2021 Spring Conference
May 22nd-23rd
Conference Background
2020 has brought new social, economic and political realities, and showed us a more connected global community that we realized and a more sustainable future that we are aspiring for. Dedicated to a constructive dialogue on the challenges, trends, and issues affecting global innovation, the U8-WIS 2021 Annual Conference was held virtually on May 22-23, 2021, centering on the theme “New Decade – New Challenge – New Alliance”. The conference will engage dozens of thought leaders across disciplines and thousands of participants in a discourse that offers insights and generates ideas for the future of humanity.
Conference Speakers
Steven Chu
1997 Nobel Physics, Former United States Secretary of Energy
Barry Barish
Professor of Physics, Caltech
2017 Nobel Prize in Physics, “for the observation of gravitational waves”
Joachim Frank
Professor of Molecular Biophysics, Columbia University
2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, "for developing cryo-electron microscopy"
Yoshua Bengio
Professor of Computer Science and Operations Research, Université de Montréal
Scientific director of the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms
2018 Turing Award
"Godfather of AI"
Jean-Marie Lehn
Professor, University of Strasbourg Institute of Advanced Study (USIAS)
1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, "for their development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity."
David Sinclair
Professor of Genetics
Co-director of the Center for the Biology of Aging
Harvard Medical School
2014 Time 100
Gregory Winter
MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, University of Cambridge
2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, "for the phage display of peptides and antibodies."
Neil Gershenfeld
Director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms
50 leaders in science and technology, Scientific American
Erik Solheim
Former Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme