Matthias Mahlmann is the Chair of Philosophy and Theory of Law, Legal Sociology and International Public Law at the University of Zurich. He has been visiting professor at the Central European University, Budapest; the Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, DC. He also serves as the BOK Visiting International Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School 2016/2017. He has been a legal consultant to different public bodies, including the Swiss Federal Government and the European Commission.

Professor Stefan Kurath studied architecture at universities in Switzerland and the Netherlands. He received his doctoral degree at HafenCity University in Hamburg in 2010. Stefan has his own practice for architecture and urban design: urbaNplus / Stefan Kurath / GmbH in Zurich, and is a partner at Iseppi-Kurath GmbH in Grison.

Since 2012, Stefan has been professor for architecture and design at the School of Architecture, ZHAW. He is the winner of the CS-ZHAW Award for best teaching in 2013, together with Peter Jenni. Since 2014, he has been the head of the Institute Urban Landscape at School of Architecture ZHAW, together with Regula Iseli.

Dr Stefanie Walter is professor for international relations and political economy at the department of political science at the University of Zurich. She received her PhD in political science from ETH Zurich for a dissertation on the political economy of currency crises. Before joining the faculty at the University of Zurich in 2013, she was a Fritz-Thyssen-Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University and junior professor for international and comparative political economy at the University of Heidelberg. Her research in international and comparative political economy examines distributional conflicts, political preferences and economic policy outcomes related to globalisation, European integration, and financial crises.

Current projects examine the mass politics of international disintegration, the political economy of the euro crisis, and the effects of globalisation and financial crises on individuals’ political preferences. Stefanie Walter’s work has been published inter alia in the Annual Review of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, European Journal of Political Research, International Organisation, International Studies Quarterly, and Political Science Research and Methods. She is the author of Financial Crises and the Politics of Macroeconomic Adjustments (2013, Cambridge University Press) and co-editor of a special issue on the political economy of the Eurozone Crisis (2016, Comparative Political Studies, with Mark Copelovitch and Jeffry Frieden).

Silvio Borner (1941) professor emeritus for Economics and Politics at the University of Basel and Program Director of the “Summer School for Law, Economics and Public Policy”, which he founded. He is also a senior advisor at Hoffmann & Partner, a founding member of the Carnot-Cournot Network for economic studies for economic studies, member of the program commission of Avenir Suisse and columnist for the “Weltwoche” magazine. After studying at the University of St. Gallen and Yale (USA), he qualified as a lecturer at the University of St. Gallen in 1973 before becoming a tenured professor in Basel in 1978. There, he taught economics for over 30 years, with spells as a visiting professor at Stanford University, Vancouver, Buenos Aires and Sydney. He was instrumental in establishing the Centre for Business and Economics (WWZ) at the University of Basel and in setting up the university’s own Faculty of Business and Economics. He has been a Professor emeritus since August 2009 and now serves as the Director of the WWZ Summer School for Law, Economics and Public Policy, which he founded. As the author of some twenty published books and over 150 academic articles and essays, Professor Borner has always been in close contact with the business world and public life.

Gerhard Schmitt is professor of Information Architecture at ETH Zurich, director of the Singapore-ETH Centre in Singapore and Lead PI of the ETH Future Cities Responsive Cities Scenario.

Gerhard Schmitt holds a Dipl.-Ing. and a Dr.-Ing. degree of the Technical University of Munich, TUM, and a Master of Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on urban metabolism with the associated emissions, smart cities and linking big data with urban design, urban models, simulation and visualisation. He and his team developed and taught the first Massive Open Online Course Series on Future Cities, Liveable Cities, Smart Cities and Responsive Cities, with over 100’000 participants.

Professor Giaco Schiesser is a member of the board and vice-president University of the Arts Zurich. Since it was founded in 2007, Prof. Dr. Schiesser has been head of Department Art & Media (DKM) of Zurich University of the Arts, ZHdK (Professor for the theories of cultures and of media). In addition, since 2009 he has held a visiting professorship for artistic and scientific Ph.D. at University of Arts and Design Linz, Austria. And since March 2013 he has been a member of the Executive Board of Society for Artistic Research, SAR. His work and his publications focus on: Epistemology, aesthetics, art research |Theories of cultures, media|Democracy, public spheres, and every day culture.

Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, Tallis writes regularly for The Times and Philosophy Now. His research, in the fields of the neurology of old age and neurological rehabilitation, has appeared in Nature Medicine and Lancet.

He has also published works on the philosophy of mind, philosophical anthropology, literary theory and the nature of art. Tallis offers a critique of current predominant intellectual trends and an alternative understanding of human consciousness, the nature of language and of what it is to be a human being. In the Economist’s Intelligent Life Magazine (Autumn 2009) he was listed as one of the top living polymaths in the world.

Rino Borini ist Spezialist für Fintech, Bitcoin & Krypto, Unternehmer und Studiengangsleiter an der HWZ. Zudem ist er Gründer der Beratungsfirma Scarossa und des Bitcoin-Geschäfts House of Satoshi.

Rob Lyons is science and technology director at the Academy of Ideas. He writes on a wide range of issues, but takes a particular interest in issues around the economy, environment, food, energy and risk, but occasionally writes about boxing. He is also convenor of the AoI Economy Forum.

Rob is author of Panic on a Plate: How society developed an eating disorder (2011). He has also written reports on sugar taxes, the impact of the smoking ban on pubs and the culture wars over nicotine and edited a survey of views from a wide range of commentators on the future of food. He is a frequent commentator on TV and radio.