Hans d'ORVILLE Assistant Director-General for Strategic Planning of UNESCO

1. Hans d'ORVILLE  Assistant Director-General for Strategic Planning of UNESCO Hans d’Orville is the Assistant Director-General for Strategic Planning of UNESCO, based in Paris. Since 2000, he has served as Director of the Bureau of Strategic Planning. Prior to his UNESCO services, Mr d’Orville served (1996-2000) as Director of the Information Technologies (IT) for Development Programme in the Bureau for Development Policy of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Since 1975 he had held various functions in the United Nations Secretariat and UNDP, among others Secretary of the UNCommittee on Conferences and Senior Officer in the Office of the UNDP Administrator with responsibility for UNDP’s Governing Council. Between 1987 and 1995 he was Executive Coordinator of the InterAction Council of former Heads of State and Government. Among other professional affiliations, Mr. d’Orville was a member-co-founder of the Africa Leadership Forum (1988-2007). He also was advisor to the Independent Commission of Population and Quality of Life and the Independent Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development. He holds a PhD and MA in economics from the University of Konstanz, Germany. 

2. Sergei KAPITSAvice president of the Academy of Natural Sciences (Russia) Sergei Kapitsa (born 14 February 1928, Cambridge, England) is a Russian physicist and demographer. He is best known as host of the popular and long-running Russian Television science magazine, Evident, but Incredible. His father is the Nobel Laureate physicist Piotr Kapitsa. He graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute in 1949. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Lebedev Physical Institute, Russian Academy of Science and Professor at the Moscow Institute of Phusics and Technology. Kapitsa's contributions to physics have been in the areas of applied electrodynamics and accelerator physics; he is known, in particular, for his work on the microton, a device for producing electron beams. More recently his research focus has been on historical demography, where he developed a number of mathematical models of the World System population hyperbolic growth and the global demographic transition. His activities in science popularization include hosting the Russian Television program, Evident, but Incredible, starting in 1973, for which he was awarded UNESCO’sKalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science in 1979 and the USSR State Prize in 1980, and editing the Russian edition of Scientific American  from 1982 onwards. He has also been active in issues of science and society through his participation in the Pugwash conferences and the Club of Rome. In the 1980s he, along with Carl Sagan, was outspoken about the possibility that nuclear war would bring about a nuclear winter, making presentations in the US Senate in 1983 and the United Nations in 1985.He has also been an advocate of planetary exploration and serves on the advisory council of the Planetary Society. Kapitsa is vice president of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Russia and president of the Eurasian Physical Society, and has been a strong proponent of restoring support for science in Russia.