Looking Forward

Mariano Sigman is a physicist by training and an international leading figure in the cognitive neuroscience of learning and decision making. He is the only Latin American scientist to be a director of the Human Brain Project and has been awarded a Human Frontiers Career Development Award, the National Prize of Physics, the Young Investigator Prize of "College de France," the IBM Scalable Data Analytics Award, and is a scholar of the James S. McDonnell Foundation. He holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from The Rockefeller University in New York and in 2016 he was made a Laureate of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. His latest book, The Secret Life of the Mind is published by HarperCollins Publishers Australia.
 

Stefan Treyvaud has enjoyed a successful and diverse career in the arts, cultural and lifestyle sectors including senior marketing and communications roles with QPAC, Brisbane Powerhouse, Queensland Music Festival and State Library Queensland.

As a writer and content producer, he has made significant contributions to World Science Festival Brisbane, Melbourne Writers Festival, University of Melbourne Ideas Festival, Melbourne Festival and White Night Melbourne.

Prior to his foray into the arts, Stefan wrote for the Courier Mail’s Books Art and Music lift out and was Editor of Brisbane’s hugely successful map magazine.

Before moving into roles as producer and director of major festivals including the Out of the Box festival, the Brisbane Asia Pacific Film Festival and the Brisbane Writers Festival, Carol had a long career in book publishing. An avid reader from childhood she achieved a long-held dream to work in books by securing an entry level role into the publishing industry early in her career; she went on to be the publisher at the University of Queensland Press where she worked with some of Australia’s most prestigious authors and then onto international publishing as the director of sales and marketing and international publishing director for Random House Australia. Carol is currently the Executive Producer of the World Science Festival Brisbane, presented by the Queensland Museum.
 

Vicki McDonald is the State Librarian and Chief Executive at the State Library of Queensland (SLQ).  She is an experienced senior executive with extensive experience in the library sector, state and local governments and tertiary education.    Vicki was thrilled to be returning to the State Library after appointments at QUT and the State Library of New South Wales - she took up her current position in September 2016. 

Tim Dunlop is an author and an in-demand public commentator.  He teaches new media and journalism and the University of Melbourne.  He has been a columnist for the ABC, as well for News Ltd. He writes on the future of work for The Guardian and speaks regularly in public and professional forums around the world on the same topic. His 2015 book, The New Front Page is a seminal text on the digital media revolution and presaged changes still affecting the industry. His 2017 book, the best-selling Why The Future Is Workless, discusses technology and the future of work. 

In his new book, The Future of Everything, he does what few are willing to do. He goes beyond mere analysis and offers a comprehensive set of changes that will make the world a better place: fairer, more democratic, less violent, more joyous. It is an audacious agenda for real democratic change that looks at work, wealth, journalism, government, education and the natural world. It argues that we are all in this together and that in order to change things we are going to have to take back control from those who are currently failing us.