We are hon­ored to count on such a dis­tin­guished, inter­dis­ci­pli­nary and forward-looking Inno­va­tion Awards Judg­ing Panel (please judge for your­self!), thanks to the par­tic­i­pa­tion of:

Baba Shiv, Pro­fes­sor at Stan­ford Busi­ness School, con­ducts research on con­sumer deci­sion mak­ing and deci­sion neu­ro­science, with spe­cific empha­sis on the neu­ro­log­i­cal under­pin­nings of emo­tion and moti­va­tion in deci­sion mak­ing. His recent work exam­ines the poten­tial for non­con­scious placebo effects related to pric­ing. He is cur­rently the edi­tor of the Jour­nal of Con­sumer Research and sits on the edi­to­r­ial board of the Jour­nal of Con­sumer Psy­chol­ogy and the Jour­nal of Mar­ket­ing Research.

Bill Tucker, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor at Edu­ca­tion Sec­tor, is a social entre­pre­neur who has founded and led both non­profit orga­ni­za­tions and for-profit com­pa­nies. He is respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing the day-to-day oper­a­tions of Edu­ca­tion Sec­tor, and also leads pol­icy work focused on tech­nol­ogy and inno­va­tion. His involve­ment in edu­ca­tion dates to early in his career, when he man­aged a middle/high school stu­dent vol­un­teer and ser­vice learn­ing pro­gram, work­ing with 22 schools and over 75 non­profit orga­ni­za­tions, and served as a com­mu­nity orga­nizer for an adult lit­er­acy pro­gram. He is a grad­u­ate of Duke Uni­ver­sity and has both an MBA and a Master’s of Edu­ca­tion from Stan­ford University.

Brian Mur­phy, Pres­i­dent of De Anza Col­lege, has led De Anza Col­lege since 2004 with a key focus on the prepa­ra­tion of stu­dents to be active, involved cit­i­zens com­mit­ted to trans­form­ing their com­mu­ni­ties. Pre­vi­ously, Pres­i­dent Mur­phy served for 12 years as exec­u­tive direc­tor of the San Fran­cisco Urban Insti­tute at San Fran­cisco State Uni­ver­sity, and was chief con­sul­tant to the Cal­i­for­nia State Legislature’s reviews of the Mas­ter Plan for Higher Edu­ca­tion and the com­mu­nity col­lege reform process in the late 1980s. He has taught polit­i­cal the­ory and Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara Uni­ver­sity and San Fran­cisco State University.

Charles Jen­nings, Direc­tor of the McGov­ern Insti­tute Neu­rotech­nol­ogy Pro­gram, MIT, became an edi­tor with the sci­en­tific jour­nal Nature fol­low­ing post­doc­toral stud­ies in devel­op­men­tal biol­ogy at Har­vard and MIT. He was the found­ing edi­tor of Nature Neu­ro­science, widely con­sid­ered a lead­ing jour­nal in its field. More recently, he was the first exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Har­vard Stem Cell Insti­tute, and he con­tin­ues to serve as an advi­sor to the Con­necti­cut Stem Cell Research Program.

Chuck House, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Stan­ford Media X, leads Stan­ford University’s Indus­try Affil­i­ate research pro­gram on media and tech­nol­ogy, and is a senior research scholar in the Human Sci­ences and Tech­nol­ogy Advanced Research divi­sion at Stan­ford. Pre­vi­ously, he was the direc­tor of Soci­etal Impact of Tech­nol­ogy for Intel Cor­po­ra­tion, and the first Direc­tor of Intel’s Vir­tual Research Col­lab­o­ra­tory. He recently co-authored The HP Phe­nom­e­non: Inno­va­tion and Busi­ness Trans­for­ma­tion (Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity Press, Octo­ber 2009).

Colin Mil­ner, Founder and CEO of the Inter­na­tional Coun­cil on Active Aging (ICAA), is one of the world’s vision­ar­ies on the health and well-being of the older adult. Mil­ner is a mem­ber of the Global Agenda Coun­cils ini­tia­tive run by the World Eco­nomic Forum, the active-aging spokesper­son for the Cana­dian Asso­ci­a­tion of Fit­ness Pro­fes­sion­als, and the res­i­dent indus­try expert on aging for the Inter­na­tional Health, Rac­quet and Sports­club Asso­ci­a­tion. An award-winning writer, Mil­ner has authored more than 200 arti­cles on aging-related issues.

Eliz­a­beth Edgerly, National Spokesper­son for Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion “Main­tain Your Brain”, is the Chief Pro­gram Offi­cer for the Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion and national spokesper­son for the Association’s Main­tain Your Brain pro­gram. She over­sees the many pro­grams of the Asso­ci­a­tion for patients, fam­i­lies and health care pro­fes­sion­als. In addi­tion, she staffs the Med­ical Sci­en­tific Advi­sory Coun­cil of the Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion – North­ern Cal­i­for­nia. She received her Ph.D. in clin­i­cal psy­chol­ogy at the State Uni­ver­sity of New York and spe­cial­ized in geropsy­chol­ogy and neu­ropsy­chol­ogy. Dr. Edgerly joined the Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion after com­plet­ing a fel­low­ship in clin­i­cal geropsy­chol­ogy at the Palo Alto VA Hos­pi­tal. Read the rest of this entry »

On Jan­u­ary 18–20, 2010 Alvaro Fer­nan­dez and his team at Sharp­Brains put together a splen­did line-up of speak­ers on a wide range of top­ics related to emerg­ing brain fit­ness research, tech­nolo­gies, and mar­kets, and clin­i­cal cog­ni­tive and men­tal health issues. IFTF was proud to be a spon­sor of this event.

Although the con­fer­ence was vir­tual, aside from the rig­ors of travel and a bas­ket of bagels on the hall­way table, my level of intel­lec­tual stim­u­la­tion (and fatigue) mir­rored most of my face-to-face con­fer­ence expe­ri­ences. It was a tech­ni­cal suc­cess and the con­tent was first-rate.

The con­fer­ence was a great oppor­tu­nity for us at IFTF to gather data and map the research land­scape in cog­ni­tive fit­ness, espe­cially as it relates to our 2010 Health Hori­zons research project around “Neu­ro­cen­tric Health.”

I’d like to share a small sam­ple of the obser­va­tions, shifts, and points of inter­est we took from the conference.

1. The fore­cast of Dr. Michael Merzenich, an expert in brain plas­tic­ity, that clin­i­cal prac­tice and treat­ment will move from drug/surgery-based inter­ven­tions to non-invasive tech­niques, prac­tices, and pre­ven­ta­tive coach­ing is pro­found. This would change the tim­ing, level, and qual­ity of treat­ment inter­ven­tions, and could be a sig­nif­i­cant cat­a­lyst to the (arguably) needed change in medical/clinical point of care and cul­ture that Dr. P Murali Doraiswamy of Duke Uni­ver­sity men­tioned as well. This shift would impact the insur­ance indus­try and risk pro­files, pay­ment mech­a­nisms, and, most impor­tantly, might be bet­ter for patients as well.

2. I am always wary of reduc­tion­ist mod­els and the ten­dency to focus our atten­tion on cer­tain organs or meth­ods at the expense of the whole sys­tem. This hes­i­ta­tion is espe­cially impor­tant when the focus is on the brain. I was very happy to hear Read the rest of this entry »

Just a quick note to announce a new Sil­ver Spon­sor of the Sharp­Brains Sum­mit, and link to a cou­ple stim­u­lat­ing online conversations.

The Insti­tute For the Future is an inde­pen­dent, non­profit strate­gic research group with more than 40 years of fore­cast­ing expe­ri­ence. The core of our work is iden­ti­fy­ing emerg­ing trends and dis­con­ti­nu­ities that will trans­form global soci­ety and the global mar­ket­place. We pro­vide our mem­bers with insights into busi­ness strat­egy, design process, inno­va­tion, and social dilem­mas. Our research spans a broad ter­ri­tory of deeply trans­for­ma­tive trends, from health and health care to tech­nol­ogy, the work­place, and human iden­tity. The Insti­tute for the Future is located in Palo Alto, California.

I have been col­lab­o­rat­ing infor­mally with IFTF projects for a few years, and it is excit­ing to col­lab­o­rate on the upcom­ing Sum­mit and related work.

Now, two stim­u­lat­ing links:

1) Ency­clo­pe­dia Bri­tan­nica Blog is host­ing an online con­ver­sa­tion on Multi-tasking:

“Mul­ti­task­ing” remem­ber when that was some­thing com­put­ers did? They were sup­posed to do it for our ben­e­fit, to make our lives eas­ier, but some­how it hasn’t quite worked out that way. With fast com­put­ers, the Inter­net, and smart phones in our pock­ets, today we’re always teth­ered to The Net­work, and some­times it seems we’re doing its bid­ding instead of it doing ours. There’s so much to do, it comes at us so fast, and it all has to be done now. The solu­tion: for­get what you were taught about doing one thing at a time and start doing sev­eral things at once. Call your office from the express­way. Bring that Black­berry to the meet­ing. Answer e-mails over din­ner. Multitask.

Of course, whether mul­ti­task­ing really is effi­cient is a mat­ter both of pub­lic debate and clin­i­cal research, and it’s just one of the ques­tions we plan to get into next week in a new forum on the sub­ject here at the Bri­tan­nica Blog.”

You can par­tic­i­pate Here.

2) For extra brain & mind read­ing, you can visit  yesterday’s Encephalon edi­tion at The Mouse Trap. Enjoy!