Theme: TEDxStanford 2016: The Human Race

We are pleased to announce that the fifth TEDxStanford: The Human Race, will take place on Sunday, April 24, 2016 from 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. TEDxStanford 2016 will bring to the stage some of Stanford's most accomplished pioneers in the arts, technology, medicine and social sciences for an incomparable day of short talks and world-class performances.

Theater tickets are sold out but you can still join us in an overflow room and then participate in all group activities, lunch and the reception. Please visit our website: tedx.stanford.edu. There is no need to RSVP. Tickets will be first come, first served until we sell out.

Cemex Auditorium
Stanford University Graduate School of Business
655 Knight Way
Stanford, California, 94305
United States

LEVYdance

Dance company

LEVYdance creates art to ignite awareness of our shared human experience. The San Francisco-based company emphasizes immersive performance as an invitation to engage with audience members while exploring and blurring the distinction between performer and spectator. At the core of LEVYdance is an internationally touring dance company recognized for innovative, interdisciplinary, interactive works that explore the nuances of being human. LEVYdance is both a gateway for new arrivals to the local dance scene, and an ambassador on the road representing the creative values of our region. LEVYdance presents an adaptation of their immersive performance ROMP, which premiered in 2011 at Z Space in San Francisco. Executive Artistic Director Garance Marneur uses dance to explores the notions of intimacy in tech: How can we humanize technologies? How can tech be used to deepen artistic experiences and emotionally connect with audiences?

Ram's Head Theatrical Society

Student group at Stanford University

Ram’s Head Theatrical Society is Stanford’s oldest and largest student theater organization. This April, will they perform Rent in Memorial Auditorium, which was directed by Elizabeth Knarr (‘16) and produced by Emily Ashton (’16). Set in the East Village in New York City, Rent is about falling in love, finding your voice and living for today. Winner of the TONY Award for Best Musical and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Rent follows a year in the life of a group of impoverished young artists and musicians struggling to survive and create under the shadow of HIV/AIDS. Ram’s Head’s production included over 70 Stanford students in the cast, staff, and band.

A-lan Holt

Poet, Playwright

A-lan Holt is a poet and playwright who imagines new worlds for intimate audiences. A former writer at the Public Theater New York, A-lan’s newest play THE BOTTOM OF HEAVEN was developed starring Lupita Nyong’o and Tonya Pinkins. A-lan continues her creative work as the Associate Director of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts (IDA) at Stanford University. At IDA she develops curriculum and programming that explores the relationship between art practice, spiritual practice and social justice. This year, A-lan will premiere two new works, MOONWORK, a collection of poetry published by Candor Arts and INAMORATA, a new film produced by TRUEMVMNT.

Adam de la Zerda

Assistant Professor of Structural Biology at Stanford University

Featured in the Forbes 30 Under 30 lists twice in science and healthcare, Adam de la Zerda is an assistant professor of structural biology and (by courtesy) of electrical engineering at Stanford. In his lab, he develops new medical imaging technologies to detect cancer at an early stage and guide physicians towards optimal treatment of the cancer. He received over 15 awards for his research, authored over 20 papers in leading journals and founded two companies, OcuBell Inc. and Click Diagnostics.

Arun Majumdar

Co-Director, Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University

Arun Majumdar is the Jay Precourt Professor at Stanford, a faculty member of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and co-director of the Stanford Precourt Institute for Energy. Nominated by President Barack Obama, Majumdar was the founding director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. He is a former acting under secretary of energy, as well as vice president for energy at Google.. Currently, he serves as vice chairman of the U.S. Secretary of Energy’s advisory board and was recently appointed by the U.S. State Department as a U.S. science envoy.

Brandon Hill

Stanford University Student Body Vice-President

Brandon is a graduating senior at Stanford where he serves as the student body Vice President over the university's 16,000 graduate and undergraduate students. Originally from Eden Prairie, Minnesota he is double majoring in political science and African/African American studies and is driven to make an impact on long standing social injustices like racial caste and educational inequality. Brandon has interned for the White House, UNICEF Tanzania, and YouTube and in 2012 co-founded an urban social innovation incubator for high school students called Enza Academy. He is currently building an education startup called Grio with three other Stanford students. Brandon eventually plans to run for public office.

Carolyn Bertozzi

Professor of Chemical & Systems Biology and Radiology at Stanford University

Carolyn Bertozzi is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Chemical & Systems Biology and Radiology (by courtesy) at Stanford, and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She completed her undergraduate degree at Harvard and her doctorate at UC Berkeley. After postdoctoral work at UCSF and a professorship at UC Berkeley, she joined the faculty at Stanford coincident with the launch of Stanford ChEM-H.

Chika Okoro

Scholar

Chika Okoro is a second year MBA student at Stanford. Passionate about race and gender equality, she is excited to raise awareness about the many issues that women of color face around the world. She hopes that her talk will start a conversation about important issues that people are less vocal about today. While at Stanford Chika is an Arbuckle Leadership Fellow providing leadership coaching and training to MBA 1st year students. Before coming to Stanford she worked at Procter & Gamble as an assistant brand manager and spent last summer at Google as a product-marketing manager. Chika holds a bachelor's degree from Harvard University where she wrote her honors thesis on race and identity in the black community.

Christina Smolke

Associate Professor of Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering at Stanford University

Christina D. Smolke is an Associate Professor, Associate Chair of Education, and W.M. Keck Foundation Faculty Scholar in the Department of Bioengineering and, by courtesy, Chemical Engineering at Stanford University. Her research program develops new tools that are rapidly advancing our ability to engineer and manipulate living organisms. Her research group has also engineered baker's yeast to make complex plant-based medicines from sugar, changing the ways in which we source and discover medicines. Smo,lke has been honored with numerous awards, including Nature’s 10, AIMBE fellow, NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, WTN Award in Biotechnology, and TR35 Award. Christina has co-founded two companies based on technologies developed in her laboratory.

David Camarillo

Assistant Professor of Bioengineering and Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University

David Camarillo is currently Assistant Professor of Bioengineering and (by courtesy) Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. Having played 10 years of football and had two concussions from bike accidents, David’s lab focuses on understanding and preventing traumatic brain injury. His lab uses sensors in mouth guards to measure the forces of head impact in sports. The ultimate goal is to link these forces to neurological deficits and to design concussion proof helmets.

Deanna Badizadegan

Musician, Designer

She holds master's and bachelor's degrees from the Stanford School of Engineering and a Professional Studies Diploma in Viola Performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Badizadegan performs regularly throughout the Bay Area as a soloist and chamber musician, and has received several awards for her playing, including Stanford’s Humanities & Sciences Undergraduate Prize in Music, Carol and Peter Polk Music Award and Dan Robinson Prize.

Eli Arbor

Rapper

Eli Arbor is a 22-year-old rapper from Rochester, New York. He grew up listening to hardcore and pop/punk, and his music seeks to incorporate their ethos. He is a storyteller whose main concern is the human experience, wishing to bring to light the narratives of forgotten people, narratives that too often get lost in a world where there is a happy ending for every story, and a hero for every villain. He is a member of California-based music collective The Outsiders, and released his debut album IDols last year.

Jeff Sheng

Photographer

His photo series Fearless, about LGBT student athletes, has been seen at over 70 different venues since 2006, and his series Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (2009-2011), about closeted United States military service members, was profiled in 2010 by the New York Times, ABC World News Tonight and CNN, among other places. Sheng is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at Stanford.

Jenny Suckale

Assistant Professor of Geography at Stanford University

Jenny Suckale is an assistant professor of geophysics in the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences and an affiliated faculty member at the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering and the Woods Institute for the Environment. The motivation behind Suckale’s research is to create knowledge that reduces the risks associated with natural disasters like volcanic eruptions, induced earthquakes, tsunamis and ice-sheet collapse. She develops original computational methods for simulating the multiphase nonlinearities that underly abrupt change in many Earth systems. Prior to joining graduate school at MIT and the Harvard Kennedy School, Suckale worked as a scientific consultant for different international organizations aiming to reduce the impact of natural and environmental disasters in vulnerable communities.

Jo Boaler

Professor of Mathematics Education at Stanford University

Jo Boaler is a professor of mathematics education at Stanford and the co-founder of YouCubed, which provides resources and ideas to inspire and excite students about mathematics. She is also the author of the first massive open online course on mathematics teaching and learning. Her book Experiencing School Mathematics won the Outstanding Book of the Year award for education in Britain. A recipient of a National Science Foundation "early career award"' she was recently named by BBC as one of the eight educators changing the face of education.

John-Lancaster Finley

Stanford University Student Body President

John-Lancaster Finley is a senior majoring in Political Science and minoring in Urban Studies, and was born and raised in America’s Finest City: San Diego, California. He currently serves as Stanford's student body president. Within student government, he has served as Frosh Council President, and two terms on the ASSU Undergraduate Senate. Elsewhere at Stanford, he is currently a student event coordinator for Cardinal Nights, a core member of the Black Student Union, and on the leadership board for Stanford Democrats. He is also a proud Eagle Scout, and usually spends his free time playing the saxophone. John-Lancaster aspires to a career in public service and plans to run for office in the future.

Jose Rosario

Teacher

Originally from Santo Domingo and raised in Los Angeles, becoming a UCSC Slug, a Stanford Tree, and a Sequoia Raven has kept Jose Rosario in Northern California. As an undergraduate researcher, he observed low SES populated schools that defied graduation and college-going statistics because he needed models as a foundation for hope. While in STEP, he learned to create curriculum with attainable and measurable goals because living one day ahead of yesterday quickly delays learning. Now a high school English teacher, he looks to develop writers who are surgically precise, thoroughly concise, and in turn permanently amplify their voices.

Margaret Neale

Professor Management at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University

Margaret Neale is the Adams Distinguished Professor of Management at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford. She was honored with the Robert T. Davis Award for Lifetime Achievement and has served as the GSB’s academic associate dean. She is the author of over 70 articles, one research series, and four books. Her most recent book co-authored with Thomas Lys, Getting (More of) What You Want, was published by Basic Books last year.

Raj Chetty

Professor of Economics at Stanford University

Raj Chetty is a professor of economics at Stanford. His research combines empirical evidence and economic theory to help design more effective government policies. Currently, his research focuses on equality of opportunity: How can we give children from disadvantaged backgrounds better chances of succeeding? Chetty is a recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship and the John Bates Clark Medal, given by the American Economic Association to the best American economist under age 40.

Robyn Sue Fisher

Founder of Smitten Ice Cream

Robyn Fisher is the Founder and Chief Brrrista of Smitten Ice Cream. Inspired by her lifelong love of ice cream, Robyn spent several years inventing Brrr™, her patented ice cream churner that uses liquid nitrogen to freeze each scoop to-order, using only freshest and purest ingredients. From launching on a Radio Flyer® wagon on the streets of San Francisco in 2009, Smitten has grown to six shops in the Bay Area and Southern California.

Salil Dudani

Investigator at Equal Justice Under Law

Salil Dudani is an investigator at Equal Justice Under Law, a civil rights organization that litigates inequalities in the criminal legal system such as modern-day debtors’ prison and the practice of money bail. Before his current work, which is supported by the John Gardner Public Service Fellowship, Dudani experienced the legal system in two different roles: as a defense investigator at the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C., and as a plaintiff in a racial profiling case after he was detained by District of Columbia police on suspicion of “terrorist activity.”

Sarah Lyons-Padilla

Research Scientist at Stanford Sparq

Sarah Lyons-Padilla is a research scientist at Stanford SPARQ: Social Psychological Answers to Real-world Questions. She studies the psychology of homegrown terrorism and has found that feelings of “cultural homelessness” and discrimination may play a key role in the radicalization of Muslims in the United States. Lyons-Padilla received her PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Maryland. Her research has been covered by media outlets such as The Conversation, Quartz, and The Washington Post. She has also reported on her findings to policymakers on Capitol Hill.

Thao Nguyen

Solo artist

Thao P. Nguyen is a doctoral student at Stanford’s Department of Theater & Performance Studies, minoring in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her scholarly interests lie at the intersection of live performance, health and social justice. Her first full-length play Fortunate Daughter was named one of the top 10 Bay Area plays of 2013 by KQED's Year in the Arts. Her latest project, WHITE POWER: A Comedy, debuted at Stanford’s Nitery Theater this year. She is the former artistic director for the San Francisco Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center.