He is currently Artist in Residence at Yale University Center for Collaborative Arts and Media (2023-2024, extended). He is a composer, multimedia artist, and writer whose work engages audiences in a blend of genres, global culture, and environmental and social issues. Miller has collaborated with an array of recording artists, including Ryuichi Sakamoto, Metallica, Chuck D from Public Enemy, Steve Reich, and Yoko Ono amongst many others. His 2018 album, DJ Spooky Presents: Phantom Dancehall, debuted at #3 on Billboard Reggae.

His large-scale, multimedia performance pieces include “Rebirth of a Nation,” Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica, commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Seoul Counterpoint, written during his 2014 residency at Seoul Institute of the Arts. His multimedia project Sonic Web premiered at San Francisco’s Internet Archive in 2019. He was the inaugural artist-in-residency at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s The Met Reframed, 2012-2013.

In 2014, he was named National Geographic Emerging Explorer. He produced Pioneers of African American Cinema, a collection of the earliest films made by African American directors, released in 2015. Miller’s artwork has appeared in the Whitney Biennial, The Venice Biennial for Architecture, the Miami/Art Basel fair, and many other museums and galleries.

His books include the award-winning Rhythm Science, published by MIT Press in 2004; Sound Unbound, an anthology about digital music and media; The Book of Ice, a visual and acoustic portrait of the Antarctic, and; The Imaginary App, on how apps changed the world. His writing has been published by The Village Voice, The Source, and Artforum, and he was the first founding Executive Editor of Origin Magazine.

He is the Co-Founder of Terreform ONE and Professor of Practice at NYU. Formerly, he was an architect at the offices of Frank Gehry and I.M. Pei. He has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and fellowships with TED, Moshe Safdie, and Martin Society for Sustainability, MIT.

He was chosen by Wired magazine for "The Smart List” and selected by Rolling Stone for “The 100 People Who Are Changing America”. Mitchell won many honors including; NEA Grant for Arts Projects, Lafarge Holcim Acknowledgement Award, Ove Arup Foundation Grant, ARCHITECT R+D Award, AIA New York Urban Design Merit Award, 1st Place International Architecture Award, Victor Papanek Social Design Award, Zumtobel Group Award for Sustainability, Architizer A+ Award, History Channel Infiniti Award for City of the Future, and Time magazine’s Best Invention with MIT Smart Cities. He's featured as “The NOW 99” in Dwell magazine and “50 Under 50 Innovators of the 21st Century” by Images Publishers.

He co-authored four books, “Design with Life: Biotech Architecture and Resilient Cities,” “XXL-XS: New Directions in Ecological Design,” “Super Cells: Building with Biology,” and “Global Design: Elsewhere Envisioned”. His design work has been exhibited at MoMA and the Venice Biennale. He earned: PhD at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MAUD Harvard University, M.Arch Columbia University.

Dr. Ietef "DJ Cavem" Vita is a Grammy-nominated Music educator, father of eco-hip hop, Co-founder of “Plantega, and a Celebrity Vegan chef with a Ph.D. in urban ecology. Seen in Leonardo DiCaprio’s documentary called ( Ice on fire ). This “Thrillist Hero award” winner was mentioned in Forbes, Oprah & People magazine for songs about climate action & Food justice. KONCRETE GARDEN is an interactive organic seed pack Album with the QR code and growing instructions to spur listeners into action in urban farming.

Mitch McEwen joined Princeton’s faculty in 2017 from the University of Michigan’s A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, where she had been an assistant professor. She is principal of McEwen Studio and co-founder of A(n) Office, an architecture collaborative of studios in Detroit, Los Angeles, and Brooklyn.

McEwen has received grants from the Graham Foundation, Knight Foundation, and New York State Council on the Arts. A(n) Office and McEwen Studio projects have been commissioned by the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, and the Istanbul Design Biennial. McEwen Studio projects in Detroit have produced a series of operations on houses previously owned by the Detroit Land Bank Authority. These include a combined residence and flower incubator for an engineer at 3M, a strategy for 100 houses selected by the City of Detroit to densify the neighborhood of Fitzgerald, and an award-winning repurposing of a balloon-frame house titled House Opera.

She began her work in urban design and architecture at Bernard Tschumi Architects and the New York City Department of City Planning, and she founded the Brooklyn-based nonprofit SUPERFRONT. McEwen earned her master’s degree in architecture at Columbia and bachelor’s degree at Harvard.

Dr. Baz Dreisinger, Senior Advisor for BPI’s Global Initiatives, is the Founding Executive Director of Incarceration Nations Network, a global network that promotes prison reform and justice reimagining worldwide; a Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York; the founder of John Jay’s groundbreaking Prison-to-College Pipeline program, which provides university-level education and reentry assistance to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people throughout New York State; the author of the critically acclaimed book Incarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World, named a notable book for 2016 by the Washington Post; and the director of Incarceration Nations: A Global Docuseries, which had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival 2021. A 2018 Global Fulbright Scholar and current Fulbright Scholar Specialist, Dr. Baz speaks regularly about justice issues on international media and in myriad settings around the world, and is also a journalist who writes and produces for such outlets as The New York Times and National Public Radio (NPR).

With over 20 years of Interior Design experience and a few more in film production, Emily resides at K Hovnanian Homes as Senior Director of Interior Design. She is part of a new infrastructure of enhancing the home building experience and yet keeping it affordable. She has a vast portfolio of work experience ranging from large scale hospitality developments, luxury retail design, innovative workplace endeavors to high end residential projects. She has worked on projects all over North America, Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean.

Prior to K Hovnanian, Emily has headed up interior design departments in a range of companies and studios like Jeffrey Beers International (JBI), Peloton, Ralph Lauren/ Club Monaco, and worked with several notable design firms and talents including Architecture +Information (A+I), Clodagh, Thom Filicia, and Ian Schrager.

Emily holds a Master of Science in Interior Design from Pratt institute and a Bachelor of Arts from University at Buffalo (SUNY Buffalo) majoring in Media Studies and Art History. She is an Associate member of the IIDA.

Sander Dolder is a perceptive, enterprising, & collaborative business development leader with over 10 years of effective results transforming organizations and economies towards a low-carbon future by fostering innovation, growth, and systems change. I am currently a Senior Vice President at the New York City Economic Development Corporation where I design, build, & lead efforts to expand the NYC economy by catalyzing emerging sectors, developing innovation ecosystems, implementing sustainability strategies, and forging public-private partnerships:

Sander is specialized in strategic foresight, innovation ecosystems, sustainability, impact investing, and organization design.

He also has sector experience in urbantech/smart cities, cleantech, telecom, media, emerging tech, chemical, and public sectors. Equally he is skilled in project management, due diligence, urban planning, public policy, and public-private partnerships.

He is the Founder and Executive Director CIV:LAB. Simon has worked at the intersection of climate and innovation for over a decade. Initially as an economist then as a builder with endeavors that include one of the first cleantech incubators in the US; the first large scale urban tech collaboratives in NYC and Detroit; and the SCNY Urban Tech Summit at Cornell Tech. Simon's work focuses on models that leverage collaboration to scale solutions tackling climate and urban related problems. Simon teaches Global Entrepreneurship at NYU and on the Future of Cities at Imperial College Business School London.

In 2019, as the Founder of CIV:LAB Simon helped create 'The Grid', a collaborative of 130+ local organizations, including Terreform One, working together innovating in and for cities. Following the Grid's success, CIV:LAB launched Detroit Urban Solutions in 2020. Prior to CIV:LAB, Simon helped launch the Urban Future Lab at NYU and Global Futures Group where he worked as an advisor to the International Trade Administration and US Commerce under Secretary Pritzker.

Wendy W Fok, trained as an architect (AIA), is the director of design and creative technologist of WE-DESIGNS (Architecture/Creative Strategy) and New Territory (mission-driven real estate venture fund).

Fok manages the client relationships, and onsite construction of architectural and spatial projects. They also provide the project planning and management of design-build work for WE-DESIGNS.

Fok has experience in Product Development and Program Management from Zero to Launch, Design-Build, Manufacturing, Hardware/Software, and Digital Fabrication. Proficient in 3D modelling, innovative material research, design-build, augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (XR) design, and cultural/community engagement that could promote a larger discussion of how consumers interact with products and delivery for architecture, real estate, retail, and innovative business development.

Fellow at the Urban Design Forum (since 2018) and Macdowell (2022), they were featured as Autodesk Remake’s Women in Reality Computing (2017), winner of the Autodesk AiR (2016), Digital Kluge Fellowship, Library of Congress (2014/15), ADC Young Guns 11 Award (2013), AIA Dallas Women in Architecture (2013), Perspective 40 under 40 (2011), and Hong Kong Young Design Talent Award (2009).

WE-DESIGNS has been selected by Twenty+Change Emerging Canadian Design Practices (2011). Fok was individually shortlisted for 1 of 13 DX Emerging Talent Awards (2013), and they won Western Living Designer of the Year – Maker Category (2016) across Canada.

Fok holds a Doctor of Design from Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), obtained their Master of Architecture and Certification of Urban Policy/Planning from Princeton University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture with a Concentration in Economics (Statistics) from Barnard College, Columbia University. Fok is an Associate Professor Adjunct at University of Southern California (USC) School of Architecture and Teaching Fellow at the Harvard Law School.

Award-winning artist Dr. Sarah Jane Pell is an experienced Occupational Diver, aquatic performer and versitile art and science collaborator. She is leading first generation artist-astronaut crews of the commercial spaceflight era. Her practice aptly begins underwater by connecting with deep ecologies to embody, and critique, the culture of exploration. Artifacts include sculptural, technical, poetic events and immersive media connecting bodies of water to bodies of knowledge and movement. She was awarded Best PhD Art & Science by Leonardo AS, MIT 2007 and TED Fellow 2010 for pioneering Aquabatics. Dr. Pell is an experienced Simulation Astronaut for undersea trials, an Artist-Astronaut Candidate for a suborbital aeronomy mission, and an imagineer for a MoonVillage. She continues to perform expressively and tests novel tools to make art in the field. Her work promotes physical conditioning, creative visualisation and new communication.

In 2016, Dr. Pell was awarded Australia Council Fellow and Gifted Citizen (Highly Commended). Her work is widely exhibited, performed and published. The first artist to graduate from the International Space University and Singularity University, Dr. Pell served as Co-Chair of the European Space Agency (ESA) Topical Team Arts & Science (2011-2014). Bending Horizons 2015-2017 documents her expression during extreme art adventures at altitude testing immersive media. Performing Astronautics 2016-2018 creates new territories for experimental and emerging arts into human extra-terrestrial expression and communication. In 2018, she joined Monash University as an Adjunct Associate Professor across the Faculty of Engineering; Office of the Engineering Dean; Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture; Artist-in-Residence at the Monash Immersive Visualisation Platform. In 2020, she is Co-PI of an Australia Research Council Discovery Project on Aquatic Play, Vice-Chair International Astronautical Federation (IAF) Technical Committee Cultural Utilisation of Space and Aquanaut on a 10-day subsea mission. Pell aims to contribute new knowledge on human behaviours, biosensory media and communication design for extreme performance, and responsible ecological adaptation.

His teaching and research interests lie in the history of science, ecology, environmentalism and design, as well as environmental philosophy. He holds a PhD in History of Science from Harvard University, and has received research fellowships from the Fulbright Program, the Dibner Institute, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.

He has also been a visiting professor at Columbia University and University of Oslo. He is the author of Imperial Ecology: Environmental Order in the British Empire, 1895-1945 (Harvard University Press, 2001), which investigates the entangled relationship between colonialism, racism and the science of ecology in the British Empire. He is also the author of From Bauhaus to Eco-House: A History of Ecological Design (Louisiana State University Press, 2010), which explores the intersection of architecture and ecological science, and he is a co-author of Global Design: Elsewhere Envisioned (Prestel, 2014), together with Louise Harpman and Mitchell Joachim. Professor Anker's The Power of the Periphery: How Norway Became an Environmental Pioneer for the World (Cambridge University Press, 2020) explores the history of ecological debates in his country of birth, Norway.

His latest book in Norwegian, Livet er best ute: Friluftslivets historie og filosofi (Kagge Forlag, 2022), celebrates the simple joy of being outside.

Dickson Despommier is Emeritus Professor of Public Health and Microbiology. He was born in New Orleans in 1940, and grew up in California before moving to the New York area, where he now lives and works. His Ph.D. degree is in microbiology granted from the University of Notre Dame, and for 28 years conducted laboratory-based biomedical research with NIH-sponsored support at Columbia University. He has always been interested in the environment and the damages caused by our encroachment into natural systems (mostly destruction of hardwood forests to make room for agriculture).

Dr. Despommier has received numerous teaching awards, including the national American Medical Student Golden Apple Award for Teaching Excellence in 2003, and the Dean’s Distinguished Teaching award (Columbia University). In 2012, he received the Distinguished Service Medal from Columbia University’s Medical School. In 2013, he received the Plantagon Corporation award of excellence. He has authored four books, written numerous peer-reviewed scientific papers, and many review articles on a wide variety of subjects. His latest book is: People, Parasites, and Plowshares: learning from our body’s most terrifying invaders (Columbia University Press).

He has lectured on the subject of vertical farming and related urban agricultural issues at The American Museum of Natural History, numerous public and private schools around the metropolitan area, at universities (MIT, Harvard, Cornell, NYU, Columbia University, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Brigham Young University, The Singularity University, Fordham University, University of Arizona), to various architectural establishments (New York and Chicago Chapters of AIA, Grimshaw, FxFowl, Kiss and Cathcart, SOA), city (Chicago; New York; Seattle; Newark, New Jersey; Jersey City; Los Angeles; Seoul, Korea; Amman, Jordan; Beijing, Shanghai, China; Bangalore and Coimbatore, India; Berlin, Germany) and federal government agencies, including the IMF, USDA and USAID, and The United Nations. He has appeared on the Colbert Report, and given talks at Credit Suisse Bank, Taliesin West, The Monterey Design Conference, The Sarasota Design Conference, TED, seven TEDx, PopTech, PINC, 21 Minutes Of Knowledge, Ars Electronica, Pecha Kucha, The World Science Festival (5 times), The Secret Science Society, The Edinburgh Science Festival, Equilibrium, The Singularity University, and The Manchester International Festival. He lives with his wife Marlene Bloom in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

Marcel Botha is an entrepreneur, engineer, architect, and investor. He experiments with simple hardware ideas on the edge between consumer and medical products. Relevant experiments are commercialized. Marcel specializes in guiding product development teams from concept to viable product and is currently locked in a wave of parallel experimenation, feeding off his passion for product acceleration, and digital manufacturing. In 2010 Marcel co-founded Patients Pending Ltd where he developed a groundbreaking diabetes product named Timesulin that helps diabetics manage their insulin compliance. Through his consulting firm 10xBETA, he has helped numerous medical proffesionals test, develop and commercialize products ranging from electronic stethoscopes, colposcopes, to surgical instruments. from 2006 - 2009 Marcel was COO and Director of Design at SNIF Labs (now General Sensing), a MIT Media Lab inspired company developing mesh-networked sensing productsfor commercial and health care applications. In 2005 he was awarded an NSF fellowship. Affiliations include MIT Smart Cities, MIT Mobile Experience Lab, MIT Digital Design and Fabrication Group and the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms.

Vivian Kuan is Executive Director of Terreform ONE, a non-profit architecture and urban design think tank focused on ecological design solutions for cities. Vivian has also served as adjunct faculty at Parsons in the Strategic Design and Management graduate program.

Before Terreform ONE, Vivian designed and managed large scale architecture projects in the U.S. and Asia for Kohn, Pederson, Fox Associates, and for Sun Hung Kai Properties. Vivian currently serves on the Advisory Council of Cornell’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, on the Dean’s Council of the Yale School of Architecture, and as a board member of the Cue Art Foundation.

Vivian earned an MBA from the Wharton School and an MA from the Lauder Institute, University of Pennsylvania, and a B.Arch. from Cornell University.

(mehr-ee-el mel-en-dr-ez mace) Meriel is a complexity scientist, artist, and educator. Presently, she teaches with Fritjof Capra's undergraduate-level systems science course, works on a collective intelligence question, researches California redwood (Sequoia sempervirens and Sequoiadendron giganteum) leaf pores, consults for a book about empathic urban design, studies software engineering and machine learning, and tutors youth in language arts and STEM.

Meriel has served as the coordinator for the first U.S. Forest Service Urban Ranger Station, the co-founder of a complexity-theory-inspired eco-design and literacy company called Little Bird Gardening, the coordinator of the urban agriculture branch of the first democratic participatory budget initiative in the United States, and a co-founder of the Indigenous Food Sovereignty Laboratory at California Polytechnic, Humboldt.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in Integrative Biology: Ecology and Evolution from the University of California, Berkeley; a large part of a degree in Landscape Architecture with a focus on permaculture from a few California community colleges; and a master’s in Social Science: Environment and Community from California Polytechnic Humboldt.

John Rudikoff is a savvy corporate attorney with diverse in-house and private practice experience. His background as a law school professor and business executive enriches his legal practice with insight into the challenges faced by all types of business ventures, workers, and dreamers. 

John takes an integrated and collaborative approach to legal practice, working hand-in-hand with his clients to design bespoke and cost-effective solutions to common legal bottlenecks. Regardless of the challenge, John brings a creative and forward-thinking approach to crafting efficient, smart, and scalable solutions.

John received his BA from Sarah Lawrence College and his JD from Brooklyn Law School, where he has held various leadership positions and continues to teach.