Theme: Emory and Atlanta

This year we are celebrating TEDxEmory's 5 year anniversary, as well as Emory University's 100th year anniversary of being on the Atlanta campus. In honor, the conference is themed "Emory in Atlanta", featuring speakers that have contributed to the Emory and Atlanta communities.

Our inaugural event was held on April 25, 2011 with over 350 people attending an all-day conference with 9 speakers. Last year, TEDxEmory continued to grow as our conference on April 12th, 2014 had over 750 attendees and featured 12 incredible speakers.

Past emcees and speakers included such distinguished personalities as Josh Levs (CNN Journalist), Rabbi David Wolpe, Dr. Frans de Waal (Renown Primatologist), Carlos Moreno (Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California) and Molly Fletcher ("The female Jerry Maguire"). Our last conferences have also featured our annual Student Speaker Competition winners.

Registration begins at 9:30, opening remarks at 10:30, 7:00 pm dinner reception.

More information at TEDxEmory.org

WHSCAB Auditorium, Emory University
1440 Clifton Road
Atlanta, Georgia, 30322
United States

Anis Mojgani

Anis Mojgani is a two time National Poetry Slam Champion and winner of the International World Cup Poetry Slam. An oft-time collaborator with the non-profit To Write Love On Her Arms, and a former resident of the Oregon Literary Arts Writers-In-The-Schools program, Anis has performed at numerous universities, festivals, and venues around the globe and has performed for audiences as varied as the House of Blues and the United Nations. Anis’ work has appeared on HBO, NPR, and within the pages of such journals as Rattle, Forklift Ohio, and Thrush. He is the author of three poetry collections, all published by Write Bloody Publishing: Songs From Under The River, The Feather Room, and Over The Anvil We Stretch. Originally from New Orleans, Anis currently lives in Austin TX.

Brian Zhao

Brian Zhao was an English major who is now studying science. In high school, he enjoyed writing and graphic design. Since coming to college, he has come to focus more specifically on the visual presentation of information. He expects to graduate with a BS in neuroscience in the winter of 2015 (unless he misses more questions about marsupials and fails NBB 302 this semester).

Daniel Enger

Daniel Enger is passionate about stories – telling them, listening to them, and understanding and amplifying those of young people to catalyze social change locally and globally. Together with Emory’s Dr. Kate Winskell, Enger founded Global Dialogues in 1997 and serves as the NGO’s International Coordinator. GD aims to promote global health and societal well-being through integrated, youth-driven solutions fueled by creativity and multidisciplinary partnership. Enger’s primary responsibility is to find and foster synergies between remarkable people working in the diverse realms that intersect and interlink in Global Dialogues’ program of activities: youth voice, education, film, social media, narrative research, and advocacy. Today, Enger and the GD team worldwide are trying to understand how to help unleash the collective potential of people’s stories, video and social media to cultivate empathy and compassion in response to the challenges humanity faces.

Dr. Helen Mayberg

Helen Mayberg, M.D. is Professor of Psychiatry, Neurology and Radiology and the Dorothy Fuqua Chair in Psychiatric Neuroimaging and Therapeutics at Emory University. Over the last 25 years, her multi-disciplinary depression research team has worked to integrate cutting-edge imaging strategies, quantitative behavioral and psychophysiological metrics, and experimental treatment trials to define brain-based biomarkers that can optimize treatment selection for individual patients. This work was foundational for the first studies of subcallosal cingulate deep brain stimulation for treatment resistant depression and remains the cornerstone of current studies to both refine and optimize DBS implementation and characterize network mechanisms mediating its antidepressant effects. Dr. Mayberg is a neurologist, trained at Columbia's Neurological Institute in New York, with fellowship training in nuclear medicine at Johns Hopkins.

Dr. Jayant Ratti

Dr. Ratti is the Founder and President of TechJect Inc., developer of intelligent and compact Sensor and Bio-Inspired Robotic Systems. He was awarded Ph.D. in Robotics & Artificial Intelligence from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2011, and is a leading expert in Aerial Vehicles and Robotics with over 10 years’ experience. He holds over five technology patents to his name and has published over 20 Journals and Conference publications.

Dr. Mohammad Bhuiyan

Mohammad Bhuiyan serves as President and CEO of Yunus Creative Lab, Inc., and CEO of the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates–Atlanta 2015 organization. He received his Ph.D. in international trade from the University of Florida (1993). Bhuiyan worked as marketing executive for the United Nations Development Program and his leadership has aided the National Policy Forum for eight years. He was founding director of a national program that helped over forty historically Black colleges establish entrepreneurship programs. Bhuiyan has served on multiple nonprofit boards of directors including the American Red Cross-Savannah and was named to Marquis’ Who’s Who in the World and Who’s Who in America. Having worked in over forty countries on six continents, he has been commended for his ability to effectively communicate with people from a myriad of backgrounds.

Dr. Rana Hajjeh

Rana Hajjeh did her undergraduate and medical studies at AUB (B.S. ’84, M.D. ’88). During 1988-1993, she trained in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases at Emory University, Atlanta, GA, and is board certified in both. In 1993, she joined the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) at the U.S. CDC for a two year training, and has been at CDC since. In 2014, She won the Federal Employee of the Year Award for her Hib vaccine work (http://servicetoamericamedals.org/SAM/recipients/profiles/fym14_hajjeh.shtml). She is a Visiting Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Emory University. Currently, Dr Hajjeh is the director of the Division of Bacterial Diseases at the Center of Immunizations and Respiratory Diseases, CDC. As director, she leads a team of nearly 200 staff responsible for CDC's bacterial and vaccine-preventable disease surveillance and response efforts in the US and globally.

George Staib

Staib began his dance training at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He earned an MFA in dance and choreography from Temple University. His national accolades include the Governor’s Prize from the Philadelphia Council on the Arts in 1994 while still a student, the Walkley Prize and the Weiss Prize for the Arts - both for his choreography. In 2001 he joined the dance faculty at Emory University where he teaches modern and ballet techniques, choreography, and Contemplate, Create, Debate, a freshman seminar he created to introduce students to the practice of seeing and making art. In 2011, Staib received Emory’s highly competitive and prestigious Winship Award for senior lecturers. He then traveled to Tel Aviv, Israel where he spent five weeks studying both Gaga technique with members of the Batsheva Dance Company and release technique with Iris Enez and leading choreographic workshops and feedback sessions.

Jericho Brown

Jericho Brown is the recipient of a Whiting Writers Award and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the National Endowment for the Arts. His first book, Please (New Issues 2008), won the American Book Award, and his second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon 2014), was named one of the best books of the year by Library Journal and the Academy of American Poets. He is an assistant professor in the creative writing program at Emory University in Atlanta.

Karol Hatzilias

Karol Hatzilias is the Chief Science Officer and co-founder of United Sciences, where he specializes in 3D scanning, 3D printing, image processing, optics, product development, and engineering management. Karol co-founded his first company, 3DScanCo, which served NASA, the Department of Energy, the National Archives Museum, and multiple fortune 100 companies before he sold it in 2008 to focus on building his own 3D scanning technologies. Karol was principal investigator on a US Navy SBIR grant (Phase 1 and 2) focusing on direct in-the-ear 3D scanning technology. Karol serves on the Advisory Board of the Grand Challenges program at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Karol was awarded a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2004.

Ken Ono

Ken Ono is an American mathematician who specializes in number theory, and the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Mathematics at Emory University. Ono's contributions include several monographs and over 150 research articles in number theory, combinatorics, and algebra. He is considered to be an expert in the theory of integer partitions and modular forms. In 2012 he made world news for his work proving the last open conjectures contained in Srinivasa Ramanujan's enigmatic death-bed letter to G. H. Hardy.

Nicole Vincent

Nicole Vincent obtained her PhD in the philosophy of tort law in 2007 from the University of Adelaide in Australia. She subsequently spent three years in The Netherlands working on a project entitled "The Brain and The Law", and after returning to Australia for another three years where she kick-started the Australian Neurolaw Database project, in 2013 she joined Georgia State University as Associate Professor of Philosophy, Law, and Neuroscience. The concept of responsibility occupies center stage in Nicole's work. She has written on such topics as the compatibility of responsibility and determinism, medical interventions to make criminal offenders competent for execution, how neuroscience and behavioural genetics fit into criminal responsibility adjudication procedures, tort liability for failure to use cognitive enhancement medications, and whether people who live unhealthy lifestyles should have de-prioritised access to public health care resources and to organ transplants.

Rashid Nuri

Rashid Nuri observed local food economies around the world while managing public, private and community based food and agriculture businesses in over 35 countries, including Southeast Asia and West Africa. He now lends his experience to urban areas, promoting good nutrition, health and economic development. Rashid obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from Harvard and a Master’s Degree in Plant and Soil Science from the University of Massachusetts. Following graduation, Rashid journeyed to Georgia, where he managed 13,000 acres of farm land for the Nation of Islam. Later, he managed operations in Asia and Africa for the Cargill Corporation, a global agribusiness conglomerate. Following nearly a decade with Cargill, Rashid returned to the U.S. to become a Senior Executive in the Clinton Administration, serving as Deputy Administrator in the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Senior Advisor in the Department of Commerce.