FutureProofing: Mobility ‒ Who's Who

Timandra Harkness (r) and Leo Johnson (l) are the resident reporters responsible for presenting this series of FutureProofing.

Timandra has presented documentaries, Data, Data Everywhere, Personality Politics and The Singularity, and is resident reporter on Radio 4's social psychology series The Human Zoo. She is currently writing a book for Bloomsbury's Sigma popular science imprint: Big Data: Does Size Matter?comes out in spring 2016. Timandra hosts events for Cheltenham Science Festival, the Institute of Ideas, and the Wellcome Collection, among many others. She says her 'natural habitat is among dissenting adults in public'; Brainsex, her solo comedy show on neuroscience and gender, tours till early 2016. @TimandraHarknes

Leo is co-founder of Sustainable Finance, advisor to over 50 global banks and businesses ‒ now part of PWC. He also worked for the International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank dedicated to financing and advising private sector projects and ventures in developing countries. He is the author of Beyond Risk and winner of the IFC Corporate Award for his work with the financial sector. He is a Fellow at Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise, and lectures at the LSE and the Cambridge Programme for Industry. His latest book, Turnaround Challenge: Business and the City of the Future considers the huge shifts in society, economy, environment and governance that confronts the world. Whether it’s IT-enabled buildings or fossil-fuel dependent cities, he looks at what the future holds for how we all live and work. @Mr_LeoJ

Raffaele is Ferrari GT's Development Head Test Driver. A former race car driver with a degree in mechanical engineering, he became Ferrari’s head test driver two years ago. He is responsible for ensuring that the handling, gadgetry and even the sound of each new model meet the expectations of the world's most demanding clients. @RaffaeledeSim11

James is an award winning motoring journalist, probably best known for his 12 year stint co-presenting the popular BBC TV programme, Top Gear. He and Jeremy Clarkson, plus an Icelandic support crew, became the first people ever to reach the Magnetic North Pole in an automobile. He has also presented James May's Man Lab, James May's Toy Stories, and a series of programmes on wine, with Oz Clarke. @MrJamesMay

Dr Paul Zanelli is Chief Technical Officer, Transport Systems Catapult, responsible for the technical leadership of the £150m project which aims to put self-driving cars on the British roads and help modernise the country’s transport infrastructure.

A trained civil engineer, Sampo is CEO of Intelligent Transport Systems Finland (ITS Finland), a non-profit organisation that 'promotes the development and deployment of transport and logistic telematic services and improves the awareness of Finnish ITS expertise.' @SampoHietanen

David is Chief Adviser to Uber. The mastermind behind Barak Obama’s 2008 presidential election victory, David now works full-time on a broad portfolio that includes business, legal and policy issues as the strategic adviser to ride sharing app and business juggernaut. @DavidPlouffe

Dirk Ahlborn (l) founded Hyperloop Transportation Technologies(HTT) to make Elon Musk’s project of high-speed vacuum tube travel a reality, based on entirely different business model. HTT crowdsources hundreds of highly skilled and qualified people who volunteer their free time and ideas just for the sake of being part of a visionary project – and potentially stock options, with the hope of becoming billionaires if and when the project gets off. He is currently Chief Executive Officer. @JustDirk

A former software developer, HTT's Chief Operating Officer Bibop Gresta (r) is an expert in digital media technologies, making projects go viral. @BibopGresta

Prof. Bülthoff is director of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics and former leader of the EU myCopter project. As well as investigating how to make flying cars a reality on behalf of the EU, Prof. Bülthoff also studies the fundamental processes that underlay human perception, cognition and action.