Exit : The Image of the Present

Elizabeth Diller is a partner at Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R). Alongside her partner Ricardo Scofidio, Elizabeth Diller's interdisciplinary work has been recognized with the Wolf Prize in Architecture, TIME magazine named her one of the "100 Most Influential People," and the MacArthur Foundation awarded her its first-ever fellowship in the field of architecture. More recently, she led three major cultural projects for New York: The Shed, the expansion of MoMA, and the redevelopment of Lincoln Center. Diller also co-created, co-directed, and co-produced The Mile-Long Opera, an immersive choral work staged on the High Line.

Diller is a member of the United Nations Council on Urban Initiatives and a professor of Architectural Design at Princeton University.

Paola Antonelli is Senior Curator of Architecture & Design at The Museum of Modern Art, as well as MoMA’s founding Director of Research & Development. Her goal is to promote design’s understanding, until its mighty influence on the world is universally acknowledged. Her work considers design various practices within a multidisciplinary framework, highlighting its connections with technology, society, and the environment. Besides curating exhibitions, she also produces a renowned public series, the MoMA R&D Salons, that demonstrates the potential of museums as R&D departments for society. The Instagram platform, book, and podcast Design Emergency, which she co-founded with design critic Alice Rawsthorn, is an ongoing investigation on design's power to envision a better future for all.

Rana Dasgupta is a British novelist and essayist.  He is the author of “Solo” and “Capital: A Portrait of Delhi in the Twenty-First Century.”  His latest book, “After Nations: The Making & Unmaking of a World Order” offers a global history of the nation-state, and a diagnosis of the large-scale transition engulfing the world today.  He is the recipient of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Windham-Campbell Prize, the Prix Émile Guimet de Littérature Asiatique and the The Ryszard Kapuściński Award.  He lives in France. 

Alison Killing is a senior reporter on the visual investigations team, an interdisciplinary group of journalists harnessing open source techniques, computational tools and traditional reporting to break stories in visual formats. 
Before joining the FT, Alison worked with BuzzFeed News, the BBC and Lighthouse Reports. In 2021 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting together with two colleagues for an investigation that uncovered a secret network of prison

Laura Kurgan is a Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation at Columbia University (GSAPP), where she directs the Master’s in Computational Design Practices (MS_CDP) and the Center for Spatial Research, a hub for urban research that links design, architecture, urbanism, the humanities and datascience. She is the author of Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics, and co-editor of Ways of Knowing Cities. For her work as a designer, Laura was awarded a National Design Award from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (2026); the BEE Award for the most original project at the Triennale di Milano (2025) and a US Artists Rockefeller Fellowship (2009.) 

Mark Hansen is a professor at Columbia Journalism School and founding director of the Brown Institute for Media Innovation. He has collaborated on numerous art installations that present complex data to the public. His work with Ben Rubin, Jer Thorp, and The Office for Creative Research has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the London Science Museum, and the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain. Listening Post, made with Ben Rubin, received the Golden Nica for Interactive Art in 2004. 

Hansen’s journalism teaching and practice also center on data and computation. His course at Columbia contributed original reporting to The New York Times project The Follower Factory, which exposed the bot economy behind the sale of fake followers on Twitter—work recognized with a George Polk Award and a Pulitzer Prize finalist citation. In the last year, he has also collaborated on New York Times investigations into deficiencies in the U.S. organ transplant system. 

Hansen holds a PhD in Statistics from the University of California, Berkeley. He has published over 60 papers and holds eight patents in data science, statistics, and computer science. 

Robert Gerard Pietrusko is an architect and composer based in Philadelphia. His research focuses on the history and speculative design potential of environmental media. His design work has been exhibited in more than 15 countries at venues such The MoMA, Centre Pompidou, Akademie der Künste, and the Venice Architecture Biennale, among others. Pietrusko Is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome and the recipient of the 2021 Rome Prize for landscape architecture. Previous residencies also include ZKM Center for Art + Media, and Les Ateliers UPIC/CCMIX. Pietrusko is an associate professor of landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania

Dava Newman, Ph.D., a futurist is the MIT Apollo Program Professor of Astronautics, former director of the MIT Media Lab and the first woman engineer and scientist to have served as a NASA Deputy Administrator. Empowering organizations to innovate from within, she reveals creative strategies for taking advantage of the coming opportunities from breakthroughs in searching for life elsewhere in the Universe to climate and energy tech, wearable technologies, and the convergence of artificial intelligence and generative biology. Her mantra of “Love, Act, Discover, Innovate” urges audiences of business, government, and academic leaders to courageously consider how innovation can truly change the way we engage with each other and our planet.