Thomas Laird. Murals of Tibet

Shigeru Ban (born in 1957) attended the SCI-Arc in California and the Cooper Union School of Architecture in New York. A member of the Voluntary Architects Network and winner of the Pritzker Prize in 2014, Ban’s innovative use of recycled materials has supported humanitarian efforts around the world. He is based in his native Tokyo, Paris, and New York.

Jakob Winkler is a Tibetologist (M.A.) who studied in Munich, Kathmandu, and Vienna. He works as a scholar, translator, editor, and teacher in the field of Tibetology and Buddhism. Winkler has studied and practiced Buddhism since the mid-eighties under various masters. His main teacher is the Dzogchen master Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, from whom he received authorization to teach Dharma in 2002 as a Santi Maha Sangha instructor. He is one of the Western experts of Dzogchen and has contributed fundamental research to the understanding of Lhasa’s Lukhang temple, being the first Western scholar to identify Pema Lingpa’s treasure text as the source for the Lukhang mural.

Robert A. F. Thurman (1941–2026) was a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism who held a Vajrāchārya degree from the Dalai Lama’s Monastery, where he was briefly a monk, and a Ph.D from Harvard University. He was the Jey Tsongkhapa Professor Emeritus of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, holding for 31 years the first endowed chair in the West in this field. He co-founded the American Institute of Buddhist Studies, to translate the Tibetan classics, and also Tibet House US, to preserve Tibetan culture, endangered in its homeland. He had been close friends and a student of the Dalai Lama since 1964. A prolific author, he was a strong advocate of the Buddhist spiritual sciences and for the survival of Tibet and its enlightening culture. Upon his retirement in 2019, he received the prestigious Padma Shri Award for his life’s work of helping India enhance the record of its classical Buddhist heritage.