Theme: Pushing the Limits

TEDxCoventryUniversity reflects the ideas of people who have been inspired to cause change in their immediate community and the world at large. This will be explored through the theme, Pushing the limits.
Every day it seems we learn something new or find different ways of doing things. But, subconsciously, we can still place limitations on everything we do, either to become relevant or become comfortable.

We now find ourselves in a rapidly changing world where boundaries are broken each and every day. So in order to achieve greater things, we have to continually progress and push through our limits. We must ask ourselves, how far can we go and where do our limitations truly end?

Coventry University
Priory Street
Coventry, Coventry, CV1 5FB
United Kingdom

Anh Tran

Senior Lecturer in Humanitarian Engineering, Coventry University

Dr Anh Tran is a Senior Lecturer, spear-heading the research arm of the UNESCO UNITWIN Network in Humanitarian Engineering at Coventry University. Previous to this position, she was the first international coordinator of the award-winning Engineer Without Borders (EWB) Challenge a design program that inspires university students to come up with innovative solutions to tackle global challenges including access to water, sanitation, food security, shelter, energy and transport for developing communities. A highlight was the “biodigester floating toilet” idea that coverts poo to renewable energy for villages living on the water. This project idea was turned into reality by Live & Learn and awarded $500,000 through the Google Impact Challenge.

David Trujillo

Structural Engineer

David was born, raised and educated in Colombia where he studied Civil Engineering. From 2000 to 2003 he contributed to the reconstruction of the Coffee-growing region following an earthquake. Here he became fascinated about bamboo structures. In 2003, he moved to the UK to study an MSc in Earthquake Engineering. From 2004 to 2009 he worked in consultancy, working as a structural engineer. His work ranged from multi-storey timber-frame structures to very large steel and concrete buildings. In 2010 he became a chartered structural engineer. In 2009, determined to research bamboo, David joined Coventry University. He currently chairs an international task force for Bamboo Construction.

Kevin Warwick

Chartered Engineer + Human Cyborg

Kevin Warwick is Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research) at Coventry University. Due to his research involving himself as a self-experimenter he is called the world’s first Cyborg. Kevin was born in Coventry, UK and left school to join British Telecom. He took his first degree at Aston University, followed by a PhD and research post at Imperial College, London. He subsequently held positions at Oxford, Newcastle, Warwick and Reading Universities before joining Coventry. Kevin is a Chartered Engineer and has published over 600 research papers. He was featured as the cover story on the US magazine, ‘Wired’.

Mike Grey

Lead Consultant for Gradconsult

Mike Grey is a Lead Consultant for Gradconsult. He has spent a decade designing, delivering and managing large scale employability initiatives. He previously managed EC Futures at Coventry University, leading this specialist faculty employability unit to win multiple awards including the Best Placement Service in the UK (2015) at the National Undergraduate Employability Awards. He is very active in supporting the employability agenda across the UK and Europe. He is a member of the Board of Trustees for PlaceNet and currently features on the EURASHE list of European Higher Education Experts.

Pam Kato

Founder HopeLab + Professor at Coventry University

Prof. Pamela Kato is an internationally recognized expert on making effective, high quality serious games. She is Professor at the Serious Games Institute at Coventry University. As the founding President and CEO at HopeLab, she led the efforts to develop and conduct research on Re-Mission, a widely acclaimed serious game published in the journal Pediatrics. As the owner of P. M. Kato Consulting, Dr. Kato has worked with international companies, government agencies and non-profits to strategically use serious games and gamification to improve customer engagement and patient outcomes.

Siraj Shaikh

Reader in Cybersecurity

Dr. Siraj Ahmed Shaikh is currently a Reader in Cybersecurity. As of February 2015, he is seconded to the Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) as cybersecurity lead coordinating across academia, industry and policy. As of March 2015, he is also seconded to MIRA, as part of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s industrial secondment scheme. Siraj is currently involved in a research project investigating collusion attacks on smartphones. This project is in collaboration with City and Swansea Universities, and Intel. This is funded by EPSRC for three years (2014-2017). He is a Chartered Fellow of BCS and a Chartered Scientist (CSci).

Stephen Reynolds

Writer + Director

From a background of self-funded short films, Writer/Director Stephen Reynolds blasted onto the UK film scene in 2013 with his debut feature film ‘Vendetta’ starring Danny Dyer. Shot on a budget of £100,000 in 18 days, the movie was the biggest non-theatrical of 2014 and he was quickly snapped up by Lionsgate and WWE Studios to Direct the Hollywood actioner 12 Rounds 3:Lockdown released in January 2016.

Sylvester Arnab

Reader at Coventry University + Game Science

Dr. Sylvester Arnab is a Reader in Game Science at Coventry University, co-leading research at the Disruptive Media Learning Lab (DMLL). With more than 10 years research experience in simulation, serious games and gamification combined, his research interests include gameful, playful and pervasive designs that transform ordinary tasks into extraordinary experiences. As lead of the Games Science research at the DMLL, Sylvester is also leading the EU Horizon 2020 BEACONING project (worth €5.9 million with 15 partners), which aims to foster ‘anytime anywhere’ learning using pervasive, context-aware and gamified techniques.