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Karen Kjær Gunn is the Editor-In-Chief of the 4 Nordic editions of National Geographic Magazine – published in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. She started her career with National Geographic when the local language editions of the magazine were launched there in 2000. She traces her interest in National Geographic from early childhood when she pored over pictures of pioneers like Jane Goodall and Jacques Cousteau in her parents’ magazines. During her ten years with the National Geographic she has edited a vast number of articles within practically all scientific fields, gaining a broad working knowledge of everything from plate tectonics and elephants to astronomy and ancient civilizations.

Gunn took a Masters Degree in Political Science and International Relations at the University of Copenhagen and worked in public administration in Denmark for a few years. She also spent three years in Greece, working as a mountain guide and studying Greek – an experience that sparked a deep interest in archaeology. In 2006 she joined the on-going excavation of an early Islamic mosque in Jarash, Jordan under the auspices of Copenhagen University.

Gunn is currently working on a pan-Nordic photo exhibition in collaboration with the UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, to mark the fact that in 2011 the world population will exceed 7 billion.

Sandra Knapp, Botany

Base of Operations: London, United Kingdom

Education: BA, Pomona College; PhD Cornell University

Sandra Knapp is a specialist on the taxonomy of the nightshade family, Solanaceae, and has spent much time in the field in Central and South America collecting plants. Her particular focus of research is the taxonomy of Solanum, the genus that contains potatoes, tomatoes and eggplants. She has described more than 50 new species of plants, mostly in Solanum and mostly from the Neotropics. She came to the Natural History Museum, London, in 1992 to manage the international project Flora Mesoamericana - a synoptic inventory of the approximately 18,000 species of plants of southern Mexico and the isthmus of Central America.

Knapp is also the author of several popular books on the history of science and botanical exploration, including the award-winning Potted Histories (2004). She is the author of more than 150 peer-reviewed scientific papers and actively involved in promoting the role of taxonomy worldwide. In 2009 she was honored by the Peter Raven Outreach Award by the American Society of Plant Taxonomists and the UK National Biodiversity Network’s John Burnett Medal. She served as the President of the Nomenclature Section of the 18th International Botanical Congress in Melbourne, Australia in July 2011.

Knapp’s current projects include Flora Mesoamericana, a world-wide taxonomic monograph of the some 1500 species of the megadiverse genus Solanum (Solanaceae), collaborative research in phylogenetics and genomic evolution of Solanaceae, research into the domestication of Solanaceae crops such as eggplants in China, and a variety of conservation and biodiversity monitoring projects in the Neotropics, most recently in Paraguay.