First speakers announced for WIRED2015

The first 19 speakers have been announced for our annual flagship event, WIRED2015, to be held on 15 and 16 October at London's Tobacco Dock.

Bringing the WIRED world to life, WIRED 2015 showcases the innovators changing the world and promoting disruptive thinking and radical ideas. There will be around 45 speakers over the two-day event, presenting stories about their work in science, design, business and many other fields.

Speakers at WIRED2015 will include:

• Andras Forgacs, cofounder and CEO of Modern Meadow, which is producing meat and leather in the lab -- without harming animals.
• Antoine Blondeau, CEO of Sentient Technologies, who worked on the project that became Apple's Siri). Today he runs Sentient Technologies, the world's best-funded AI company.
• Caleb Harper, research scientist, MIT CityFARM at MIT Media Lab. Harper is turning city dwellers into farmers by making it possible to grow crops anywhere -- even underground.
• Carlo Ratti, director, MIT Senseable City Laboratory. Ratti is an architect, engineer, inventor, educator and activist who's designing the future of the connected city.
• Gabor Forgacs, chief scientific officer, Modern Meadow and scientific founder, Organovo. A theoretical physicist and bioengineer, Forgacs is 3D printing blood vessels, liver tissue and other human organs.
• Willard Ahdritz, founder and CEO of Kobalt, the music industry's biggest secret. By tracking online music plays, it produces up to 700,000 revenue streams for artists.
• Frank Pearl, who has worked with ex-members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia to re-integrate them into society, plus Jose Miguel Sokoloff, an ad-man whose work has led to the demobilisation of guerrilla forces in his native Colombia.
• Author and broadcaster Misha Glenny, whose most recent book explores the criminal underworld surrounding Rio de Janeiro's largest cocaine operation.
• Serial entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox, who is a crossbench peer in the House of Lords and chair of digital skills charity Go ON UK.
• Tom Wujec, an Autodesk problem solver who uses emerging technologies and tools to help organisations overcome their challenges.
• Alex "Sandy" Pentland, who helped create and direct MIT's Media Lab, the Media Lab Asia, and the Centre for Future Health, and will show what our phone data reveals about us.
• In addition, René Redzepi, chef and founder of Copenhagen's Noma, repeatedly voted the world's best restaurant, is bringing MAD, his non-profit for chefs, to guest-curate a special section on chefs and the future of food.

There will also be 15 WIRED Innovation Fellows (including three Creative Fellows, in association with The Space) from around the world, building on the programme's successful launch at WIRED2014.

These will include:

• USAF pilot and physicist Ryan Weed who is developing the world's first antimatter rocket to help humans become a truly interstellar species.
• Helen Keen who creates pioneering science/comedy shows and whose new series explores how technology can solve the world's problems.
• Freeman Osonuga, who worked in Sierra Leone for six months on the front-line against the ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone.
• Meg Schwamb, who is crowdsourcing the search for new planets outside our Solar System and the study of Mars' climate.
• Arthur Kay, CEO of bio-bean, who has industrialised the process of turning waste coffee grounds into Advanced Biofuels.
• Designer Francis Bitonti, who merges 3D printing and artificial intelligence to bring product design into the information age.

Further pioneering speakers from around the world appearing at the event will be named in the coming weeks.

Global influencers who participated in last year's event included will.i.am, Zaha Hadid, HRH The Duke of York, Ze Frank, Ron Arad, Sir John Hegarty, Andrew Hessel, Anne Wojcicki, Charmian Gooch, Demis Hassabis, Elif Shafak, Esther Dyson, Ionut Alexandru Budisteanu, Jay Bregman, Joel Jackson, Nico Sell and Sam Bompas.

We are also delighted to announce that Telefónica will once again be WIRED2015's headline partner.

Nick Sargent, commercial director of WIRED, said: "We're thrilled to have Telefónica as our headline partner again this year. WIRED2015 will once more assemble opinion formers and future shapers, setting the agenda and providing a unique platform from which to engage with the future. WIRED, together with Telefónica, looks forward to facilitating this meeting of minds."

WIRED2015 takes place on October 15-16 at Tobacco Dock in London, E1. Last year's event sold out, so secure your place now with our Advance Early Bird Offer: save 20 per cent by booking before May 31, 2015. We also have a limited number of half-price tickets available for startups and registered charities. For more information or to register, please visithttp://www.wiredevent.co.uk/wired-2015

This article was originally published by WIRED UK