Opportunities, Risks & Lives We Desire

TWIN Global 2023 Welcome: YOU & A MOVIE
In addition to compelling film content and conversation, the #1 objective of our welcome will be to introduce everyone to everyone. Renew long-time friendships and create new ones.

ARRIVE no later than 06:30 pm. We’ll start the all-group program focused on what matters to YOU.

REGISTRATION & WELCOME RECEPTION
Arrive for registration, welcome reception and some food. No seated dinner, but we’ll have plenty of hors d’oeuvres.

Share Your Vision, Change Our World
Live our TWIN Motto: Never leave serendipity to chance. Share YOUR vision with a small group of TWINians… and discover how much better we are together. Articulate a mission objective of most importance to you and fellow TWINians will offer their trusted relationships to help.

Virtual, Experience & Catalyzing the Future

Robert C. Wolcott
Co-Founder & Chair
TWIN Global

Chris Gebhardt
Co-Founder & President
Random Good
TWIN Global Advisory Board Member

Sten-Kristian Saluveer
Head of Cannes NEXT
Cannes Film Festival

RECEPTION

The connecting continues before a night on the town… and (hopefully) enough sleep before our big day June 1!

Open Time
Enjoy London at leisure… but be ready for tomorrow’s 08:30 am start…

Registration & Reception
Registration Location: Inside the main entry hall
Reception Location: First Floor

Prepare for our Roundtables and expect many opportunities to connect. We’ll have a coffee & tea reception with very light pastries. (If you’d like breakfast, plan to dine in advance.)

Ensure you’re with us by 09:00 am at The Royal Institution ready to go.

BREAKOUT SESSIONS

ALL of our sessions will be compelling, and you can only select one. (Yes, a horrible ‘first-world problem.’) You will NOT want to miss these, as they’ll be small enough to directly engage. As much as we love our mainstage programming (and we do!), THIS is where we generate relationships and activate insights.


BREAKOUT OPTION 1

Frontiers of Sustainability & the Energy Transition
09:00 am – 10:15 am

Location: The Discussion Room

How are developments like distributed power generation, renewables and digital technologies helping create a more sustainable world? What potential risks do they pose, and how can we make sure they do more good than harm? Join us to explore questions like these, and to come away with one practical thing you can do to nudge our global energy transition in sustainable directions.

HOST
Daianna Karaian
Co-Founder & Managing Director
Today Do This

DISCUSSANTS
Carlos Correa
Senior Fellow
Conservation International
Sustainability Advisor, DAABON

Manuel Alberto Davila
Managing Director
DAABON UK

Declan Flanagan
Founder & CEO
Blue Star Energy Capital

Attila Kiss
CEO
Gruppo Florence

Barney Swan
CEO
Climate Force


BREAKOUT OPTION 2:

Timeless Wisdom for the Modern Leader
09:00 am – 10:15 am

Location: The Writing Room
Amidst rapid change, the world hungers for wise and innovative leaders. Join TWINian Justin Milano, executive coach and CEO of Abroad.io, to explore three strategies to create the world we all know is possible. Justin’s approach synthesizes contemporary science and insights from wisdom cultures from around the world. Discuss how cultivating inner peace leads to better decisions, more effective collaboration and better lives today… and tomorrow.

HOST
Justin Milano
Founder & CEO
Abroad.io

BREAK

Welcome: Proximity & Lives We Desire

Robert C. Wolcott
Co-Founder & Chair
TWIN Global
Adjunct Professor of Innovation
Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
&
Booth School of Business, University of Chicago

We’ll open with the big idea: PROXIMITY. Digital technologies enable us to do what was heretofore impossible—but most businesses remain anchored to past success. How can we overcome assumptions and paradigms that hold us back and enable our businesses and societies to thrive into the future?

Proximity in Action: Healthcare, Anywhere, All the Time

Shafi Ahmed, M.D.
Surgeon
The Royal London Hospital
Futurist & Entrepreneur
(UK)

Menghis Bairu, M.D.
Chairman & CEO
Proxenia Venture Partners

Avner Halperin
CEO, Technology Transfer
SHEBA City of Health
(Israel)

Proximity drives the emphasis of healthcare from cure to prevention.

Dr. Ahmed has been pioneering VR, remote medicine and other technologies to enhance scale healthcare worldwide. Dr. Bairu’s career has been all about commercialization of biotech and medtech. Today, he’s leading an initiative to bring biologics production to the developing world: distributed, affordable, dependable near demand. The essence of Proximity.

Israel’s top healthcare institution SHEBA’s approach to research and commercialization is second to none. On a TWIN visit there in February, we witnessed Proximity in action in nearly every digital initiative they presented.

WORLDS AHEAD: The United Arab Emirates

Najla Ahmed Al-Midfa
CEO
Sharjah Entrepreneurship Center
(UAE)

PK Gulati
Founder
The Assembly & SmartStart Fund
(UAE)


INTERLOCUTOR
Robert C. Wolcott
Co-Founder & Chair
TWIN Global

Part of TWIN’s mission is to engage with the leading innovation ecosystems around the world. At TWIN Global 2023, we’ll focus on the United Arab Emirates.

Few places invent the future more so than the UAE. Najla Ahmed Al-Midfa leads an impressive organization catalyzing and supporting science, technology and entrepreneurship within the Emirate of Sharjah, connecting the Emirate with innovators worldwide. PK Gulati moved to neighboring Emirate Dubai nearly 30 years ago. Throughout those decades he has engaged leaders around the world to participate in the country’s extraordinary rise.

Design & the Lives We Desire

Brian Collins
Chief Creative Officer
COLLINS

TWIN’s resident design visionary and founder of one of the world’s foremost brand experience design firms, Brian Collins will share insights regarding Proximity in our futures, then facilitate an exercise to make the concept, well, more proximate.

LUNCH
A casual buffet lunch around the RI. Time to connect and conspire.

Your Observations

Professor Wolcott opens by asking you to share a few observations from our sessions thus far. Pay attention. Who else shares your interests for follow-up? This session helps you find them during breaks and meals.

View from the Future… from the Museum of the Future

Sundar Raman
Director of Technology
Museum of the Future
(UAE)

Sundar Raman leads technology for a singular institution, the Museum of the Future. Anyone who has visited Dubai—and many who have not—will recognize the iconic structure. Anyone who has visited the museum leaves with much to consider.

AI Risks, Opportunities—and the Robot Apocalypse

Paraphrasing Marcel Duchamp, “This is not a panel.” Expect a knock-down, drag-out mele on AI Risks & Opportunities with some of the world’s leading minds.

Deborah Berebichez, Ph.D.
Physicist & Lead Scientist, Quantum Computing
VTT
(Finland)

Moran Cerf, Ph.D.
Professor of Neuroscience & Business
Author, Brain Imaging: An Illustrated Guide to the Future of Neuroscience

Keyun Ruan, Ph.D.
Chief Information Security Officer
Google Cloud
Founder & Chair, Happiness Foundation

Manoj Saxena
Chairman
Trustwise
Chairman, Responsible AI Institute
AI investor, entrepreneur & philanthropist

David Shrier
Professor of Practice, AI & Innovation
Imperial College Business School
Venture Investor & Serial Entrepreneur

HOST
Robert C. Wolcott
TWIN Global

AI has been rising for decades, though the public launch of ChatGPT shook the public dialogue. How can we as business leaders, consumers and citizens best navigate?

TWIN’s favorite neuroscientist and technology visionary Moran Cerf always brings depth and nuance to tech-human conversations. Economist and computer scientist Keyun Ruan, Alphabet’s CISO for Cloud, brings us her complementary insights as founder of the Happiness Foundation, while physicist Deborah Berebichez’s work at Finland’s leading technology institution VTT includes both technical and policy efforts regarding AI. David Shrier brings insight to AI and virtual worlds from founding, investing, writing and teaching.

Expect surprises… all human generated.

Proximity, Culture, the Individual & Society

Moriella Kowalski
Partner
MAIZE
(Italy)

San Rahi
Global Brand Innovation Advisor
TWIN Advisory Board

Jonathan Wilson, Ph.D.
Professor of Brand Strategy & Culture
Regent’s University London
Adjunct Professor, NYU
(UK)

HOST
Chris Gebhardt
President
Random Good
TWIN Advisory Board

Four of TWIN’s most astute observers of intersections between technology, culture and society comment on the human aspects of an increasingly proximate world. What opportunities and threats might we face as a result of ever more instantaneous responses to our desires? How might global brands best support this evolution for the good?

Open Time

Use this downtime for whatever, here or at your hotel—or even better, find somewhere at the RI or nearby to meet more of your fellow TWINians for a conversation about what you’ve heard and the implications for you and your missions. Get to know what’s important to each other. That’s where partnerships and friendships begin.

RECEPTION & CASUAL DINNER
Around the RI
IMPORTANT: All food and drink service ends by 700 pm!

No program. Reception format with food, drink and friends. This is where things really get moving.

Etudes for Innovation, Opus 15

In the spirit of Proximity, we’ll gather in an intimate setting for live performances and conversations with some of London’s most compelling artists.

Houses of worship have been virtual reality environments for millennia. Designed by Sir Christopher Wren following the Great Fire of 1666, the church was destroyed during World War II then faithfully rebuilt. Join us to discover what insights we can generate through architecture, music and spoken word.

OPEN TIME
Nothing planned and entirely up to you. It won’t be difficult to find TWINians interested in a Thursday night out in London. PLEASE ensure you’re back and ready for our start Friday morning at 09:00 am SHARP! (Really, it will be profound. PLEASE don’t miss it.)

Life Transforms: Virtual, Inner & Outer Space
Co-Hosted with HowToAcademy

Robert C. Wolcott
Co-Founder & Chair
TWIN Global

Serhat Cicekoglu
Founder
Sente Ventures

Alana Sandel
Founder
For Well Being
TWIN Advisory Board

Throughout this century, humanity will proliferate within rapidly evolving virtual worlds and expand, tentatively, into the infinity of space. Meanwhile we’ll confront the possibility of vastly longer lives.

We’ll traverse the three horizons of the 21st Century: Virtual Worlds, Space & Radical Longevity—and how they amplify Proximity beyond anything yet witnessed. Then we’ll explore what science advises about our experiences of life itself: perception and happiness.

Ever More Proximate: Life in Virtual Reality

Andrea Bravo, Ph.D.
Founder
Metaversethics.org

Louisa Bremner, Ph.D.
Virtual Production Expert & Artist
Louisa Bremner Design

Rashid Mansoor
Founder & CEO
Metagravity


HOST
Sten-Kristian Saluveer
Head, Cannes NEXT
Cannes Film Festival

While “META” generated yet another (HUGE) hype cycle—boom to sort-of bust—last year, the trends in favor of VR+ continue apace. This will be transformative across industries and our lives in the multi-decade horizon. What’s most compelling now? To what should we be attending over the next few years? How should we as business leaders, consumers and citizens confront the promise and peril of increasingly capable virtual experiences?

Sten-Kristian Saluveer leads digital for one of the world’s top film festivals, representing an industry undergoing fundamental transformation due to virtual production and AI. Rashid Mansoor pioneers the deep tech mathematics behind making VR truly scalable, and Andrea Bravo advocates for ethical approaches to these new meta-realities. Louisa Bremner advises directors on projects such as House of the Dragon, Matrix 4 and others to advance what’s possible with virtual production. Our panelists have much to share about where our lives are going in increasingly virtual environments.

Nothing but Proximity: Life in Space

Barbara Belvisi
Founder & CEO
Interstellar Lab

Dylan Taylor
Founder & CEO
Voyager Space Holdings

Rick Tumlinson
Founder & CEO
SpaceFund
Founder, EarthLight Foundation

While no longer the “final frontier” (virtual worlds ensure no frontier need ever be ‘final’—humanity’s will and means to outer space accelerate this century. It’s also entirely proximate. (As TWINian Dorit Donoviel, head of NASA’s space health grant program, remarked, “In space, we’ll have nothing but Proximity!”) We’ll hear from TWINians at the leading edge of the cosmic ocean.

BREAK

Perception of Invented Worlds

Christine Mohr
Professor in Cognitive Psychology
University of Lausanne
(Switzerland)

Alexandre Roulin
Ornithologist & Professor of Biology
University of Lausanne
(Switzerland)

Mohr and Roulin explore perception in our animal relatives. Be prepared to discover more about how we animals might perceive the coming worlds of our own invention, virtual, space and otherwise. Or the worlds we’ve invented since the first cave paintings.

Radically Longer Lives: The Science & Implications of Longevity

Douglas Vaughan, M.D.
Director
Potocsnak Longevity Institute
Chair, Department of Medicine
Irving S. Cutter Professor of Medicine
Feinberg School of Medicine
Northwestern University

Far sooner and more profoundly than most of us imagine, we’ll attain the potential for radically longer lives. Will this opportunity be widely accessible? How might we achieve better, not just longer, lives?

Dr. Vaughan leads a new Institute at Northwestern University dedicated to not only the science of longevity, but also the broader societal implications of radically longer lives. Expect all of the dynamics of society, from economics and policy to culture and philosophy, to face new conditions as humanity yet again—this time successfully—pursues the Fountain of Youth.

Navigating Desire: The Science of Happiness

Bruce Hood, Ph.D.
Professor of Developmental Psychology in Society
Bristol University
Fellow, The Royal Institution

INTERLOCUTRICE
Nely Galan, Psy.D.
New York Times Best-Selling Author, Self-Made
Emmy Award Winning Media Entrepreneur
Former President, Telemundo USA

If we might live far longer lives, let’s try doing so with wellness and fulfillment.

Professor Hood explores human psychology with the widest possible aperture: from our individual experiences to society-wide. For the past decade, he has attended to the question of happiness. What might it be and what can science tell us about achieving it?

Over the years, I’ve personally found Bruce’s approach to the big questions of life to be insightful, entertaining and meaningful.

Bruce will be joined by long-time TWINian and award-winning media entrepreneur Nely Galan. Nely’s professional and personal missions have brought not only entertainment but also inspiration, support and meaning to countless individuals. As Nely advised on our stage, “Your pain is also your salvation.”

TRANSCEND: Space, Virtual Worlds– to Forever

Professor Wolcott offers concluding remarks, encouraging us to redouble our commitments to creating the worlds we desire. We’ll offer the final words, though, to TWIN’s own resident poet and vocal arts expert, Marshall Davis Jones.

Marshall Davis Jones
Founder
MindBodySpeak
Spoken Word Artist

Robert C. Wolcott
Co-Founder & Chair
TWIN Global