Familiar to most as the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynksi was spared his life by means of a plea bargain and given four life sentences plus 30 years in prison. Kaczynski eluded the F.B.I. for 17 years, during which time he orchestrated 16 explosions that killed three people and injured 23 others. A brilliant mathematician, Kaczynski relinquished his academic career to live in solitude, write tracts against the proliferation of technology… read more
Dr. Michio Kaku is an internationally recognized authority in theoretical physics and also the environment. He holds the Henry Semat Professorship in Theoretical Physics at the City College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His goal is to help complete Einstein’s dream of a "theory of everything," a single equation, perhaps no more than one inch long, which will unify all the fundamental forces in the universe. He has lectured around the world and his Ph.D. level textbooks are required reading at many of the top physics laboratories. He has written 9 books; his last two books, Hyperspace and Visions, became international bestsellers, and have been widely translated into different languages. He hosts a weekly hour-long radio program on science on several stations around the country, and his commentaries on science can be heard on 60 radio stations nationwide.… read more
Mitchell Kapor is the founder of Lotus Development Corporation and the designer of Lotus 1-2-3, the “killer application” which made the personal computer ubiquitous in the business world in the 1980′s. He has been at the forefront of the information technology revolution for a generation as an entrepreneur, investor, social activist, and philanthropist.
Mr. Kapor was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1950 and attended public… read more
Dr. Kauffman’s scientific interests are developmental genetics, theoretical biology, and evolution and the origin of life. After an Internship and Postdoctoral Fellowship in genetics in Cincinnati, Dr. Kauffman joined the Department of Theoretical Biology, University of Chicago in 1969. From 1973 to 1975, he was in the Public Health Service at the National Cancer Institute. He joined the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania in 1975 as Associate Professor and became Professor in 1980. Since 1985, he has served as a consultant to Los Alamos National Laboratory, and from 1986 to 1998 as Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, where he is presently an external professor. He was awarded the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship, 1987-92.… read more
Clinton W. Kelly III has twenty years of leadership and management in Research and Advanced Technology projects in both industry and government.
As Senior Vice President for Advanced Technology Development at SAIC (a $6.0B company, 296th on the Fortune 500 list), Dr. Kelly is responsible for the conduct of the corporation’s Independent Research and Development (IR&D) program; a discretionary investment intended to provide the corporation with the basis for developing contract research and development support in areas of strategic importance. He chairs the committee that reviews all IR&D proposals submitted by the operating groups and makes recommendations for funding to the Chairman and President. He is also charged to independently identify and recommend areas for IR&D projects. He carries out periodic audits of the corporation’s core technologies and competencies and is responsible for benchmarking the corporation’s technical capabilities against best practice. To carry out these responsibilities, he visits leading research universities and government laboratories to highlight best practice and to identify emerging technologies of potential future significance to the corporation and its customers. He is responsible for recommending the insertion of these promising new technologies into the corporation’s contract programs. He makes recommendations on strategic discretionary corporate research and technology investments to the executive committee of the board of directors and to other senior management.… read more
Kevin Kelly helped launch Wired magazine in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor until January 1999. He is now Editor-At-Large for Wired. In 1994 and 1997, during Kelly’s tenure, Wired won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence (the industry’s equivalent of two Oscars).… read more
Steve Kirsch, 42, was chairman and founder of Infoseek Corporation, a leading Internet navigation service. But Disney acquired Infoseek on November 17, 1999. That meant that Steve was out of a job, looking for work. In other words, he became one of the “unemployed in Silicon Valley.”… read more
Jeff Kleiser’s pioneering work in computer animation has spanned the history of the medium. He has contributed to films with groundbreaking visual effects, including Tron, Stargate, Judge Dredd, Mortal Kombat Annihilation and X-Men. He served as senior visual effects supervisor on "The One"—a film in which martial arts master Jet Li battles his evil doppelganger and that required the development of innovative face replacement techniques. Kleiser is currently serving as a visual effects advisor on X-Men 2.… read more
Randal A. Koene (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randal_A._Koene) heads the organization carboncopies.org (http://carboncopies.org/, co-founded with Dr. Suzanne Gildert), which is the outreach and roadmapping organization for action towards Advancing Substrate-Independent Minds (ASIM).
Dr. Koene is a neuroscientist and neuroengineer, and he directs the Halcyon SIM (substrate-independent minds) and BCI (brain-computer interfaces) divisions, as well as the Analysis team at the nanotechnology company Halcyon Molecular in Silicon Valley (… read more
Stephen M. Kosslyn is Dean of Social Science and John Lindsley Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and Associate Psychologist in the Department of Neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He received a B.A. from UCLA and a Ph.D. from Stanford University, both in psychology. His original graduate training was in Cognitive Science, which focused on the intersection of cognitive psychology and Artificial Intelligence. Faced with limitations in those approaches,… read more
Ray walked on stage, played a composition on an old upright piano, and then whispered to I’ve Got a Secret host Steve Allen “I built my own computer”.
“Well that’s impressive,” Steve Allen replied, “but what does that have to do with the piece you just played?” Ray then whispered the rest of his secret: “The computer composed the piece I just played.” During the yes or no questions, former Miss America Bess Myerson was stumped, but film star Henry Morgan, the second celebrity panelist, guessed Ray’s secret.… read more