Carlo Ratti
An architect and engineer by training, Carlo Ratti practices in Italy and teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he directs the SENSEable City Lab. He graduated from the Politecnico di Torino and the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris, and later earned his M.Phil. and Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge. Ratti has coauthored more than two hundred publications and holds several patents. His work has been exhibited worldwide, at venues such as the Venice Biennale, the Disseny Hub Barcelona, the Science Museum in London, the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts in San Francisco, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His Digital Water Pavilion at the 2008 World Expo in Zaragoza, Spain, was hailed by Time magazine as one of the best inventions of the year. In June 2007 the Italian Minister of Culture named Ratti a member of the Italian Design Council, an advisory board to the Italian government comprising 25 leaders in the field of design in Italy. He was also appointed inaugural Innovator in Residence by the government of Queensland, Australia, in 2009; included in 60: Innovators Shaping Our Creative Future, published by Thames & Hudson in 2009; and named in Esquire magazine’s “2008 Best &Brightest” list. In 2010 Blueprint magazine selected him as one of “25 People Who Will Change the World of Design,” and in 2011Forbes listed him as one of the “Names You Need to Know.” He was recently a presenter at TED2011 and is serving as a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council for Urban Management.

Corinne Rose
Corinne Rose is an artist and psychologist based in Berlin. She studied psychology at the Freie Universität Berlin, where she received her Ph.D. in 2006. Originating from microanalytic research and unconscious communication processes, her art examines the interaction of psychology with urban space and architecture. Rose employs video and photography in works that meld the fine arts, music, and science. Exploring buildings, interiors, urban spaces, and landscapes by creating portraits of specific locations and their contexts, she focuses on investigating different forms of human interaction with public and private space.

Rose teaches at the Y (Institut für Transdisziplinarität) at the Hochschule der Künste Bern, where cross-disciplinarity and the transgression of borders within the arts are core principles. Her works have been presented at the Aalto-Musiktheater Essen, Schaubühne Berlin, Schiller Theater Berlin, Deutsche Oper Berlin and Amerika Haus Berlin (in collaboration with Oper Dynamo West), Korean German Institute of Technology (KGIT) in Seoul, and the Nationalgalerie in Berlin.

Rachel Smith
Rachel Smith, a British-born planner based in Brisbane, Australia, is passionate about all things sustainable and active transport. She is one of Australia’s leading active-transport specialists and maintains a high profile in the engineering sector. Smith has spent the last 12 years working in bicycle planning, transport-strategy development, travel-behavior change, and congestion management in the private and public sectors. She was retained as a U.K. government advisor on three national transport panels for six years, developing and managing pilot and best-practice transport projects with schools, employers, and tourist destinations, and was a trusted advisor to the former Queensland transport minister. Smith won the 2003 CIHT BP International Road Safety Award for her success in creating significant change in travel patterns at schools in Penryn, Cornwall, was awarded an International Walk to School Week Award in 2004 for her innovative Finding Nemo school assemblies to reduce school-gate car congestion, and in 2005 convinced Playhouse Disney to work with her to produce a children’s television program about the walking school bus at Devoran School in Cornwall. 

In 2008 Smith was awarded the AITPM Janet Brash Memorial Scholarship and spent several months visiting and learning from the world’s most acclaimed cities for cycling, including Bogotá, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Odense, and Groningen. In 2010 she published her research on “Cycling Super Highways”: a vision for seven-meter-wide, high-capacity cycleways (3.6 meters of “usable cycling space” in either direction) completely separated from parked and moving cars and designed for everyone to be able to safely ride a bicycle regardless of age, physical ability, and cycling experience. Smith has published many papers, is a regular columnist for news and city-design websites, and works as a principal transport planner with professional technical-services consultancy AECOM.