Lars Laichter
Lars Laichter is the steward of Laichter House, a historic publishing house and cultural landmark in Prague founded by his great-great-grandfather, publisher Jan Laichter. He leads the restoration of the house as a center for cultural exchange, public events, and innovation, combining interests in cultural heritage, literature, and technology. He studied Liberal Arts and Sciences at Quest University Canada and earned a master's degree in Logic from Charles University, specializing in dialogue modelling and artificial intelligence. His research has included work at the University of Amsterdam's Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC), and he has worked at IBM on AI and conversational technologies. Alongside his work in heritage preservation, he develops digital tools for cultural institutions and community spaces and organizes literary, educational, and cultural programs.
Valerie Fowles
Valerie has built her career around decarbonisation, working across disciplines from the lab bench to the policy table. Her experience spans scientific research, climate activism, EU funding administration, agricultural policy reform, and political and geopolitical analysis for industry and governments.
She has spent the last five years understanding the impact of geopolitics on Europe's energy transition. She has developed deep expertise in how global conflicts are reshaping renewable energy technology supply chains, and she advises the EU on strategies for maintaining resilience at a time when the global institutions it has long relied on are under pressure.
Mala Emde
Mala Emde is a versatile and creative actress whose work spans across international film, television, and theatre. Following her acting studies at the renowned Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin and LAMDA in London, she also expanded her academic horizons with an academic year in Liberal Arts at Bard College. Her artistic work is characterized by a deep exploration of complex social and human questions — ranging from historical narratives such as Meine Tochter Anne Frank to contemporary discourses in award-winning feature films like And Tomorrow the Entire World (Venice Film Festival) or Köln 75 (Berlinale). Alongside her intensive work in front of the camera, she was a permanent ensemble member at Theater Basel from 2021 to 2024. Mala Emde's accolades include the German Acting Award (Deutscher Schauspielpreis) and the Bisato d'Oro. Within the NOYA project, she channels her artistic expressiveness into the search for forward-looking, hopeful answers to the existential questions of our time.
Carla Zoe Cremer
Carla Zoe Cremer completed a PhD in cognitive science from the University of Oxford. She was a research scholar at the Future of Humanity Institute, a fellow at the Centre for the Governance of AI and an affiliate of the Center for the Study of Existential Risk and the Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge. Her research interests have spanned metacognition, active learning, democratic epistemics, limitations of deep learning, method limitations of existential risk studies, cognitive and epistemic risk.