David Sandalow is the Inaugural Fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy and co-Director of the Energy and Environment Concentration at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He launched the Center’s U.S.-China Program and served in senior positions at the White House, State Department, and Department of Energy. He was Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Energy & Climate Change Working Group Chair at the Clinton Global Initiative. He was Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans, Environment & Science and Senior Director on the National Security Council staff. He is on the Selection Committee of the Zayed Future Energy Prize and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Sandalow has appeared on CNN, NPR, NBC, BBC, CCTV and written widely, recently on The Geopolitics of Renewable Energy and Meeting China’s Shale Gas Goals. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and Yale College. David was a speaker at the 2018 Abu Dhabi Ideas Weekend, where he delivered a talk with Elizabeth Economy on China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Elizabeth Economy is the C. V. Starr senior fellow and director for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is the award-winning author of The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China's Future (Cornell University Press, 2004; 2nd edition, 2010), and By All Means Necessary: How China's Resource Quest is Changing the World (Oxford University Press, 2014), co-authored with Michael Levi. Her forthcoming book, The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State, will be published by Oxford University Press in May 2018. She also frequently contributes to foreign policy and scholarly journals including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and the Harvard Business Review; and op-eds in the New York Times and Washington Post, among others. Dr. Economy received her BA from Swarthmore College, her AM from Stanford University, and her PhD from the University of Michigan.

Julian Gewirtz is a Fellow in History and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is the author of Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China (2017), which The Economist called "a gripping read, highlighting what was little short of a revolution in China’s economic thought." His writing on Asia has appeared in publications including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, and Foreign Affairs. A Chinese speaker, he has lived and worked in China and the United States and most recently served as Special Advisor for International Affairs at the U.S. Department of Energy. A Rhodes Scholar, he holds degrees from the University of Oxford and Harvard College. Julian was a speaker at the 2018 Abu Dhabi Ideas Weekend, where he moderated Moonshot 4: “The Modern Silk Road: A new era of globalistaion?”.

In March 2018, the Abu Dhabi Ideas Weekend welcomed some of the brightest and most interesting minds from the UAE and around the world to discuss four of the most important moonshot challenges facing our planet. The event was inspired by the world-famous Aspen Ideas Festival that has been taking place in Colorado since 2005, as a place for scientists, artists, politicians, business leaders, historians and educators to discuss some of the most fascinating ideas of our time. The 2018 Abu Dhabi Ideas Weekend topics included: “Polarisation: Bridging the gaps”, “Cancer: An end in sight?”, “Artificial Intelligence: Our super-intelligent friend?” and “The Modern Silk Road: A new era of globalisation”.