Dr. Aubrey de Grey is a biomedical gerontologist. As the Chief Science Officer of the SENS Foundation (a foundation working to develop widespread access to rejuvenation biotechnologies), author of numerous journal articles and books, and board member of a handful of editorial and scientific advisory boards, it is incontestable that Dr. Aubrey de Grey has dedicated his life to the science of combating the aging process. He received his BA and Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, however, his original field was computer science.
Dr. de Grey is a Fellow of both the Gerontological Society of America and the American Aging Association and sits on the editorial and scientific advisory boards of numerous journals and organisations. He has appeared on countless shows, was even featured in the Max Wexler documentary, How to Live Forever, and has also spoken at a number of world-renowned events, including TED.
Babak Parviz is on the faculty of the University of Washington and is the Associate Director of the University's Micro-scale Life Sciences Center. While at Harvard, he worked on developing nanofabrication technologies, self-assembled systems, low-cost biosensing, and using organics for electronics and MEMS.
Babak is a founding member of the American Academy of Nanomedicine; a senior member of the IEEE and affiliate of many other renowned scientific associations. Babak was selected by the MIT Technology Review Magazine as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35 in 2007 and in that same year also selected as a Rising Star Investigator in genomics by the Genome Technology Magazine. He has worked to create a multipurpose contact lens, which could aid people with impaired hearing, or even one day display text, translate speech into captions or offer navigation visual cues.
As the Head of Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) at Google, Catherine Roe helps drive online advertising initiatives for top midwest CPG clients. With her expertise in marketing, shopping behavior, and sales, Catherine helps Google to leverage digital media in connecting CPG clients to their target consumers. She contributes to the Shopper Revolution by focusing on building creative sales solutions and developing highly productive teams.
Elizabeth Gerber is a professor in the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern Universtiy. She is also the principle investigator for The Creative Action Lab, which investigates how technology fosters innovation; she specifically focuses on researching crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, and innovation education. As the founder of Design for America, an award winning national educational initiative, she helps teach young adults how to create change using tangible solutions.
Gary Erickson, along with his wife Kit Crawford, is the founder and co-CEO of Clif Bar & Company. He is dedicated to providing nutritious and organic foods and drinks for sport and healthy snacking for the global community. His love for and commitment to the outdoors, cycling, great food, and socially responsible business has lead him to create a company with a unique business model. Clif Bar & Company stands out as a model of innovative environmental activism in the private sector, as well as a reliable source of snacks worth eating.
Jaime Teevan is a Senior Researcher in the Context, Learning, and User Experience for Search (CLUES) Group at Microsoft Research. Jaime is focused on examining how people use digital information, in order to build tools to better help support interactions with social and temporal contexts. As a leader in using data about people's preferences and habits to manage their information, in 2009 Jaime was named a Technology Review Young Innovator for her research on personalized research. She has also co-authored and edited a number of books relating to collaborative web search and Personal Information Management (PIM).
Carlos Miranda Levy is a social entrepreneur and Information and Communication Technologies for Human Development professional. He was acknowledged by CNN as one of the 20 Latin American Leaders of the Internet in 2000. He has lead a number of projects, such as the CIVILA-Virtual Cities Network, which engages millions throughout the world in sharing and accessing content and ideas, mostly on education, literature and culture. After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Carlos coordinated missions through a collaborative assembling of aid using social networks, word of mouth, local stakeholders, celebrities, and number of universities. His Relief 2.0 model is being developed at the National University of Singapore in collaboration with Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab in order to better help countries like Indonesia and Haiti.
He is a professor at McGill University in the department of Psychology. As a neuroscientist he works to understand what neurobiological processes are involved in acquiring and storing memories, especially relating to fear, in order to use the study of memory reconsolidation to treat anxiety disorders. Dr. Nader made a breakthrough in the field in 1999, when he first revived and tested the obscure theory that memories do not necessarily remain stable--think Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Together with Andrew P. Hendry, Dr. Nader was nominated in 2009 for the prestigious E.W.R Steacie Memorial Fellowship. He is also the recipient of a CIHR New Investigator Award and in 2006 was named one of the Top 40 under 40.
She is an economist and has served as the Director of the new Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation in the White House since 2009. Previously she was a member of President Obama's Transition Project, in 2007 headed the Global Development Initiatives, which is a philanthropic arm of Google, the Director of Operations and Programs at the Center for Global Development, and in 2004 served as the Vice President of Goldman Sachs. Sonal's work in both the private and public sector is substantial; she has been active in overseeing programs in sub-Saharan Africa relating to debt relief, working with the Ministries of Finance in Bosnia and Kosovo to design the post-war banking system, and has even founded non-profits dedicated to helping Indian NGOS.
She is an anti human-trafficking advocate. She is the founder and Executive Director of the New York-based Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (GEMS). Since immigrating to the United States, Rachel has worked with incarcerated women, as well as combatting commercial sexual exploitation of children and young women within the United States. GEMS is the only organization in New York State of its kind. The organization has helped hundreds leave the commercial sex industry and the documentary and exposé of human trafficking of young girls on the streets of New York titled, Very Young Girls was directed by David Schisgall and Nina Alvarez and highlights the work that GEMS does. Rachel was named one of the 50 Women Who Change the World, as well as recognized as one of the 100 Women Who Shape New York by the New York Daily News.
Mohamed is an economist, writer, speaker and compulsive traveler. He is a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, the Institute of Political Studies (SciencesPo) in Paris, but also Cairo University’s school of Economics and Political Science. Mohamed is now a consultant in international development and works with numerous actors such as the African Development Bank, the World Bank, IDRC etc., national governments, thinks tanks and research centers in order to develop workable policies. Mohamed works primarily on developing the private sector, investment promotion and entrepreneurship, with a special focus on post-conflict countries. He is also an award-winning writer and journalist, and has work in a number of publications like, Foreign Policy Magazine, The New York Times. He was a Professor of Development Economics at Cairo’s Ain-Shams University.
Noah graduated from Harvard and earned a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University where he earned a Ph.D in Islamic Thought. He later received his J.D from Yale Law School, and is now a Bemis professor of International Law at Harvard University. Dr. Feldman worked as an advisor in the early days of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq following the 2003 invasion. He regularly contributes features and opinion pieces to The New York Times Magazine and is a senior adjunct fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His work focuses on studying the intersection of religion, politics and law, with a particular focus on how Islam meshes with modern democracy. In 2003 he spoke on the main TED stage, relating politics and religion to technology, which is designed to efficiently connect and manage groups of people.
An expert in pediatric and adolescent gynecology, Dr. Melissa Gilliam helps children, teens and women age 25 and younger who need routine care and testing or have complicated gynecologic problems. Dr. Gilliam has expertise in providing contraception to adolescents with other medical problems. Dr. Gilliam focuses on providing a youth-friendly atmosphere for girls and young women. She works closely with other specialists across the University.
An active researcher, Dr. Gilliam has been an investigator in several studies related to contraception and family planning. Specifically, she focuses on contraceptive use among teens and women who are at risk for unintended pregnancy. She also serves as director of the fellowship in family planning at the University of Chicago, which is dedicated to training specialists in high-level research and clinical skills related to all aspects of family planning.
Raghu is an undergraduate at the University of Chicago who is studying Economics. In a former life he was a college dropout and a serial entrepreneur. He is passionate about technology and education. He is the winner of our 2012 Student Speaker Competition, and will be talking about the Coding Revolution.
Rebecca Keller's career is deeply interdisciplinary. She's a Fulbright Artist/Scholar, an American Association of Museums International Fellow, recipient of grants from National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Arts Council, and College Art Association. Her recent projects create research-based "site-complicit' artworks in historic sites. A book about her "Excavating History" projects is newly released by Stepsister Press.
Other aspects of Keller's career include teaching and extensive museum experience (her Fulbright research explored the changing role of arts institutions in Post-Soviet society.) She views her cross-disciplinary, dialogic teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as central to her art practice. She is also a serious creative writer. Endeavoring to knit the various aspects of her creative life together, or at least to keep them in productive tension, is a major focus of Keller's thinking. As part of that effort, she co-founded YoYoMagazine.Org, an online journal that aims to be a platform where writers, artists and creativeresearchers engage one another.
TEDxUChicago is a local, independently organized event at The University of Chicago that strives to re-create the unique experience found at TED, where the world´s leaders, thinkers and doers congregate to share what they are most passionate about. At its core, the fundamental goal of TED and The University of Chicago is to foster and spear great ideas. We aim to provide a platform where the smartest thinkers, greatest visionaries, and most fascinating teachers will be inspired and will have the opportunity to inspire others. We hope that at our conference the diverse group of students, faculty, and alumni present will be able to learn from one another, both as speakers and attendees, and will leave the conference driven to creatively improve our collective future.
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