Washington DC as a center of influence was the topic of this panel, but taking place six weeks after the innauguration of the new President, the conversation centered around President Trump as a center of influence. Moderator Steve Clemons, editor at large for The Atlantic led the discussion with Bloomberg News chief political columnist, Margaret Carlson, and NBC/MSNBC News political analyst, Elis..

Dr. Philip Pizzo asks to think about how we can best explore longevity from the perspective of aligning our long-term health with our lifespans. Living longer, how do we ensure we have sufficient quality of life? Wellbeing, equity, social cohesion, personal security, and productivity are all critical considerations. Skillsets, and the time at which we learn and acquire them, will shift. Education,..

Economist Andrew Scott delves into the topic of aging from the perspective of longevity. The traditional structure of time, in which we progress through life in an orderly, three-stage fashion - education, followed by work, followed by retirement - has changed. We have more time, so we have to reconsider how we live out our lives. Not only do we need to reframe the way we think about our material ..

On the Imagine Solutions stage, Arthur Benjamin demonstrates his incredible ability to accurately calculate complex mathematical functions in his head in astonishingly short time. A math professor by day, Arthur travels all around the world giving audiences a view inside the mind of a mathemagician. You'll be amazed by his intellectual pyrotechnics, and entertained by his high-energy, humor-infuse..

Brad Myles has devoted his entire career to the problem of human trafficking. He explores to what extent human trafficking is connected to nearly all aspects of daily life. It is a problem few of us openly witness, but that goes on all the time just below the surface of our society. When a person falls into a trafficking situation, it is nearly always because of force, fraud, or coercion, exploiti..

How can you imagine technology 30 years ahead? Daniel Franklin took the tactic of crowd-sourcing among subject matter experts to think about the trends and drivers of technology, to give us a sense of what could be coming, with a particular lens on the future of science and jobs. With increasingly sophisticated computing and capacity to calculate, and knowledge about gene sequencing, change is com..

The focus of the Smithsonian is immersion in American's cultures, science, history, and art. The national collections include more than 155 million objects of all kinds. There are 216 museums throughout the United States and territories that affiliate with the Smithsonian. A true national treasure, the Smithsonian institutions are essential in furthering an understanding of the past, but also of w..

Dr. Ken Anderson is one of the foremost experts on the cancer of multiple myeloma. He opens his talk with two tenets on which he bases his work: to undertake research in service of improving patients' experience of diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment, and to take care of patients like family. Research is necessary to advance the treatment of any disease. Medical research requires its own kind of c..

Dr. Olufunmilayo I. Olopade is a force to be reckoned with in healthcare and oncology. She starts by sharing her optimism that, with the pace and scope of current breakthroughs, cancer will become a manageable, chronic disease before too long. The study and application of genomics are allowing the speed of progress to continue to accelerate. What's more, we will have better tools available to us t..

Laura Galante is a recognized expert on cyber security, knowing just how much the digital world can enhance our lives, as well as the depth of the associated risks. What is the internet we signed up for, and how do we understand and use cyberspace for optimal benefit and minimal danger? The primary threats, by and large, aren't about bots and spams. The biggest threats are global, and at times mas..

Lee Rainie of the Pew Research Center comes on the Imagine Solutions stage to talk about the essential nature of truth and trust. These are core components of a healthy society, the potency of which has been diminished in recent times. Why is truth struggling so significantly? Dark digital corners are having a damaging effect, spreading false information immediately and extensively. We live in a w..

As founder and CEO of Build Change, Elizabeth Hausler came up with a woman-made solution to a man-made problem - faulty, weak homes claiming lives in emerging countries prone to natural disaster. Making straightforward structural and engineering changes to how homes are built, training over 25,000 people globally in safe construction, creating 11,000 jobs, and revolutionizing the relief industry w..

An innovator with more than 30 patents to his name, George Prendergast is the President and CEO of the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research, prioritizing a holistic, inventive, research-based perspective. His talk delves into the microbiome, in the context of cancer and our health more broadly. Our understanding of the microbiome is evolving and actually quite recent. We are, in fact, a comple..

Jake Wood founded and leads Team Rubicon, a rapid-response emergency relief organization, sending in boots-on-the-ground teams post-disaster, calling on military veterans, with their passion and desire for purpose and identity. The organization is built on fundamentally American ideals of community and coming together. With a network of 75,000 volunteers, Team Rubicon is able to have a meaningful ..

Jo Ann Jenkins is the CEO of AARP, the world's largest nonprofit, nonpartisan membership organization. By definition, as people are living longer, our overall population demographics are changing, with real societial implications posed by the aging of America. There is simply no denying that the world is getting older, and doing so quickly. The effects and consequences of a more aged population ar..

Old age is a moving target, with younger generations destined for vastly different lifestyles than their parents or grandparents. Laura Carstensen, of the Stanford Center on Longevity, interviews AARP's Jo Ann Jenkins about the organization's newly disruptive approach to aging. Under Jenkins' direction, one of AARP's core values is to lead as an everday innovator in aging, geared towards helping..

Keith Boesky is an expert in the field of augmented and virtual reality. What potential do these technologies have to change our lives and the way we receive and interact with information? Keith has an understanding of the extent to which electronic games and gaming are not just for fun, but have real implications and applications beyond the entertainment factor. While, to date, adoption of AR and..

As the founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, Laura Carstensen has unique insights into the reality that aging is not just about the elderly. It is no longer as uncommon for a person to live through their 90s and past the age of 100. For the youngest among us, 100 may become the new normal. Laura believes it is our duty to build a world that will support people throughout those lon..

Matthew Whitaker joined the Imagine Solutions stage at the age of 16, wowing the audience with his genius at the piano. His talents are incredibe enough on their own, until you learn that Matthew is blind, making his artistic accomplishments stratospheric. Matthew was born at only 24 weeks, with a less than 50% chance of survival. His entire life, Matthew has not just beaten the odds, but redefine..

Drawing from classroom experience in New Orleans post-Katrina and in New York, Sydney Morris observed educators' impact on students' trajectories, and grew determined to do something about a system that lets so many kids down, especially our most underserved. The opportunity gap must be closed, and we know how to do it. Classroom teachers are the most important factor in students' long-term succe..