Zamante.

Dr. Yvonne Cagle is a NASA Astronaut and Family Physician. In 2008 , Dr. Cagle retired as a Colonel in the USAF where she served as a Senior Flight Surgeon prior to her selection to the NASA Astronaut Corp in 1996. In 2005, Dr. Cagle was assigned to the NASA/ARC as the lead ARC Astronaut Science Liaison and Strategic Relationships Manager for Google and other Silicon Valley Programmatic Partnerships. Dr. Cagle's groundbreaking work is preserving historic NASA space legacy data while, simultaneously, galvanizing NASA's lead in global mapping, sustainable energies, green initiatives, and disaster preparedness. Dr. Cagle is advisor for the Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research Program (CRuSR). Currently Dr. Cagle is on faculty and serves as the NASA liaison for exploration and space exponential technologies with Singularity University.

Xavier Damman is the CEO and cofounder of Storify, an internet start up company that helps people curate what people post on social media into coherent narratives. Xavier moved from Belgium to San Francisco in 2009 with the goal to make sense of the social web to better inform the world on what is happening as reported by people on the ground using social media. He's also the founder of HackDemocracy a meetup group which tries to think about the ways technology can impact democracy for the better. He's a firm believer in sharing, in spreading good ideas and in the power of technology and networks to make the world a better place.

Alexander D'Hooghe is associate professor in Architectural Urbanism at MIT. He conducts a research group called Platform for a Permanent Modernity. Alexander runs the Organisation for Permanent Modernity, an architecture and urban design firm seeking radical solutions to the crisis of urban sprawl by seeing a place for the monumental in urban design. To this end they've been working on a massive landfill project in South Korea and a masterplan for the conversion of Rekjavik airport. Amid all this big thinking is a series of smaller Scala domestic and civic architecture projects in Belgium, including Police Stations, private villas, Fire Stations and a park. In this time of political and economic uncertainty, and in the face of social turmoil across Europe a new and ambitious vision for the urban landscape is sorely needed.

Dr. Stuart Firestein is the Chair of Columbia University's Department of Biological Sciences where his colleagues and he study the vertebrate olfactory system, possibly the best chemical detector on the face of the planet. Aside from its molecular detection capabilities, the olfactory system serves as a model for investigating general principles and mechanisms of signaling and perception in the brain. His laboratory seeks to answer that fundamental human question: How do I smell?

Dedicated to promoting the accessibility of science to a public audience Firestein serves as an advisor for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's program for the Public Understanding of Science. Recently he was awarded the 2011 Lenfest Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award for excellence in scholarship and teaching. His book on the workings of science for a general audience called Ignorance, How it drives Science was released by Oxford University Press this Spring.

Greg Gage is a Neuroscientist and co-founder of Backyard Brains, an organisation teaching kids and amateurs neuroscience through hands-on experiments to see and hear brain signals from living neurons and also via robotic control of ordinary cockroaches. He's also a TED Fellow. The way he reveals neuroscience to school kids is through the SpikerBox, a small rig that helps kids understand the electrical impulses that control the nervous system. He's passionate about helping students understand how our brains and our neurons work, because as he says, we still know very little about how the brain works -- and we need to start inspiring kids early to want to know more. The inspiration for Greg's work as an educator came from a realisation that the advanced equipment he used as a PhD student could be made at home for a fraction of the price, in less than a day.

Eri Gentry is a founder of Bio Curious, a garage biology movement and meetup group pushing the boundaries of how bio-science is done, where it takes place and most importantly who does it. The inexorable democratisation of technology, in place for the last 300 years or so, has reached its latest frontier. By taking the tools of production out of university hands, and loosening the grip of giant Pharma on bio-science Gentry has created a disruptive environment for creative exploration. Gentry is a mentor at the Singularity University, a blogger at MAKE magazine, organiser of the Bay Area Quantified Self meetup and most recently Director of Business Development at Scanadu.

Pediatrician and father of four, Dr. Alan Greene completed his pediatric residency program at Children's Hospital Medical Center of Northern California and served there as Chief Resident. In 1995, while at ABC Pediatrics in San Mateo, California, he launched DrGreene.com, cited by the AMA as "the pioneer physician Web site". He is the author of Feeding Baby Green, Raising Baby Green and, From First Kicks to First Steps.

He appears frequently in the media including such venues as the TODAY Show, the Dr. Oz Show, Good Morning America, Fox and Friends, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Time Magazine. In 2010, Dr. Greene founded the WhiteOut Now movement aimed at changing how babies are fed starting with their first bite of solid food.

Connie Hedegaard is a Danish politician and public intellectual who is the European Commissioner for Climate Action since February 2010.Taking up her new position at the European Commission in 2010, Connie Hedegaard stressed the importance of climate change in the 21st century. She hoped that by the end of her five-year term, Europe would be the most climate friendly region in the world.On behalf of Denmark, she hosted the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009. She was Danish Minister for Climate and Energy from 23 November 2007 as a member of the Cabinet of Anders Fogh Rasmussen III and that of Lars Lokke Rasmussen and had been the Danish Minister for the Environment from 2 August 2004 to 23 November 2007, as a member of the Cabinet of Anders Fogh Rasmussen I and II.

Tito Jankowski is a synthetic biologist who works from home, sequencing and manipulating mailorder DNA using over-the-counter equipment in his garage. He founded the San Francisco chapter of DIYBio, a Boston originating national movement, in 2008. The group's experiments include extracting DNA from saliva and designing organisms that glow in the presence of heavy metals. This mash up of biological experimentation, laboratory work, hacker principles, and punk DIY methods is gaining rapid traction and Jankowski is one of the early West Coast founders. He organises Bio Curious meetings and speaks regularly at meetings and conferences about DIY biology and the garage DNA revolution. He invented a A DIY copier machine for DNA: A fast, computer controlled PCR machine that uses normal PCR tubes and can be built with off the shelf parts and free plans.

Peter Jansen is a maker and a research scientist. His area of expertise is Cognitive Artificial Intelligence, he teaches computers how to learn language like babies. He's also worked in astrophysics, Computational Linguistics and … making stuff. He started putting together things like homemade 3D printers and a reciprocating laser saw, made of ultra low cost materials, and all schematics and details posted online for free. Peter's most impressive achievement is four generations of the scientific Tricorder. Based on Star Trek's famous sensor device he managed to make a Tricorder that measures atmospheric pressure, electromagnetism, temperature and humidity among many other metrics, and that has GPS, and an ultrasonic distance sensor on-board. Peter designed everything, he sourced all the components, soldered the control boards, made the casings and programmed the chips, a true polymath.

Andrew Keen is a British born entrepreneur and author. His book The Cult of the Amateur sets out his views of user-generated content websites such as YouTube and Wikipedia. Keen's view is that by worshipping the amateur individual - bedroom filmmaker or prolific blogger, part time Flickr photographer or war tourist tweeter - we're losing sight of carefully considered media production techniques that have evolved over decades, along with the intelligent professionals who operate in far flung places to bring us the news. Keen reckons Wikipedia is the online home of inaccuracy and crowdsourced content can never be as reliable as pre-digital information channels. He argues fluently for media literacy, challenging the mantra of the digital generation, the user is not king.

Artist and maker Zoe Laughlin is a co-founder/director of the Institute of Making and the Materials Library project. She holds an MA from Central Saint Martin's College of Art and Design and obtained a PhD in Materials within the Division of Engineering, King's College London. Working at the interface of the science, art, craft and design of materials, her work ranges from formal experiments with matter, to materials consultancy and large-scale public exhibitions and events with partners including Tate Modern, the Hayward Gallery, the V&A and the Wellcome Collection. Her particular areas of interest are currently The Sound of Materials, The Taste of Materials and The Performativity of Matter, with outputs ranging from theatrical demonstration lectures to the making of instruments and features on both radio and television.

Rudi Pauwels is a pharmacologist and biotech start up founder. He founded both Tibotec, a pharmaceutical company specialising in retrovirals for the treatment of HIV, and Virco which became the leading lab in the world for matching HIV mutations to specific patient DNA profiles. Rudi is also the founder of Biocartis SA which aims to transform the global diagnostics market by making personalised medicine an everyday reality. Biocartis will do this by matching novel, broadly applicable molecular diagnostics and immunodiagnostics solutions to both patients and diseases, broadening access to technologies and suggesting treatments to rapidly emerging biomarkers rather than on physiological symptoms.

Irene van Peer is a Dutch product designer, games & interaction lecturer and design researcher at HKU in Hilversum. User centered design and working in the field are key to her. Pig Chase is a digital game designed to be played by pigs and humans. The Playing with Pigs project started as a collaboration between HKU and Wageningen University and is researching the complex relationship we have with domesticated pigs by designing play. Designing new forms of human-pig interaction can create the opportunity for humans and pigs to forge new relations as well as to experience the cognitive capabilities of each other. Pig Chase is the start and inspiration of the 'Playing with Animals' research program. What makes Pig Chase a bit different is that it takes advantage of new technology to make the game available at home and in a pig pen. The main discovery Irene and her team have made is pigs respond more readily to light, colour and shape than to haptic stimulus.

Ben Kestner studied flute at the London College of music and in Berlin with Andreas Blau and after spending time playing and teaching he pursued a career in education. He taught Music in two comprehensive schools in Norfolk and London and then joined the Berlin Brandenburg International School in 2001 becoming curriculum coordinator for the IBO Middle Years Programme and then Middle School Principal. He is currently Middle School Principal at St. John's International School in Belgium. He believes that we need to push the reset button when we talk about the future of education and start again. Ben is one of the key organizer of the TEDxKids@Brussels 2011 and 2012 - www.tedxkids.be

Ben will be hosting "Citizen Science" at TEDxBrussels 2012.

Jeroen Raes is a bionaut, he researches the human microbiome. What he's discovered in his lab at the Flanders Institute of Biology could herald a major breakthrough not just in gastro-intestinal medicine, but in our fundamental knowledge of the human biology. It turns out that there are only three different types of gut bacteria and, just like blood groups, the three types are totally independent of race, sex, age or diet. Such a baffling finding leads to more research of course and Raes is currently testing his idea on a larger group . The implications for Crohn's Disease or obesity could be dramatic.

Aaron Rowe is a molecular chemistry researcher and prolific blogger about life sciences, technology and science education. He writes product reviews for Wired and has developed a low cost medical instrument as part of his studies at the University of California. Most recently Aaron has become a senior biomedical engineer at Scanadu where he's lending his considerable scientific knowledge to the search for the medical Tricorder. He wants to make a significant contribution to health care and use his skills to make innovative changes both to scientific method and to life science results.

Scala is an all-female choir from the Flemish town of Aarschot in Belgium. They hit the headlines in 2010 when, with the Kolacny brothers, they featured on the trailer to The Social Network, the massively successful hollywood movie all about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. For the film they sang a version of Radiohead's 'Creep' that resonated around the world as the wired generation discovered the personality behind Facebook and its billions of users. Long before that however, Scala were enjoying local success winning the award for Belgian Choir of the Year in 2000, releasing their first album, Scala on the Rocks in 2002. The formula of rendering current rock classics in pure choral tones has proved incredibly popular, Scala performs all over the world continually adding to its hard rock repertoire.

Yasaman Sheri is Teaching Fellow, Design Track at Singularity University and Designer, Board of Directors at Fluxmedia, Hexagram.

Fluxmedia is a research-creation network located at Concordia University in Montreal. The network is made up of artists, scholars, graduate students, and research labs engaged with interdisciplinary research across art and the life sciences, including biology, digital and electronic media art, art/sci, and transdisciplinary art practices. Research projects initiated through Fluxmedia explore how emerging technologies and biomedia intersect with new modes of artistic practice and cultural theory. Fluxmedia is a space of exploration, working with science and art techniques to reflect on the socio-political, aesthetic, ethical, and environmental dimensions implicated through the use of new bioimaging and visualization technologies.

Dale Stephens is a 20 year old education hactivist and Thiel Fellow. Started by Peter Thiel, the idea is that Fellows of the programme each receive $100,000 not to go to college (which Thiel believes is a waste of time and money). Dale Stephens is the leader of UnCollege a social movement which intends to challenge the notion that a college degree is the only path to business or career success. He points to the fact that self-directed learners consistently out perform traditional students, 22% of young college grads work at jobs that have no requirement for a college degree, and 70% of learning comes from real-world experiences. Dale is regularly invited to speak about his vision and has appeared on CNN, ABC, NPR, CBS, Fox, and TechCrunch. His work has been covered by the New York Times and New York Magazine toFast Company and Forbes.

Monte Stettin is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of e.mersion studio, llc, a state-of-the-art scientific animation and design studio that develops very sophisticated visualizations and cross-platform applications for areas including pharma, biotech, patient information, medical education, museums. e-mersion is all about bringing the power of animation to science education, through both cutting-edge advances in interactive technologies and innovations in publishing to foster immersive science and biology in action.

Bruno Zamborlin is a technologist, researcher, musician and designer. He's been working on a joint PhD in computational technologies between Paris and London, exploring new methods for gestural interaction and its applications in performing arts and the creation of new musical instruments. Bruno is interested in the topic of Interactive Machine Learning and the possibility of allowing the artist to interact with the entire supervised learning process and the creation and design of his own gesture vocabulary. The early results of this research is Mogees, which uses contact microphones to turn any touchable surface into a musical instrument. Bruno made a video illustrating Mogees that's had more then 300,000 views, furthering his mission to open up gestural vocabulary to impromptu actions and personalisation.