Theme: New Perspectives

Each year, TEDxGunnHighSchool aims to center its annual conference's content around a central theme. Previous themes have included Be The Variable, More Than A Number, Trailblazers, and Crossroads. Inspired by the vision of challenging the norm and viewing established and novel problems under a new light, we selected New Perspectives as this year’s theme.

With our distinguished set of speakers and performers, we hope to provide a conference experience where the audience will explore innovative ways of viewing ourselves and the world around us through lenses such as New Technology, New Paths, New Mind, New Mentality, and New Vitality.

Gunn High School Little Theatre
780 Arastradero Road
Palo Alto, California, 94306
United States

Allen Su

Student

Allen Su is a senior at Gunn High School. From a young age, Allen has enjoyed gaming and immersing himself in a more exciting world. Eventually, he realized that video games not only shaped the storylines of characters, but also his own identity. Allen is giving this TED talk to dispel some of the common misconceptions about gaming and to teach the importance of playing games in making us more sympathetic, understanding, and observant. When Allen is not gaming, he enjoys debating, fishing, and hiking.

David Carreon

Psychiatry Resident

Dr. Carreon studied Civil Engineering at UCLA, spending time in a nano-medicine lab and doing nonprofit work in Mexico. He went to medical school at Stanford where he developed an interest in psychiatry and neuroscience. Working in a neuroscience lab and studying cognitive behavioral therapy as a medical student, he decided to continue on at Stanford as a psychiatry resident. His research has focused on willpower and "top-down" control, from a naturalistic project looking at self-control "in the wild," to a gigantic study looking at all the brain imaging studies of executive function in mental illness. Clinically, he is intrigued, challenged, and inspired by his patients with depression. He is working on developing holistic treatments and finding better ways to help his patients thrive, body, brain, and soul. He also loves teaching, nonprofit work (including a year in Kenya), excessively long brunch conversations, and podcasting (http://psyched.space).

Fantasma Trio

Ishaan Rajan (violin), Jimmy Lee (cello), and Peyton Lee (piano), formed the Fantasma Trio in late 2017. They soon began work on Beethoven’s Ghost Trio, from which the trio’s name is inspired. Since then, they have competed and won on a national level, winning first place at the Silicon Valley Youth Music Competition and the United States International Music Competition. Their future plans include performing in more competitive settings and traveling abroad with their talents as a group. Astor Piazzolla was an Argentinian composer from the 20th century. Born in poverty, he rose to eventually become one of the most prolific Latin American composers in history. His pioneering work on “nuevo tango” popularized the style almost instantly. Adding saxophone, electric guitar, and his personal instrument, the bandoneon, Piazzolla immortalized a jazzy perspective of the tango. Piazzolla’s Libertango, a combination of the words “libertad”, meaning liberty, and “tango”, a type of dance, is perhaps his most recognized work. With their own arrangement, the Fantasma Trio hopes to offer a new perspective on Piazzolla’s masterpiece.

Ge Wang

Associate Professor, Author

Ge Wang is an Associate Professor at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). He researches artful design of tools, toys, games, and social experiences. Ge is the architect of the ChucK music programming language, director of the Stanford Laptop Orchestra, Co-founder of Smule, and designer of Ocarina and Magic Piano for mobile phones. He is a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow, and the author of ARTFUL DESIGN: TECHNOLOGY IN SEARCH OF THE SUBLIME -- a (comic) book about the ethics, aesthetics, and craft of shaping technology. ARTFUL DESIGN: TECHNOLOGY IN SEARCH OF THE SUBLIME: https://artful.design/

Gunn Acapella

Gunn Acapella is a new club that has started over this year. Gunn Acapella is a club for all students at Gunn. We wanted to create a club for everyone who enjoys the wonderful atmosphere of singing and music, without being confined to the music classes at Gunn. We wanted to create music with many people old and new to music and to help us through happy and sad times. Sharing music together makes it all the better!

Gunn Hip Hop

The purpose of Gunn Hip Hop club is to create a space where students interested in urban dance, specifically hip-hop dance, can feel comfortable expressing themselves, dancing, improving their ability, and meeting peers who share a similar interest. Most of our members had little to no previous dance experience, as the club is open to anyone who is interested, regardless of skill level. Through our performance, we hope to showcase the hard work of all of our members, and to spread a love of and appreciation for urban dance.

Madeline Lurie

Student

Madeline Lurie, a senior at Gunn, is passionate about mental health advocacy and hopes to use her own experiences to affect change in how we view mental illness. She has worked on several mental health campaigns, both through clubs on campus and in out-of-school organizations. Through studying psychology in college, she hopes to blend her first-hand experience with academics and pursue both research and clinical work. In her free time, she enjoys playing cello, hugging her cat, and writing poems.

Mark Hernandez

Teacher

Will be updated soon!

Michael Montegut

Experimental Psychologist, Consultant

Michael Montegut is a Research Psychologist and writer, consultant, father, husband, kids basketball coach, and poet. He has researched the psychology of human vision and performed R&D in the areas of 3D computer graphics, flight simulation, and Virtual Reality. Michael developed and presented one of the first virtual flyovers of Mars terrain data and lander images at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum. He has worked at a variety of Silicon Valley companies, including some of his own in data analytics, personality analysis, social networking, and nonprofit fundraising. Michael enjoys reading anything he stumbles across at the library, cooking, gardening, and writing on a multitude of topics. He believes that every person has a unique contribution to make to the world and that it will take all of us to move humanity forward. He believes that if we are to help our youth grow to be resilient, we as adults must share our personal stories of triumph over the vicissitudes of life.

Misty Gilbert

Transformational Coach

Misty W. Gilbert was born in Paso Robles, California and currently resides in Fort Worth, Texas. As a transformational coach, writer, and speaker, her mission is to inspire and assist people to create the lives they want by living purposefully. Her powerful story through abuse, rejection, fear, and inauthenticity, evokes both pain and courage as she vulnerably shares her path to freedom. She boldly calls others to take the steps to overcome their own stories and shares how embracing pain is the key to leveraging the freedom they desire. She teaches living authentically, courageously, and abundantly to embrace freedom through the power of choice by escaping the limiting beliefs around fear, shame, guilt, and regret.

Peter Norvig

Director of Research, Google Inc.

Peter Norvig is a Director of Research at Google Inc; previously he directed Google's core search algorithms group. He is the co-author of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, the leading textbook in the field, and co-teacher of an Artificial Intelligence class that signed up 160,000 students, helping to kick off the current round of massive open online classes. He is a fellow of the AAAI, ACM, California Academy of Science and American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Roni Manor

Student

Roni Manor is a senior at Gunn High School and student at Foothill College whose passions include writing, music, cooking, and speaking on important topics in society. She spends most of her time helping to run a teen art youth group, working to plan and execute free events to spread teen art in her community. In her free time, she loves spending time with her sister and friends, watching too much tv, and traveling. Roni is excited to give her second TEDx talk on how social media usage effects teenagers and how being too trusting on social media can have unforeseen consequences.

Tarang Gala

Creative Director

Tarang Gala was born and raised in India and have been a dreamer, artist, and maker since childhood. He graduated from California College of the Arts with a BFA in Interaction Design and currently works as a Creative Director at a software company in San Francisco. He is most passionate about building spaces that free people to create.