The Manzari Brothers, John and Leo, are performers who rocketed to overnight national stardom in 2010. Then ages 17 and 15, respectively, they co-starred with tap-dance legend Maurice Hines in “Sophisticated Ladies” at the Lincoln Theater in Washington D.C.
The Washington Conservatory of Music is a nationally accredited community music school in Bethesda, MD and Glen Echo Park, founded in 1984 to serve the Greater DC area. At WCM, children and adults, without audition, study with performing artist faculty. Individual lessons are the cornerstone of WCM, along with Early Childhood, Jazz, Classical, Folk, Irish classes and an amateur adult orchestra.
Peter is the President and co-founder of the Nutrition Science Initiative (NuSI), a California-based 501(c)(3). Peter is also a physician and former McKinsey & Company consultant, where he was a member of both the corporate risk and healthcare practices.
Kelli Swazey, Ph.D., is a cultural anthropologist who investigates the role that spiritual and religious practices play in defining group identity. She has conducted research on Indonesian society and culture as a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow, a Fulbright-Hayes researcher, and a fellow of the East West Center in Honolulu, Hawai’i.
Kaoru Ishibashi, who goes by the professional name Kishi Bashi, is a singer-songwriter, composer and performing artist who appears both solo and with groups. He plays multiple instruments including violin, keyboard and guitar, and his musical repertoire ranges from indie pop and rock to psychedelic pop. He sometimes uses Japanese singing as one of many sound layers in his creations, helping to suggest (to Western ears, at least) a sense of the ineffable.
Larry Smarr is the founding Director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), a UC San Diego/UC Irvine partnership, and holds the Harry E. Gruber professorship in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) of UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering. At Calit2, he has continued to drive major developments in information infrastructure– including the Internet, Web, scientific visualization, virtual reality, and global telepresence–begun during his previous 15 years as founding Director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).
Mariano Vázquez, PhD, is a researcher at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center. He helps lead a multi-disciplinary, international team of 25 researchers from the fields of mathematics, physics, computer sciences and engineering. Their common goal: to better understand nature through creating a “computational world” employing the world’s most powerful supercomputers.
Max Little is an applied mathematician whose goal is to “see connections between subjects, not boundaries…to see how things are related, not how they are different.” He has a background in applied mathematics, statistics, signal processing and computational engineering. His work has been applied across disciplines like biomedicine, extreme rainfall analysis and forecasting, biophysical signal processing, and hydrogeomorphology and open channel flow measurement.
Peter Aguero was born and raised in Southern New Jersey and currently makes his home in Queens. He’s a Moth GrandSLAM champion, regular host of Moth shows, and an instructor for the MothSHOP community program. Fulfilling the dreams of no one, he appeared shirtless on Late Night With Conan O’Brien multiple times. He’s also the lead singer of The BTK Band – an improvised storytelling rock band that performs regularly in NYC.
Pritpal S. Tamber helps qualify and select speakers and assists with strategy for the stage program. A physician with over 12 years’ experience in creating compelling content in health and medicine, Pritpal is the founder of Optimising Clinical Knowledge, a UK-based consultancy that helps organizations devise and deliver clinically credible strategies with measurable impact on care.