Theme: The Ripple Effect of Innovation

This theme urges individuals to seek knowledge and discover new revelations. It shows the infinite effect of new discoveries on the community, education, society, and individuals. This theme highlights the importance of teamwork and coming together to combine every individual’s knowledge in order to advance the community to its highest potential. This theme also urges individuals to discover the hidden potential in everything around them and note how one simple thing could cause a huge difference.

GEMS American Academy
Madinat Khalifa A, Next Seha
Abu Dhabi, Abū Z̧aby, 145161
United Arab Emirates

Ahmed Tawfeeq

Ahmed Tawfeeq is a senior at Gems and No place has deeper sentiment in his autonomy than comedy. Ahmed always puts the happiness of his peers before himself by entertaining them with clever, witty jokes. Ahmed considers comedy a cornerstone in his personality and a substantial medium of human communication. He admires influential and prominent comedians such as George Carlin and Daniel Tosh who give a humorous, yet comical views on certain aspects that make up society.

Alia Alzaabi

Alia Alzaabi is an Emirati Student Filmmaker and an aspiring Environmentalist. She hopes to inspire youth on the innovative expectations the world needs and hopes that they’ll bring towards reality. Alia wishes to achieve a career of purpose, work with the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment, and prove that the first of the three R’s is reducing.

Dhruv Nair

Dhruv Nair is a grade 10 student from India who enjoys playing sports like tennis and badminton. He enjoys exploring different technologies and would like to pursue a career in finance in the future. His fascination and interest in drone technology has led to him to share his perspective here on TEDx.

Divyanshu Gupta

Divyanshu Gupta is an Indian student from grade 10 who enjoys playing sports such as cricket in his free time. He is an over-achiever and always strives to be his best. He chose TEDx to have an outlet for his goals and fascinations with outer space. He hopes to shed some light on the importance of space innovation.

Emilia Cesetti

Emilia Cesetti is an IB student from Italy and Azerbaijan. She enjoys playing sports as well as studying biology, chemistry and aspires to study medicine in the future. Since she was six, Emilia has worn glasses; her experiences in addition to her passion for science, have inspired her to become an ophthalmologist as an adult. The awareness of how the innovation of refractive correction devices has impacted her life led her to share her experiences here on TEDx.

Injoon Jun

Injoon Jun is a sophomore at Gems American Academy. He is from South Korea, but has been living in the U.A.E. for most of his life. With his speech, he aims to change your perspective about innovation for the better.

Mark Treska

Mr. Treska is a high school economics and history teacher at Gems American Academy. His interests involve travel, diving and geocaching. The use of GPS in his activities have helped him become aware of the tradeoffs of using location services. Through TEDx, he hopes to share his insights into the evolution, useage and challenges of GPS in mainstream society.

Minseok Oh

Minseok Oh is a student from Korea who enjoys playing basketball and instruments, especially piano. He enjoys studying science and would like to pursue a career in either science field or engineering field when he grows up. When he first came to Abu Dhabi he had a hard time communicating in English, this led him to share his experiences and feelings about learning a foreign language on TEDx.

Sara El-Kai

Sara El-Kaissi is an IB student from Lebanon who enjoys travelling and exploring the impact of culture on human behaviour. She has always been fascinated in healthcare and specifically, how mental disorders arise, the stigma around mental health and how can societies be better understood. Thinking about the impact innovation can have on treating mental disorders, has allowed Sara to share her perspective on TEDx.