If all that sounds like a fantasy, consider Itskov’s colleagues: speakers at Global Futures 2045 included Church (who pioneered the first truly effective gene sequencing techniques and helped initiate the Human Genome Project), inventor-futurist Ray Kurzweil (now engineering chief at Google), X-Prize Foundation founder and far-out tech entrepreneur Peter H. Diamandis (current project: asteroid mining), and legendary computer technologist James Martin, who shares a name with the Oxford Martin School at Oxford University (and not by happenstance).

And while speaking doesn’t imply blanket endorsement of the Avatar Project and its lofty aims, this roll call of renowned speakers certainly lends Global Futures 2045 some intellectual heft.