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Shana O. Kelley is professor of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto. Shana’s lab has been developing electronic chips that aim to reduce the time needed for diagnosis of infectious disease and cancer to minutes, rather than days. Chip-based sensors made from nanomaterials, such as gold and palladium, play an important role, as detection sensitivity is greatly enhanced when measurements are performed at the nanoscale. 

Professor Yamuna Krishnan works at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, India and the University of Chicago. She makes experimental nanomachines out of filaments of DNA, and gets them to sail into the nooks and crannies of living cells. These tiny machines can be programmed to check the aspects of chemistry inside a cell which are crucial to human health.

Benjamin H. Bratton is a theorist whose work spans Philosophy, Art and Design. He is associate professor of Visual Arts and director of The Center for Design and Geopolitics at the University of California, San Diego as well as professor at The European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. He has worked with biosensor ‘inks’, developed in UCSD’s Laboratory for Nanobioelectronics, transforming them into project Nanoskin, which explores ways to enhance the human ability to sense through our skin.

Josh Fischman is a senior editor at Scientific American magazine with special interest in health and technology. He has been following nanoscience for a number of years and explains why materials at a nanometre scale often behave in a radically different ways to macroscale. He also outlines some of the practical uses for nanotech today.