In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized (subject to certain rules and regulations).

McConomy Auditorium
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 15213
United States

Amy Blankson

Amy Blankson has become one of the world’s leading experts on the connection between positive psychology and technology. She is the only person to be named a Point of Light by two presidents (President George H. W. Bush and President Bill Clinton) for creating a movement to activate positive culture change. A sought-after speaker and consultant, Amy has now worked with organizations like Google, NASA, the US Army, and the Xprize Foundation to help foster a sense of well-being in the Digital Era. Amy received her BA from Harvard and MBA from Yale School of Management. Most recently, she was a featured professor in Oprah’s Happiness course. Amy is the author of two books: The Future of Happiness and an award-winning children’s book called Ripple’s Effect.

Charlie White

Charlie White is a noted academic, photographer, writer, and filmmaker whose work explores America’s social fictions and collective identities. White has had numerous solo institutional exhibitions at venues including Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Domus Artium in Salamanca, Spain; and Oslo Kunstforening in Oslo, Norway; his work has also appeared in numerous group exhibitions such as the Singapore Biennial, the Hammer Biennial, and Art in America Now (organized by the Guggenheim Museum). White’s films have screened at the Sundance Film Festival and Director’s Fortnight in Cannes, and his photography has been featured in five monographs. White holds the position of professor and Head of School at the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University.

Eric Cyphers

Eric Cyphers is a cellist and sophomore majoring in Neuroscience and Chemistry. He conducts National Institute of Health-funded research on Neuroplasticity, while maintaining an active concert tour schedule.

Jeff Schneider

Dr. Jeff Schneider is the Engineering Lead for Machine Learning at Uber's Advanced Technologies Group. He is currently on leave from Carnegie Mellon University where he is a research professor in the School of Computer Science. He has 20 years experience developing, publishing, and applying machine learning algorithms in government, science, and industry. He has over 100 publications and regularly gives talks and tutorials on the subject.

Michael Senatore

Michael Senatore was born in Charlotte, North Carolina. About a year ago he decided to perform in his high school talent show. The tricky part of this was that he did not have a traditional talent, so he decided he would flip a water bottle and make it land. Next thing you know the video of him doing the trick is all over the internet and ‘The Water Bottle Flip’ became the next popular trend/meme.

Molly Wright Steenson

Molly Wright Steenson is a designer, writer, and speaker, and an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon's School of Design. Her work focuses on the intersection of design, architecture, and artificial intelligence. She is the author of the forthcoming book Architectural Intelligence: How Designers and Architects Created the Digital Landscape (MIT Press, Fall 2017), which tells the radical history of AI’s impact on design and architecture and how it poured the foundation for contemporary digital design. A web pioneer since 1994, she’s worked at groundbreaking design studios, consultancies, and Fortune 500 companies. Dr. Steenson holds a PhD in architecture from Princeton University and a master’s in architectural history from Yale.

Rebecca Nugent

Rebecca Nugent is a Teaching Professor and the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University. Originally from Texas, she received her PhD in Statistics from the University of Washington. She has spearheaded the rapid growth of the Carnegie Mellon Statistics Undergraduate program and the development of modern, interdisciplinary curriculum including serving on the National Academy of Sciences Committee for “Envisioning the Data Science Discipline: The Undergraduate Perspective”. Her research interests lie in the identification and extraction of meaningful patterns in high-dimensional data, techniques which she tries to apply daily to her own life.

Steven Chase

Steven Chase is an Associate Professor jointly appointed in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition at Carnegie Mellon University. He holds a BS in Applied Physics from Caltech, an MS in Electrical Engineering from UC Berkeley, and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins. In 2016 he received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation. For his research he designs brain-computer interfaces and uses them to study learning and motor control.

Subra Suresh

Subra Suresh is the ninth president of Carnegie Mellon University, where he began his tenure on July 1, 2013. Prior to assuming this role, he served as director of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Before joining the NSF, Suresh served as the dean of the School of Engineering and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A distinguished engineer and scientist, Suresh is the first and only university president to be elected to all three National Academies — the National Academy of Medicine (2013), the National Academy of Sciences (2012) and the National Academy of Engineering (2002).