Nicholas Merrill - Calyx Institute


Nicholas Merrill created the Calyx Institute to educate the public regarding the lack of privacy in telecommunications and to develop the infrastructure to implement secure mobile phone and Internet services in a way that has not been done before. Merrill has personally fought intrusive government demands for private customer information, and he aims to develop, document and publicly release technology under an open source license to enable private communications that even the service provider cannot decode or eavesdrop upon. Merrill’s goal is to inhibit mass surveillance and to protect the privacy and security of users everywhere.

Flaminia Catteruccia - Immunology and Infectious Diseases


Associate Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Harvard School of Public Health
Flaminia Catteruccia is a molecular entomologist specializing in the reproductive biology of Anopheles mosquitoes, the only mosquitoes capable of transmitting human malaria. She is exploring how disruptions to the mosquito mating process could hinder reproduction. Her work has received funding from the European Research Council, Wellcome Trust and Medical Research Council and has appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Biotechnology and PLoS Biology. Her focus on the reproductive biology of mosquitoes seeks keys to fighting a disease that still affects hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Giuseppe “Bepi” Raviola - Global Mental Health


Director of Mental Health at Partners In Health, Director of the Program in Global Mental Health and Social Change at Harvard Medical School, and Medical Director of the Psychiatry Quality Program at Boston Children's Hospital Giuseppe “Bepi” Raviola works to more fully integrate mental health services into global health care efforts. Through research, clinical practice and training in places ranging from Haiti to Rwanda, Raviola is building teams and bridging disciplines to address this critical and neglected issue. His ideas and findings have appeared in The Lancet, the Harvard Review of Psychiatry and the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Raviola’s work on behalf of local mental health team leaders aims to build lasting, community-based systems of mental health care.

Young Guru on the American Tradition of Piracy

Revered as “The Sound of New York,” Young Guru has mixed 10 of Jay-Z’s albums and officially became Jay-Z’s tour D.J. in 2010. He has recorded virtually every other top hip-hop artist and has more than a decade of experience in sound engineering, production, and A&R for the acclaimed Roc-A-Fella Records and Def Jam Recordings. Young Guru is part of a team using a grant from the National Science Foundation to develop so-called 3-D sound, which allows the brain to interpret the depth and direction of sound like it occurs in real space.

Aishwarya Ratan - Global Financial Inclusion Initiative


As director of the Global Financial Inclusion Initiative at Yale University and Innovations for Poverty Action, Aishwarya Ratan focuses on the design and delivery of effective financial services for the poor. GFII seeks to test, evaluate and replicate interventions to improve products, delivery channels and tools ranging from savings products to mobile money and financial literacyprograms. The initiative's rigorous approach to testing and measuring the impact of such innovations aims to ensure that the financial services available to the poor to manage and grow their money are affordable, efficient, secure and welfare-enhancing.

Rachel Brown founded Sisi ni Amani


Rachel Brown founded Sisi ni Amani - Kenya ("We are Peace - Kenya" in Swahili) to pioneer the use of mobile technology to get the right communication capacity into the hands of local peacebuilders, enabling communities to participate in democratic processes and prevent violence. Through civic education, engagement and dialogue, SNA-K leverages SMS text messaging to support the peace efforts of community leaders. As a key partner in the collaborative PeaceTXT project, SNA-K is working to make locally effective tools that can be replicated globally in stopping violence and building peace.

Adrian Anantawan

Born of Thai-Chinese ethnicity, Adrian Anantawan began the violin at nine, and has since established himself as “a rising star in classical music," according to the Globe and Mail. In 2001, he was accepted into the Curtis Institute of Music with a merit-based full scholarship, and completed his bachelor degree under the tutelage of Ida Kavafian and Yumi Ninomiya Scott. He also holds a Masters Degree from Yale University, studying with Peter Oundjian. Anantawan has performed extensively in Canada as a soloist with the Orchestras of Toronto, Nova Scotia, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Montreal, Edmonton and Vancouver. He has also presented feature recitals at the Aspen Music Festival, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and the White House.

Eric Stowe - Splash


Eric Stowe believes that every child has a right to clean water—and he has built an innovative, scalable approach to act on that belief. Since founding Splash (formerly A Child's Right) in 2006, Stowe has developed a highly effective model to ensure safe water for urban children living at the intersection of these two streets: “greatest degrees of poverty” and “worst water quality conditions.” Leveraging world-class water purification technology, sustainable monitoring and maintenance, excellent people, and a rigorous commitment to transparency, Splash will soon announce that every orphanage in China has safe drinking water. Stowe's team will then demonstrate how they are customizing their approach for 15 more countries in Asia and East Africa, using their "Proving It" platform to share both successes and failures at all of their project sites.