Thomas Metzinger (*1958 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany) is currently Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz and an Adjunct Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Study (FIAS). He is also Director of the Neuroethics Research Unit in Mainz (http://www.philosophie.uni-mainz.de/1887_DEU_HTML.php) and Director of the MIND Group at the FIAS. In 2008 he received a one-year Fellowship at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Berlin Institute for Advanced Study), is past president of the German Cognitive Science Society (2005-2007) and of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (2009-2011). His focus of research lies in analytical philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophical aspects of the neuro- and cognitive sciences, as well as in connections between ethics, philosophy of mind and anthropology. In the English language, he has edited two collections on consciousness (“Conscious Experience”, Paderborn: mentis & Thorverton, UK: Imprint Academic, 1995; “Neural Correlates of Consciousness”, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000) and one major scientific monograph developing a comprehensive, interdisciplinary theory about consciousness, the phenomenal self, and the first-person perspective (“Being No One – The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity”, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003; als in paperback and as eBook). In 2009, he published a popular book, which addresses a wider audience and also discusses the ethical, cultural and social consequences of consciousness research (“The Ego Tunnel – The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self”, New York: Basic Books). Details at http://www.philosophie.uni-mainz.de/metzinger/ET.html

Markus Schlosser recently joined the Faculty of Philosophy at Groningen as a post-doc. He did a PhD in philosophy at the University of St. Andrews with a thesis on the metaphysics of agency. Since then he has worked on research projects at the University of Bristol and Leiden. He has published on various topics in the philosophy of action, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of psychology. Current research interests include the philosophy and neuroscience of free will and the nature of rational agency.
Michael J. Spivey earned a B.A. in Psychology from UC Santa Cruz in 1991, and then a Ph.D. in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from the University of Rochester in 1996, after which he was faculty at Cornell University for 12 years.  He is currently Professor of Cognitive Science at University of California, Merced.  His research focuses on the embodiment of cognition and the interaction between language and vision, using the methods of eye-tracking, reach-tracking, and dynamic neural network simulations. This work is detailed in his book, The Continuity of Mind. 

Ben Maassen (Professor of Dyslexia & Clinical Neuropsychologist) has a background in cognitive neuropsychology and speech-language pathology. He started experimental research at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics studying sentence production processes, did his PhD on intelligibility of the speech of the deaf at the University of Nijmegen, specialized further in clinical neuropsychology at the Department of Child Neurology and Medical Psychology, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, and is now affiliated to the Faculty of Arts and the University Medical Center, University of Groningen. He is leader of projects on developmental dyslexia, speech motor control and developmental neuropsychological disorders, and teacher in BA-, MA- and PhD-programs of Speech-Language Pathology, Clinical Linguistics and Cognitive Neuroscience. Main research areas are dyslexia and neurocognitive precursors of literacy; neurogenic speech disorders, in particular childhood apraxia of speech; perception-production modelling in speech development; and speech-related cognitive dysfunctions. He was chair and programme chair of the International Conference on Speech Motor Control (edition 2001, 2006, 2011), editor of the resulting Oxford University Press publications, and is involved in international research networks on speech motor control and dyslexia.

Anne Bertolotti has been a group leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology since 2006, an INSERM scientist since 2001 and was elected an EMBO Young Investigator in 2005. She obtained her Ph.D. from Strasbourg University (France), working with Pierre Chambon and Lazslo Tora and pursued her postdoctoral training in David Ron’s lab at The Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine, NYU Medical Center, New York.

Her lab is interested in understanding the mechanisms underlying the deposition of proteins of abnormal conformation in cells, a hallmark of many pathological conditions. In addition, she is looking at strategies that can help cells boosting their natural defenses against misfolded proteins, aiming to correct numerous conditions characterized by the accumulation of misfolded proteins.

Craig Heller received his PhD from the Department of Biology at Yale University.He then was a postdoctoral fellow at Scripps Institute of Oceanography with Ted Hammel and Pete Scholander.At that time he was working on hypothalamic regulation of body temperature in hibernators.He joined the faculty in Biology at Stanford University in 1972.Throughout his career at Stanford he has continued to work on hibernation, mammalian temperature regulation, sleep and circadian neurobiology, and most recently the role of sleep and circadian rhythms in learning and learning disability, which is the topic of his BCN Jubilee Lecture.

Lambert Schomaker (1957) received his M.Sc. degree in psychophysiological psychology in 1983 (cum laude), and his Ph.D. degree on "Simulation and Recognition of Handwriting Movements" in 1991 at Nijmegen University, The Netherlands. Since 1988, he has been working in several European Esprit projects (IMU,Papyrus) concerning the recognition of on-line, connected cursive script on the basis of knowledge on the handwriting movement process.

He participated in the European medical technology AIM project Camarc on balance diagnostics for stroke patients. He was the project coordinator of a large European project on multimodality in multimedial interfaces (Esprit/MIAMI), and has enjoyed collaborative researchprojects with several industrial companies (Hewlett-Packard, Olivetti). Current projects, mostly funded by NWO are in the area of image-based retrieval, on-line and off-line, historical handwriting recognition, forensic writer identification, and cognitive robot navigation models. He has organized several conferences on handwriting recognition and modeling. He was the chairman of TC-11/Reading Systemsof the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR), chairmanof the International Unipen Foundation for benchmarking of on- line handwriting recognizers, member of the IAPR joint TC11/TC5 committee on Benchmarking and Software, and member of the IEEE Computer Society. Within the Netherlands he has been member of the Advisory Board of the IPO Institute, Eindhoven, and the NICI, Nijmegen. He was member of the NWO programme committees ToKeN and Catch. He is member of the Computational Humanities programme commitee installed by the Royal Academy of Sciences in 2009. He has contributed to over 110 peer-reviewed publications in journals and books. His work is cited in 23 patents.

In 2001 he has accepted the position of full professor in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, currently assuming the role of director of Research of the ALICE institute of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences.

Raja Parasuraman , Ph.D. is University Professor of Psychology at George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA. He is Director of the Graduate Program in Human Factors and Applied Cognition and Director of the Center of Excellence in Neuroergonomics, Technology, and Cognition (CENTEC). His research interests are in attention, aging, automation, neuroimaging, and genetics. He has published over 150 peer-reviewed journal articles and 11 books, including Varieties of Attention, Automation and Human Performance, Neuroergonomics: The Brain at Work, and Nurturing the Older Brain and Mind. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Society, and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. His awards include the Franklin Taylor Award for Lifetime Achievement from the American Psychological Association, the Paul Fitts Education Award from the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, and the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council for Higher Education for the State of Virginia.

For more information, see http://archlab.gmu.edu/people/rparasur/ and http://centec.gmu.edu

Wiebo Brouwer (1949) is associate professor ofneuropsychology at the department of Psychologyofthe University of Groningen and head of the clinical neuropsychology unit ofthe department ofNeurology of the University Medical Center Groningen. Since 2004 he has held the chair of traffic medicine and neuropsychology established by the Dutch road licensing department CBR. His research has focused on attention, visual perception and executive functioning in adult brain disorders and ageing. Special emphasis is given to the subject of attention and driving,concerning boththe basic visual-spatial, visual-motor and emotional functions and processes involved (ICF body level) and the complex driving skills and behaviours, as assessed on the road, and in a driving simulator (ICF activity and participation level), often also involving assessment andrehabilitation with regard to fitness to drive.