For 16 years I was a Professor in the fabulous Department of Psychology at the University of Virginia. But in 2011 I moved to the NYU-Stern School of Business. Stern has offered me the opportunity to build a new program looking at complex social systems. I'm working with economists and other social scientists to figure out how to apply moral psychology to make businesses, non-profits, cities, and other systems work more efficiently and ethically, without having to teach ethics to anyone.
I study morality and emotion, and how they vary across cultures. I am also active in positive psychology (the scientific study of human flourishing) and study positive emotions such as moral elevation, admiration, and awe. My research in recent years focused on the moral foundations of politics, and on ways to transcend the culture wars by using recent discoveries in moral psychology to foster more civil forms of politics. Morality, by its very nature, makes it hard to study morality. It binds people together into teams that seek victory, not truth. It closes hearts and minds to opponents even as it makes cooperation and decency possible within groups.

To live virtuously as individuals and as societies, we must understand how our minds are built. We must find ways to overcome our natural self-righteousness. We must respect and even learn from those whose morality differs from our own (see this talk on politics, or this essay on religion).
Jonathan received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992 and then did postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago and in Orissa, India. He has been on the faculty of the University of Virginia since 1995.
He was the Laurance S. Rockefeller Distinguished Visiting Professor at Princeton University in 2006-2007. He is the author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. His next book, to be published in 2010, is The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

Andre Wakefield, Associate Professor of History at Pitzer College, writes on the history of political economy and deep time. His books include The Disordered Police State: German Cameralism as Science and Practice and an edited translation of G. W. Leibniz's Protogaea. He has also written articles on topics ranging from higher education to German bureaucracies and California fires.

Andre has lectured widely across the United States and Europe on the history of science and the history of political economy; he has served as a visiting professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris; and he has received numerous grants and awards. These include the Humboldt Foundation Fellowship for Experienced Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany; the Herzog Ernst Fellowship at the University of Erfurt, Germany; and the Arnold L. and Lois S. Graves Award in the Humanities from the American Council on Learned Societies. Andre also received a Collaborative Grant (with Claudine Cohen) from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to translate Leibniz's Protogaea from the original Latin. He currently serves on the editorial board of Isis, the flagship journal of the History of Science Society.

Andre received a Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago; an M.A. in Public Affairs from the University of Minnesota; and a B.A. in Philosophy and Mathematics from St. Johna's College.

Angela began learning tap, jazz and ballet in her native Buffalo, New York at six years of age. She received her BFA from the Boston Conservatory where she was awarded the Jan Veen Scholarship. Through her studies at the Conservatory, Angela performed the works of Jose Limon, Martha Graham, and Murray Lewis, as well as creating her own works. Angela then pursued a career in acrobatics and circus arts. She kept one toe on the ground dancing with Tribe of Human, The Chase Brock Experience, and began getting airtime with the Brooklyn-based, 'PopAction' dance company, STREB. Angela was an acrobat in Cirqutaculara's Circurious; was a featured aerialist and co-choreographer in the Off-Broadway production of Caligula Maximus; played the principle role of Luna the Moth in Grounded Aerial's InsectInside and was on the world tour of The Aluminum Show.

In 2012 Angela co-founded The Muse Brooklyn, a unique circus-based community and artist collective through the collaboration and integration of circus, music, dance, and other performing arts. Angela currently produces her own works and shows at The Muse while working as a hand-to-hand acrobat and aerialist with Phoenix Entertainment NYC and other New York- based circus companies.

Lewis H. Lapham is the founder and editor of Lapham's Quarterly, a newly-launched, award winning and critically acclaimed journal of history and ideas, praised by the historian David McCullough as "a god-send and a genuine treasure," and by the novelist, Dave Eggers, as "brilliant and much needed." Lapham's Quarterly was rated "one of the years hottest launches" by MIN, the media industry newsletter; Library Journal named it one of the best new journals of the year, and the Utne Reader judged it to be the "best new publication of 2009."

The editor emeritus of Harper's Magazine, Lapham in 2007 was inducted into the American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame. He is the author of thirteen books, among them Money and Class in America, The Wish for Kings, Waiting for the Barbarians and Theater of War. He produces a weekly podcast, "The World in Time" for Bloomberg News, and his documentary film, "The American Ruling Class" has become part of the curriculum in many of the nation's schools and colleges. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Lapham has lectured at many of the nation's leading universities, among them Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, and Stanford and the Universities of Michigan, Virginia, and Oregon.

Colin Spoelman, the son of a Presbyterian minister, was born and raised in rural Kentucky, where renegade moonshine distillers still thrive. Knowing a bit about the process from exposure growing up, he began to study the science and craft of distilling, starting with unaged corn whiskeys and moving to a small-cask bourbon. Since hobby distilling is illegal, he poured through a trove of sources, in books and online, to find the rare expert advice that is available to the general public, but gained most of his
expertise through simple trial and error. He has worked in film and architecture and operates as KCD's Master Distiller.

As an entrepreneur, Kevin has successfully navigated and integrated the areas of gaming, new media, technology, and design. As Co-founder of Area/Code in 2005, Kevin was a pioneer in rethinking game design and development around new technologies (like GPS) and new platforms (like Facebook). Area/Code worked to develop next-generation game experiences not only for major consumer product groups like Nokia, Nike and Puma but for media giants such as MTV, Discovery Channel, CBS and Disney. Their Facebook game Parking Wars, commissioned by A&E Television to promote its show of the same name, served over 1 billion pages in 2008. The company was acquired by Zynga in 2011, becoming Zynga New York.

Other ventures include the social TV company Starling, building on synchronized audience participation around broadcast television. He co-founded AFK Labs in 2008, designing next-generation dynamically responsive environments, designing for the (now defunct) largest and densest sensor mesh on the planet.

Kevin is currently advising and investing in several new startups including locative games, education analytics, luxury retailing, algorithmic sports analysis, visual search, and online video advertising. Kevin's thinking and ventures have been featured in major business publications such as the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Wired, Businessweek and Fast Company. Recent feature profiles include everything from Dwell to the New Scientist, the Design Observer, and the Calcalist in Israel. Slavin and his partner at Area/Code were named to Creativity Magazine's Creativity 50.

Kevin understands business and technology from the corporate side as well having spent 10 years as an advertising executive for large tech brands like Microsoft and Time Warner.

Thom started his career in dance and theatre training in New York City at Ellen Stewart`s LaMama ETC, Edward Hawkins Dance and the Open Theatre. In Paris he continued at L’Ecole Jacques Lecoq, LaMama de Paris and workshops with Grotwoski’s Polish Laboratory Theatre. His theatrical creations were informed by corporeal and sculptural imagery.
Returning to Toronto he became one of the original founders of The Theatre Centre and the Native Theatre School. Meeting composer and visionary R. Murray Schafer, he directed his operas including RA at the Ontario Science Centre and Holland Festival, Hermes Trismegistos at the Liege Festival and inside Union Station for Toronto's World Stage 92, The Greatest Show and Requiems for a Party Girl.
He produced Michael Nyman at Massey Hall, the Master Musicians of Jajouka at Convocation Hall and the Sonic Boom series of contemporary opera and music. In co-production with the Banff Centre, Opera de Montreal, Huddersfield Festival and Musica Festival in Strasbourg, he produced an international tour of Claude Vivier's opera Kopernikus in 2000.
His own works include the opera Electric Flesh with composer Wend Bartley, presented at the Opera de Lyon, the libretto for Nosferatu for the Canadian Opera Company and Anxiety of Immortality at the Royal Ontario Museum. His final theatrical creation was Kafka in Love, a water-opera inside Hart House swimming pool with synchronized swimmers and a video-sound installation for the World Stage Festival 2003.
A series of commissions followed; National Capital Commission in Ottawa for The Balloons, the Fallsview Casino for The Royal Flush and Scotiabank's Nuit Blanche 2006 for Confinement of the Intellect which then, re-titled as The Encampment, had versions exhibited on Roosevelt Island in New York City (07) and Major's Hill Park in Ottawa (08) and more recently at last year's Luminato Festival. In 2012, he was commissioned by Scotiabank Nuit Blanche and Chevrolet to create Funhouse, a drive through contemporary funhouse inspired by Tobe Hooper's film of the same name.

His curatorial practice started with Interactive 05 which he co-curated with Clara Hargittay for the Toronto International Art Fair, focusing on interactive media art in public spaces. This followed with Le Labo - Contact 2007 (Marc Audette), Zone A for Toronto's Scotiabanks's Nuit Blanche 2009, and Futurism Today or NOT! and Dada Reboot!, independent projects for Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2011 and 2012. This year Thom created the Erotic Life of Dreams for The Spoke Club Gallery and this coming June 2013, he will be curating 'Darkness at the Edge' for Propeller Centre of Visual Arts in Toronto. He is presently creating Chorea Lasciva to premiere autumn 2013, a 16 screen video/sound installation.
Besides working as an independent artist and curator, he runs a collective studio with Jenny-Anne McCowan (Thomas+Guinevere). Their focus is on the large-scale temporal public art projects, which have included the several versions of The Encampment in Canada and US, a residency in Mapoon, Queensland and a development workshop at Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, NYC. Further development on Ghost Net starts this year.

Thomas P.M. Barnett, PhD, is a Grand Strategist who has worked in national security affairs since the end of the Cold War. Dr. Barnett is best known as the New York Times-bestseller, author of The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century (2004). He has also written Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating (2005), and Great Powers: America and the World After Bush (2009). Esquire named the Best and the Brightest in 2002; he has also been described by U.S. News & World Report's Michael Barone as "one of the most important strategic thinkers of our time."

He holds a PhD in Political Science from Harvard University and is currently the Chief Analyst for WikiStrat, running his own consulting company Barnett Consulting LLC, a Contributing Editor for www.esquire.com , write a weekly column at the World Politics Review.

Charles Raison, MD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and the Barry and Janet Lang Associate Professor of Integrative Mental Health at the John and Doris Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences, University of Arizona. Prior to this, he was an Associate Professor and Clinical Director of the Mind-Body Program at Emory University.

Dr. Raison received his medical degree from Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, where he was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha and won the Missouri State Medical Association Award. He completed residency training at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and Hospital in Los Angeles.

The recipient of several teaching awards, Dr. Raison has received research funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. His research focuses on bi-directional relationships between neuroendocrine and immune systems, especially as these pertain to depression in response to stress or medical illness. His research ranges from immune system effects on central nervous system functioning to the application of compassion meditation as a strategy to reduce inflammatory responses to psychosocial stress. Dr. Raison has also done pioneering studies on the use of cytokine antagonists for the treatment of major depression. In addition to his activities at University of Arizona, Dr. Raison is the mental health expert for CNN.com and serves on the editorial board of Brain, Behavior and Immunity.

Dr. Stock is a leading authority on the broad impacts of genomic and other advanced technologies in the life sciences. His goal as the Director of the Program on Medicine, Technology and Society at UCLA's School of Medicine is both to explore critical technologies poised to impact humanity's future and the shape of medical science and to catalyze broad public debate about their implications for public policy.

A recent focus of his has been the implications for healthcare of today's revolution in molecular genetics and bioinformatics. Dr. Stock's book, Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future with Houghton Mifflin, won the Kistler Book Prize for Science books and was nominated for a Wired Rave Award. Among his other books are Engineering The Human Germline for Oxford University Press, Metaman, for Simon & Schuster, and the best seller, The Book of Questions, which has been translated into seventeen languages, and is now in its fifty-fifth printing. Sequels to that book include The Book of Questions: Business, Politics, and Ethics and a new book that will explore how coming technologies will reshape our everyday lives. Dr. Stock sits on the editorial board of the American Journal of Bioethics, The Journal of Evolution and Technology, and Rejuvenation Research and was invited to submit an Advisory Memo to President Clinton on the challenges of the next century.

He makes regular appearances on television and radio, including CNN, PBS, NPR, Bloomberg and the BBC and has debated biotech policy with Jeremy Rifkin, Leon Kass, Francis Fukuyama, Bill McKibben, George Annas and other prominent voices who would rein in biomedical research. He serves on the California Advisory Committee on Stem Cells and Reproductive Cloning, and is the Associate Director of the BioAgenda Institute, a policy think tank at Berkeley, and the CEO of Signum Biosciences, a Princeton-based biotechnology company developing therapeutics for Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases. He has a PhD in Biophysics from Johns Hopkins University and an MBA from Harvard University.