Research Director of the National Research Council of Italy. Responsible for the CNR Research Unit “Social Studies of Science, Education, Communication”, involved in several national and international projects in the fields of science and society, engsgement and science education, relationships between research and policy, and sociology of communication. Main Projects Responsibilities include CNR National coordination of the FP7 project REPOPA, of the International Research Project “Implicit values in textbooks - representations of migration” and responsible for the SCE Unit of the FP7 project Scicafe 2.0. Main memberships included membership as National Expert of the “Information Society Forum”, WG2 “Social and democratic values, culture and the future of new services and the media”. Contract professor in several Italian Universities (Rome Sapienza and Lumsa, Naples Partenope, Macerata). Component of the School Commission of the Italian National Academy of Science.

I'm the Director of RSA Global at the RSA (Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Commerce and Manufactures) - a 260 year old think tank and social change organisation in London. We have run a year-long commission into how to deliver inclusive growth policies in the UK and are working with cities around the world to put our findings into practice. I'm interested in learning from other places about how they are breaking silos and including citizens in social and economic policy-making. I have a breadth of experience in working with, and for, the private sector, national NGOs and local charities. I began my career working for FTSE 100 company Wolseley Plc in Europe; after four years and much thought, took the decision to focus on work that addresses the systemic causes of inequality in the world. I left Wolseley to launch an enterprise project for leprosy and tuberculosis charity Damien Foundation in Bangladesh, and then built a successful socio-economic impact consultancy within think tank the New Economics Foundation (NEF) in London. I strongly believes that putting people and the planet at the heart of decision-making is the best way to make real social change.

I am an environmental practitioner who works for the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and have a focus on local economic development of disadvantaged communities through providing support in environmental assessments for their potential businesses/ developments. I have an interest in looking to broaden spatial planning in township and rural communities in South Africa to include looking at Ecosystem Services that can assist in building community resilience and economic development. I have worked with a number of monitoring, evaluating and developing sustainability indicators for state of the environment reporting with the South African and Namibian governments.

Fadi Salem has over fifteen years of multidisciplinary working experience in the policy research fields, policy think tanks and media organizations, including contributing to numerous projects with the UN, OECD and the World Bank. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow with the Future Government Group at the MBR School of Government (formerly Dubai School of Government) and founder of the Governance and Innovation Program. He also was a Research Associate at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and a Fellow with the I+I Policy Research Centre, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKY SPP), National University of Singapore. Fadi is currently a PhD in Public Policy candidate at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. His areas of expertise extends to technology policy, digital government and transformation, Internet governance and smart cities development; specifically, policy implications of IoT, open and big data. He is the author of numerous policy publications on social implications of social media, e-participation, digital transformation and digital governance. Previously, Fadi has worked in The Executive Office in Dubai, advising senior government leaders on technology policy and digital economy as well as an Editor in two regional media publications. Fadi is currently a PhD in Public Policy candidate at the University of Oxford, and hold a Master in Management from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and a B.Eng. in Computer Engineering from Aleppo University. He co-founded several international research projects, development initiatives and NGOs such as Jusoor and Project Encounter, and authored numerous policy publications and reports, including the influential ‘Arab Social Media Report’ series and the ‘Arab World Online’ series. He is frequently invited as an expert and public speaker in international conferences and policy forums. His work and interviews have been featured (among others) in The Economist, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Financial Times, Foreign Policy Magazine, Foreign Affairs, BBC, CNN and numerous other media outlets.