Theme: Numbers

Unusual and entertaining uses for mathematics, education in developing countries, music, culture - and vegetables – will all be sharing the spotlight at TEDxNewcastle.

Great North Museum
Barras Bridge
Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE2 4PT
United Kingdom

Dannie-Lu Carr

Dannie-Lu Carr is an Acting & Business Performance Coach, Writer, Artistic Director and Actor. She has worked in her multi-disciplined career for 19 years. Her book, Brilliant Assertiveness, was published in 2012 and her film, Things To Remember, is due for public release in 2015. Having been engaged by many forms of specialisms, working with practitioners across the whole artistic spectrum, Dannie firmly believes we need a reorientation for the way we understand, nurture and engage with Craft, Culture and Creativity. A move away from ‘Hypercycling’, and a firm refocussing onto the private process and internal driven journeys is crucial.

James Tooley

Professor Tooley has published widely on the role of government in education. His particular focus is on the phenomenon of low-cost private schools in developing countries. He is co-founder and chairman of Omega Schools Franchise Ltd, a chain of low-cost private schools in Ghana. Its first two schools opened in 2009, and it has grown to 40 schools with 20,000 students, with significant investment from Pearson’s Affordable Learning Fund. Tooley has also created embryonic chains of low-cost private schools in Sierra Leone and India. He is the patron of AFED - the Association of Formidable Educational Development - in Nigeria, an association of 3,000 low-cost private schools. Prior to joining Newcastle University, Professor Tooley previously taught and researched at the Universities of Oxford and Manchester, England; Simon Fraser University, Canada; and University of the Western Cape, South Africa.

Joanna Montgomery

Joanna Montgomery was born and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 2010 she completed a First Class BSC(Hons) in Digital Interaction Design from Dundee University. Upon graduating, she started her company, Little Riot, to develop a product called Pillow Talk. In the last few years, the company has grown from strength to strength, securing vast amounts of funding and winning several awards. Given her incredible journey so far, she is keen to encourage others in the same way she has been (and continues to be) helped through her time as a start-up. She regularly speaks at enterprise events and universities and loves to meet other people who are also going against the grain. She is a creative thinker; who likes to push boundaries and explore new things. She has travelled extensively including backpacking around parts of Asia, Australia, the USA and Canada. In her free time she enjoys sailing, windsurfing, climbing and horse riding.

Pam Warhurst

Pam is a co- founder of the Incredible Edible Todmorden initiative, which encourages ordinary people to take control of their communities and their surroundings through civic engagement and food. She is a former chair of the UK Forestry Commission and has served as a member of the Board of Natural England, where she was the lead non- executive board member working on the Countryside & Rights of Way Bill. She has also been Deputy Chair and Acting Chair of the Countryside Agency, leader of Calderdale Council, a board member of Yorkshire Forward, and chair of the National Countryside Access Forum and Calderdale NHS Trust. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts & Manufacturing, and chairs Pennine Prospects, a regeneration company for the South Pennines. She was awarded CBE in 2005 for services to the environment.

Peter Grindrod

Peter Grindrod is a British mathematician. He was awarded a CBE in 2005 for services to mathematics R&D. He has developed models and methods for analyzing large networks (range dependent random graphs) occurring within the biosciences, such as in genome, proteome and metabolome interactions. He is interested in applications of mathematics to phenomena in the Digital Economy, and within neurodynamics. He is working on methods for analysing very large and evolving graphs/networks, including forecasting, inference and intervention problems. These have applications to large communication (telco, email social) networks - especially in monitoring marketing and intervention applications (including CT, cyber, and radicalisation modelling) He is a Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford (2013– ).

Sam Aaron

Sam Aaron is a live coder who considers programming as performance and strongly believes in the importance of emphasising, exploring and celebrating creativity within all aspects of programming. Sam believes that a programming environment which has sufficient liveness, rapid feedback and tolerance of failure to support the live performance of music is an environment ripe for mining novel ideas that will not only benefit artistic practices themselves but also the computer industry more generally. In pursuit of this unique perspective Sam is the lead developer of Overtone and Quil, powerful live coding platforms for music and visuals. Sam is also the creator of Sonic Pi, a music live coding environment used to teach programming within schools. By day Sam is a Postdoc Researcher at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory and by night he codes music for people to dance to.

Sophie Westbrooke

Sophie began playing the recorder with her mother when she was 5, as a way of learning to read music to aid her violin and piano studies. She moved to formal lessons a year later and passed her Grade 8 at the age of 9. Shortly after she started studying with Barbara Law at the Junior Royal Academy of Music and often plays alongside 2012 BBC Young Musician Finalist Charlotte Barbour-Condini. In 2013 Sophie passed her ABRSM Performance Diploma with Distinction, and she has also gained distinction at Grade 8 on both piano and violin.

Steve Humble

With over 20 years experience as a mathematics subject leader in various educational establishments, Steve became the Senior Regional Coordinator for the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM), which he undertook for five years. Currently he works at Newcastle University, teaching mathematics on the Primary and Secondary PGCE. Steves research focuses on talented children in low-income areas of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania and their possible contribution to the eradication of poverty.

Sugata Mitra

Sugata Mitra is Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University. His work is built around the idea that children with access to the internet can learn almost anything by themselves. In 2013 he became the first $1m TED prize winner for his vision to “help design the future of learning by supporting children all over the world to tap into their innate sense of wonder and work together.” His School in the Cloud is made up of seven learning labs in India and the UK where children can embark on intellectual adventures by engaging and connecting with information and mentoring online. Professor Mitra is also known for his Hole in the Wall experiment which inspired the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire.

Thomas Woolley

Thomas Woolley has been doing mathematics at University of Oxford since 2004 and now specialises in mathematical biology as a Junior Research Fellow at St John’s College. His doctorate focused on the applications of Turing’s patterning theory to biology, but now he researches mathematical models of stem cells movement. The hope is that by understanding how stem cells move we can influence them and, thus, speed up the healing process. When not doing mathematics he is a keen participant in mathematical outreach workshops and has given a variety of popular maths lectures nationally and internationally. He has previously worked for the BBC, illustrated Marcus du Sautoy’s book and he recently worked on the popular maths show “Dara O’Briains school of hard sums”. He is currently the Fellow of Modern Mathematics at the London Science Museum and is helping redesign their mathematics gallery.