Theme: Where dreams ideas and ambitions are powered

About TEDxNTU
x= independently organized event

“Where dreams, ideas and ambitions are powered”
TED is a group of the world’s most creative and inspiring thinkers. By forming a similar community at Nanyang Technological University, we hope to congregate innovative and socially conscious students and guests who are committed to changing the society for better. This is a unique opportunity for NTU to showcase itself as a global University and take pride in its multicultural diversity.

Through the event, we wish to expose potential change-makers in the NTU community to innovative speakers so that they can step into the world with dreams that matter, ideas that can change the world and a renewed power to follow their ambitions.

Be ready for a revolution!

ADM Auditorium
Nanyang Technological University School of Art, Design & Media 81 Nanyang Drive, Level 3
Singapore, 637458
Singapore

Dr. George Barbastathis

Dr. George Barbastathis is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT and Faculty Resident with the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) Centre. He received the Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens in 1993, and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Caltech in 1994 and ’97, respectively. Between 1997-99 he was a Post-doctoral Research Associate with the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Between 2006-2007 he was Visiting Scholar with the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Harvard University. He has been the recipient of the Nikolaos Kritikos award in Mathematics, the 3M Innovation Award, the NSF Young Investigator Award, and the Esther & Harold E. Edgerton junior chair at MIT. He and his team at the SMART center developed an “invisibility cloak” using a very simple and inexpensive system. This method of using Science to hide objects in plain sight was voted in the top 10 breakthroughs in Physics in 2010.

Chris Tobias

As the founder and Lead Strategist at Forward, Chris has a passion for innovation and leadership. Originally heralding from Chicago, he’s been active since 2003 around issues of sustainable development. His specialty is transforming the challenges of our time through forward-focused strategies. Rather than seeing obstacles, he is a lateral thinker who focuses on opportunity. The future will be about creating “thrivability” rather than making existing systems less bad. Chris has consistently pushed this tangent by inspiring his clients, and also by influencing public opinion on Celsias.com and numerous other media outlets. He is also guest lecturer at National University of Singapore School of Geography. He has travelled to 26 countries, written a book, started a business, starred in a TV pilot, and given regular public talks raising awareness on sustainability issues. Outside of work, he has readily given his time to numerous green causes wherever he’s lived. He is a keen outdoor enthusiast, spending much of his free time outside. Since his early 20′s, he has embraced the philosophy of Voluntary Simplicity, one that recognizes the notion of non-materialism and having “enough” in one’s life.

Dr, Foo Check Teck

Uniquely for a professor, he has a deeply multi-disciplinary, holistic mind. Globally renowned for Art of War strategy, his doctoral research emerged as Organizing Strategy: Sun Tzu Business Warcraft (Blackwell in Oxford, Spring’s Choice). In Reminiscences of an Ancient Strategist: Mind of Sun Tzu, he created the world’s first bio-psychological study into China’s most famous strategist that wins the Singapore’s top book prize. He was consulted for History Channel’s Art of War documentary. Featuring him as Asia’s Mover and Shaker, Straits Times named him, Singapore’s Man of Renaissance. In 2007 he founded research journal, Chinese Management Studies; now a SSCI Journal. Last year, he founded Sun Tzu Art of War Institute TM organizing 1st Global Chinese Management Studies Conference, 2011 and innovative programs (Art of War CFO with ACCA, Singapore) for internalizing Art of War thinking. Since 2004, Honorary Chair of Strategy, University of St Andrews, Scotland and besides his legal practice, he is now translating the Art of War using an embedded approach. His favorite TED talk: Understanding the Rise of China. Passionate about strategic thinking, he recently begins a monthly seminar on I Ching to explore trends and is in a search for Art of War CEOs.

Dr. Rohan Gunaratna

Rohan Gunaratna (born 1961) is an international terrorism expert. He is the head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR)] at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.[1] By its size, ICPVTR is one of the largest counterterrorism research and training centres in the world.

James Norris

James loves to work in the space between social change and personal change. It’s his playground. He believes in leading a purposeful life and has defined his mission as doing as much good as humanly possible. James started his entrepreneurial journey at 6 years old while seeing firsthand the effects of injustice. Since then he’s founded or established 15 organizations, clubs, and social enterprises and 7 microbusinesses, many of which were focused on creating social good. And he’s worked, volunteered or consulted for dozens more. He happily admits to being an enterprise junkie. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin as a triple major/quadruple minor. James currently has 104 interests, but particularly loves social innovation, social entrepreneurship, venture philanthropy, personal development, positive psychology, social psychology and ethics. Now he’s helping Project Polymath build a new type of university where self-directed, interdisciplinary learning would be the norm. James is also trying to spark a personal growth movement through his newest social enterprise, Self Spark.

Mark Cheng

Mark Cheng is a Co-Founder of Avelife, one of the largest non-profit environment charity in Singapore that locally conducts green education to the community and a firm campaigner of youth-led Green Education.

Neil Walter

Neil has been an entrepreneur since late 2002 and is currently focusing on the development of a consulting business in the online games niche. Originally creating an online game at 14 years old and growing it through his teenage years, Neil decided to put his University studies on hold in late 2008 and pursue a nomadic adventure throughout South East Asia. He now “works” from coffee shops, airports, beaches, hotels, and various other locations in one of the 12 countries he has visited in the 2 years since leaving Australia for the first time in December 2008. When not engaged in calls with clients or working on his games consulting business, Neil is deeply passionate about developing youth entrepreneurship and attends as many local events and entrepreneurial challenges as possible, building up a large network of South East Asian Entrepreneurs and other change makers. Neil is currently the Ambassador for South East Asia and Australia for the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards that is an initiative of Entrepreneurs Organisation. Neil loves to help people shatter their template lifestyles

Nitin Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy

Nitin Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy is the co-founder of and an executive producer at Alamara Films – an ad film production house. Nitin’s expertise dwells in Virals and Social Media marketing that rarely fails to strike a chord with the viewers. In the last 2 years, since the start of his firm, Nitin has spun out several award-winning ad campaigns for global stalwarts such as Nike, Lenovo, Oxfam, Bingo, Bangalore International Airport, Titan watches and so on. In his spare time, Nitin- an admirer of beauty in all forms, dabbles in fashion photography and composes background scores for films. He plays a variety of musical instruments including the Sitar, Guitar, Bass, Piano. Nitin holds a Bachelors’ degree in Computer Science engineering.

JC Sum

J C Sum is an illusionist, illusion designer and show producer of international fame. He is most well-known for his innovative mega illusions such as teleporting and vanishing people & cars over great distances as well as setting a world magic record and successfully predicting the national 4D lottery. He has performed across Asia Pacific as well as in the Middle East, France and the US and has been seen by millions on Asian television. He is the first Singapore illusionist to be awarded the Merlin Award from the International Magicians Society for “Most Original Illusionist of the Year 2009″. He was also presented with a “Special Recognition Award for Contributions to the Arts & Media Community” from the School of Film & Media Studies, Ngee Ann Polytechnic in 2011.

Dr.V Anantha Nageswaran

Ngiam Tee Woh

Mr Ngiam Tee Woh is an engineer turned serial entrepreneur. He is the founder of LCMS Consulting – A consultancy company devoted to bringing new products to the market based on the philosophy of Learning, Creating, Making and Selling. Tee Woh has also previously co-founded several other companies involved in the design of geriatric products to PDA accessories; and he was also part of the entrepreneurial team that turned a classroom business plan into a real business of selling romance. Tee Woh obtained his Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical and Production Engineering) degree and Masters of Science (Technopreneurship and Innovation) at Nanyang Technological University. Prior to starting his own ventures, he had 10 years working experience as Senior Engineer for Japanese, German and American MNCs in the automotive industry.

Dr. Afroz Ahmad Shah

Dr. Afroz Ahmad Shah received his PhD in 2010, worked with Prof. Tim Bell in Structural and Metamorphic Research Institute (SAMRI), School of Earth & Environmental Sciences James Cook University, Townsville, Australia. He worked on tectono-metamorphic evolution of Precambrian rocks that lie in the foothills of Colorado Rocky Mountains, USA. He obtained an M.Tech. degree in engineering geosciences (2006) from IIT Kanpur India, where he worked with Prof. JN Malik on Active Tectonics of Himalayan foot hills, Nanital. He joined EOS in June 2010 and is currently working with Prof. Kerry Edward Sieh and Prof. Paul Tapponnier on active fault mapping of SE Asia. He will be using various methodologies including a detailed study of satellite images followed by paleo-seismic investigation(s) via trenching to understand the faults and their behaviour.

Isaac Timothy

Isaac is a local lad born and raised in Singapore. Passing through the education system, he managed to get most of the ticks in the check boxes that define the Singaporean student culminating with graduation from NUS and a job in a MNC. Although he enjoyed leading teams to build critical applications for major financial institutions, Isaac always felt something was missing in the jobs he had and the work environments he was part of. It was inevitable that he would be drawn to the people behind SGEntrepreneurs, intrigued by the grassroots effort to serve the local entrepreneurs and infected by the passion of the community. He now serves as the lead developer and a full partner in running SGEntrepreneurs. He left his job five months ago to pursue building his own web start-up determined to create the kind of working environment he always yearned for.