André Valente has a BA and MA in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge (UK), is a Doctoral graduate of the Gulbenkian PhD Programme in Biomedicine and a Harvard graduate of the School of Arts & Sciences (USA). In 2015, he moved to Lisbon where he works with the Champalimaud Foundation’s Ethics Committee and with vision-related programmes, such as the UM Cure 2020 consortium.

André has been collaborating with the Champalimaud Foundation’s board since its launch in Lisbon in 2005. He directs the António Champalimaud Vision Award with an international jury panel across the world. The award has a dual focus – in odd-numbered years, it recognizes humanitarian and sustainable healthcare achievements to fight blindness and visual impairment in developing countries, one of the largest public health issues in the world; in even numbered-years, it distinguishes scientific accomplishments towards the understanding and/or preservation of vision globally. The award is based both on the candidates’ achievements and their tangible potential, and it may be used in any way that advances their contributions such as furthering basic, translational or clinical research, clinical practice or public health programs.

Antonio Damasio is University Professor, David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology and Philosophy, and Director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California. Trained as both a neurologist and neuroscientist, António has made seminal contributions to the understanding of brain processes underlying emotions, feelings and consciousness. His work on the role of affect in decision-making has made a major impact in neuroscience, psychology and philosophy. António is the author of numerous scientific articles and is regarded as one of the most eminent psychologists of the modern era.

Antonio has received multiple accolades, including the Grawemeyer Award (2014), the Honda Prize (2010), the Asturias Prize in Science and Technology (2005), and the Nonino (2003), Signoret (2004) and Pessoa (1992) Prizes. He holds Honorary Doctorates from several leading Universities such as the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and the Sorbonne. Antonio has discussed his research and ideas in several books including Descartes’ Error, The Feeling of What Happens, Looking for Spinoza and Self Comes to Mind, which are translated and taught in universities worldwide.

António Murta is Managing Partner, co-founder and CEO of Pathena. He is also a non-exec board member of two companies of Pathena’s portfolio, and an observer in the board of other portfolio companies. António has a degree in systems engineering from Universidade do Minho (UM), an MBA from Porto Business School and an AMP from INSEAD. He also completed post-graduate courses at MIT, IESE and Singularity University – Exponential Medicine.

From 1991 to 1997, António worked as Corporate Information Officer for Sonae Distribuição, the largest Portuguese retailer. In 1997, he founded Enabler, a systems integrator strictly focused in retail, and later became VP of retail services of Wipro when it acquired Enabler. He is also a Founding Partner and business angel of many other IT and MedTech companies. António co-chairs the fundraising committee of UM and is an Advisory Board Member of its School of Nursing, a position he also occupies at INL, INESC Porto and Grupo Mello’s corporate program Grow. He is part of UM’s Medical Degree Evaluation Committee and of the Strategic Council at VdA Sociedade de Advogados. António is a seasoned speaker in innovation and entrepreneurship.

Ayesha Khalid is a surgeon (Harvard Medical School) and clinician director (Center for Biomedical Innovation and Technology, Yale School of Medicine). She completed an MBA at the MIT Sloan School of Management (Sloan Fellows Program) focusing on innovation and global leadership. She is a board-certified ENT surgeon with over 15 years of experience in the healthcare industry.
Ayesha is a systems thinker and a healthcare innovation enthusiast. Prior to Sloan, she served on the boards of several medical organizations, performed cutting edge basic science and clinical research in sinonasal disease. While at Sloan, she joined MIT H@cking Medicine to help promote disruptive thinking in healthcare. Ayesha served as VP of Business Development at Doctella, a digital health start-up with a recent successful exit. She currently serves on the board of Global Genes, a rare diseases patient advocacy organization, and helped set up their Medical and Scientific Advisory Board. As a practicing clinician, Ayesha understands the healthcare change process and the need to foster cross-disciplinary engagement. She is deeply committed to the patient voice in healthcare. Ayesha is married to a critical care intensivist and anesthesiologist, with whom she raises three brilliant critical thinkers.

Eurico Castro Alves was born in Porto and is a specialist General Surgeon at the city’s main hospital group. He graduated in Medicine from the University of Porto and went on to complete his specialty training in General Surgery at the Southern Illinois University Medical School and at the Cook County Hospital of Chicago. He holds post-graduate degrees in Management from Universidade Católica Portuguesa and the Portuguese General Medical Council, and in Leadership and Networking from Universidade Nova de Lisboa. He completed the High Management of Health Institutions Program at AESE Business School and the Advanced Management Program at IESF Porto.
Eurico teaches Surgery at the Abel Salazar Biomedical Sciences Institute. He published and coordinated several studies in the areas of General Surgery, health regulation and quality. Between 2012 and 2015, he was president of the Board of Infarmed, the Portuguese National Authority for Medicament and Health Products. During this period, Portugal’s National System for the Evaluation of Technology in Health was created. Eurico served as a mentor to the European group responsible for fighting counterfeit medicines, and as Health Secretary of State to Portugal’s government. Currently, he is the President of the National Health Convention.

Hanna Damasio M.D. is University Professor, Dana Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Dana and David Dornsife Cognitive Neuroscience Imaging Center at the University of Southern California. Using computerized tomography and magnetic resonance scanning, she has developed methods of investigating the human brain structure and studied functions such as language, memory and emotion, using both the lesion method and functional neuroimaging. Besides numerous scientific articles, she is the author of the award-winning Lesion Analysis in Neuropsychology, and of Human Brain Anatomy in Computerized Images, the first brain atlas based on computerized imaging data.
Hanna is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Neurological Association. She shared the Signoret Prize and the Pessoa Prize with Antonio Damasio, and, among others, holds honorary doctorates from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, the Universities of Aachen and Lisbon, and the Open University of Catalonia. The Center she directs works closely with the Brain and Creativity Institute.

João Medeiros is Features Director for UK Wired magazine. He was born in Portugal and moved to the UK at eighteen. João holds a Physics and Astronomy degree from Southampton University and a Doctorate in Cosmology from Imperial College London. After his doctorate, he started his path as a journalist and has written widely for publications such as The Economist, GQ and Nature.
At Wired, João is involved in the writing and editing of stories at the intersection of science, technology and medicine. Talking to the academics, entrepreneurs and pioneers disrupting the healthcare sector is what he loves. His pieces include subjects as diverse as serial killers, extreme memory tournaments and Softbank, and he has interviewed heavy weights such as Stephen Hawking, Chris Froome, Eddie Redmayne and Andy Serkis. João also curates Wired Health, Europe’s most influential gathering in the field of health tech, and co-curates the magazine’s annual festival, Wired Live. In 2015, he was shortlisted for the Writer of the Year Award by the Periodical Publishers Association, and spoke at TEDxOporto. In 2019, João published his first book, Game Changers: How a Team of Underdogs and Scientists Discovered What It Takes To Win.

José António Ferreira Machado is the Vice-Rector of Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, and is currently leading the development of its new health campus. Previously, during his tenure as Dean of NOVA School of Business and Economics, he was responsible for the implementation of the Bologna reforms, for securing AMBA, AACSB and EQUIS accreditations, for the participation in the CEMS alliance and the creation of the Lisbon MBA in collaboration with Católica-Lisbon and the Sloan School of MIT. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Illinois and a Habilitation in Statistics and Econometrics from Universidade NOVA de Lisboa.
José António is a member of the editorial boards of Empirical Economics and the Portuguese Economic Journal. His research is published in some of the leading journals of his field, namely the Journal of the American Statistical Society, the European Economic Review and the Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics. His most influential piece of research “Counterfactual Decomposition of Changes in Wage Distributions using Quantile Regression”, a joint work with José Mata, was published in the Journal of Applied Econometrics 20, 2005. José António teaches Econometrics, Statistics and Macroeconomics. He has been a consultant of the Bank of Portugal since 1992.

Minnie Freudenthal is a Portuguese doctor who stands out for her international experience and her holistic approach to medicine, which has led her to integrate nutrition, clinical hypnosis and mindfulness in her practice. She has studied and done residencies in many parts of the world, including the US, France, Angola, London and, of course, Portugal. In addition to her consultations, one of her numerous side projects involves working with young people for the prevention of mental disease.
Minnie completed her BA in medicine in 1978 at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon. A series of internships and residencies followed, notably in Paris, Lisbon and New York. In New York, she, was approved in the Federal Licensing Examination of the National Board of Medical Examiners and did an internship in infectious diseases in the New York Medical College hospitals. She also started to work in a private clinic, as an Internal Medicine Expert.
In 1990, Minnie returned to Portugal and started working in private practice in Lisbon and Cascais, in parallel to being an emergency doctor at the Portuguese Red Cross Hospital. A naturally curious mind, Minnie started taking a keen interest in nutrition as a cornerstone of good health, completing a course in Type 2 Diabetes Therapeutics. As she realized nutrition problems are closely linked to mind problems, in 2010 Minnie took course in Clinical Hypnosis at the London School of Clinical Hypnosis and in 2013 a course on Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction. Her various interests and trainings intersect in her consultations as she looks at various inseparable aspects in each patient: the body and its nervous system, the relationship with the self and with others, and the mind.
A strong advocate for a new, more wholesome, kind of education, Minnie has taken a special interest in today’s youth. Alarmed at the rates of mental illnesses and disorders in the younger generations, she is one of the founders of a youth project called ‘Mind Blackout’, a project uniting neuroscience, medicine, psychology, critical thinking, mindfulness-cognitive tools, art and entrepreneurship. Minnie gives lectures and workshops related to her areas of interest in universities, private gatherings and companies from all sectors and industries.

Nadim Habib holds an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics and currently is a lecturer at the NOVA School of Business and Economics (SBE), teaching in the master’s and Executive Education programs. Some of his subjects include High Impact Innovation, Creativity and Innovation, Strategy and Leading the Digital Transformation. He is also a consultant for prominent organizations on matters such as strategy and agility. Nadim’s Innovation and Management Agility program was voted Best in The World in 2014 and 2015 by the CEMS Network, a global alliance of 27 business schools and 90 corporations. From 2008 to 2014, he was the CEO of the Executive Education program at NOVA SBE, as well as CEO of the Angola Business School. Previously, he held senior management roles in banking, telecommunications and consulting.

Nuno Maulide was born in Lisbon. He studied chemistry at Instituto Superior Técnico before completing a Master’s at the École Polytechnique in France, followed by a PhD at the Catholic University of Louvin. After his post-doc studies at Stanford, he began his career as an independent researcher at the Max-Planck Institute in Germany. In 2013, he became Full Professor of Organic Synthesis at the University of Vienna, and in 2018, Invited Professor at ITQB NOVA.
Nuno is Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and has received several awards, including the Academy’s Ignaz Lieben prize and three European Research Council grants. In 2019, he was elected Scientist of The Year for the outstanding way in which he communicates his research to different audiences, thus promoting scientific culture in Austria. Nuno’s research has mostly focused on unusual reactivity profiles of organic compounds. He has developed numerous chemical reactions to produce molecules upon which modern society relies, in more efficient and sustainable ways. Nuno is a keen pianist, having trained at prestigious musical academies in Portugal.

Shafi Ahmed is a multi-award winning cancer surgeon working at the Royal London Hospital. In 2015, he won the Silver Scalpel as Best Bational Trainer in Surgery, and was voted Asian Star in UK Tech in 2018. He was given the accolade of world’s most watched surgeon for live streaming operations using Google Glass, VR, social media and on national television. Shafi is a faculty member at various international medical schools, teaching topics such as innovation and digital transformation in health. He has developed surgical education programs in over 20 countries including conflict zones. Shafi is also a medical advisor to both the UK and Abu Dhabi governments.
Shafi co-founded Medical Realities, a VR education company, and sits on the board of other major med-tech and pharma companies. He chairs the Webit Health Summit and co-founded the GIANT Health Summit. Shafi is a 2019 HIMSS Future50 clinical leader and one of the top 20 global influencers in digital health. He has delivered over 200 keynotes in more than 30 countries on innovation, the future of healthcare and digital transformation. His work has been featured in over 400 international newspapers, tech journals and mainstream TV news channels.

Steven Kotler is a New York Times bestselling author and an award-winning journalist. As the executive director of the Flow Research Collective, he is one of the world’s leading experts on high performance. His most recent work, Stealing Fire, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His books Tomorrowland, Bold, The Rise of Superman and Abundance received ample praise from the public and the media. Steven’s work has been translated into over 40 languages and appeared in more than 100 publications, including The New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Wired and TIME.
Steven is also the cofounder of Creating Equilibrium, a conference/concert/innovation accelerator focused on solving critical environmental challenges. Alongside his wife, author Joy Nicholson, he cofounded Rancho de Chihuahua, a dog sanctuary in the mountains of New Mexico. He has a BA from the University of Wisconsin and an MA from Johns Hopkins University. Whenever possible, he can be found hurling himself down mountains at high speeds. He lectures widely on human performance, disruptive technology and radical innovation.