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Look who Apple is hiring

The best clue for what Apple has up its sleeve may be the talent it's taken on.


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FORTUNE — A fitness expert. A sleep scientist. A pair of high-profile CEOs from the fashion industry. Lots of hardware and software engineers with expertise in wireless, non-invasive bionsensing — measuring everything from respiration rates to glucose and oxygen levels in the blood.

What are these people doing at Apple (AAPL)?

Working on the so-called iWatch, according to 9to5Mac‘s Mark Gurman. Gurman on Friday published profiles of the team Apple has assembled to build the widely anticipated but still unannounced product, including nearly a dozen recent hires.

Who Apple hired and what it hired them for may be the best clue we’ll get to what Apple has up its sleeve.

Below: Brief summaries of Gurman’s roster in the order he presents them.

  • Kevin Lynch: Former chief technology officer at Adobe. Joined Apple last March. Now manages a large in-house team of former iPod and iOS developers.
  • Jay Blahnik:  Fitness expert. From Nike. Worked on the FuelBand; known in the field as a trainer and motivational speaker.
  • Roy Raymann: Scientist. From Phillips. Expert in non-pharmaceutical methods for improving the quality of sleep; developed miniature sensors for monitoring sleep.
  • Paul Deneve: Former CEO, Yves Saint Laurent. Worked at Apple for several years before leading one the most valuable brands in fashion.
  • Angela Ahrendts: Former CEO, Burberry. Credited with Burberry’s tech-heavy turnaround. Tapped to head Apple retail, both brick-and-mortar and online.
  • Ben Shaffer: Designer. He was the director of Nike’s “Innovation Kitchen,” the R&D lab that produced the FuelBand and the Flyknit shoe.
  • Ueyn Block: Was director of engineering at C8 MediSensor, which developed a non-invasive way to glucose levels and other vital signs.
  • Nancy Dougherty: Hardware engineer. At Proteus Digital Health she worked on smart patches and ingestible, Bluetooth-connected smart pills. Most recently, she worked as a hardware lead for Sano Intelligence, whose tagline reads “the API for the bloodstream.”
  • Todd Whitehurst: Hardware development. As Senseonics’s VP of hardware engineering, he  ran the engineering team for a wireless, smartphone-connected body sensor for monitoring glucose levels in real time.
  • Michael O’Reilly: Former chief medical officer for Masimo, which markets a wireless pulse oximeter for the iPhone.
  • Ravi Narashamian: Expert in biosensors and wireless communications. At Vital Connect he focused  on sensors for measuring respiration and activity levels with wearable devices.

LINK: From fashion to fitness: the experts behind Apple’s wearable future