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).

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Alex Pentland

MIT Prof. Alex Pentland has been called one of the world's most influential data scientists, helped create the European privacy regulations and shape the UN Sustainable Development Goals. He has co-founded or incubated several companies that today touch almost one-third of human race.

Buehler Buehler

Markus J. Buehler is the McAfee Professor of Engineering at MIT and leads MIT’s Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics. His primary research interests focus on the structure and mechanical properties of biological and bio-inspired materials, to characterize, model and create materials with architectural features from the nano- to the macro-scale. His most recent book, Biomateriomics, presents a new design paradigm for the analysis of biomaterials using a categorization approach that translates insights from disparate fields such as materials and music, and offers a new hierarchical design approach at the nexus of sound and matter. Buehler serves as the president of the board of directors for the Society of Engineering Science, on the executive committee for the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST), and others. He is the Editor in Chief of the Journal of the Behavior of Biomedical Materials (JMBBM) and BioNanoScience, and serves on the editorial board of numerous journals. He served as the chair of several conferences, societal committees, and is actively involved in public outreach (including an annual materials research camp at MIT with local middle and high schools), as well as translation of basic research through entrepreneurship. In addition to his teaching at MIT, he offers an annual Professional Education class “Predictive Multiscale Materials Design”. He was recently elected as MRS Fall 2021 Meeting Chair. Buehler is the recipient of many awards including the Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award, the Alfred Noble Prize, the Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology, the Leonardo da Vinci Award, and the Thomas J.R. Hughes Young Investigator Award. He is a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER award, the United States Air Force Young Investigator Award, the Navy Young Investigator Award, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award, as well as the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). In 2018, Buehler was selected as a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Analytics. In 2019, he received the Materials Horizons Outstanding Paper Prize, and his work was recognized as a highly cited author by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Clemens Bauer

Clemens Bauer is a Research Scientist Affiliate @ the Gabrieli Lab at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. He received his MD from the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara and his PhD from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Clemens has had a long time interest in understanding the neural correlates of subjective first person experience, in particular, the mechanisms underlying the interactions between mind/brain and body. Before joining MIT he conducted research with experienced meditators, assessing subjective phenomenology of bodily sensations that yielded specific brain activity correlates. This inspired him to further search for correlates of subjective first person experiences with neuronal activations of different networks (e.g. Default Mode Network) in the brain during controlled and sustained attentional periods, especially during meditation. Using novel real-time functional magnetic imaging methods he now can obtain a personalized fingerprint of brain networks with particular spatiotemporal signatures of brain activity, which then can be used as feedback in real time through a virtual mirror of specific mind/brain states (e.g. meditation vs distraction). This has led to the development of a personalized neuro-template for efficient neurofeedback protocols in psychopathology. In particular, it has enabled patients with schizophrenia to enhance the learning of meditation to consequently reduce their auditory hallucinations. Now he wants to extend this research to other areas of mental health (e.g. anxiety, depression, dementia) as well as find accurate electroencephalographic markers to make this technique more accessible.

Clio Batali

Clio Batali (MIT '21) ties together her transdisciplinary interests in the physical world through her degree in Materials Science and Engineering, and double-minors in Chemistry and History of Architecture, Art, and Design. While she spends her days doing hardware research for IBM, she always finds the time to cook.

Curtis Northcutt

Curtis Northcutt (a.k.a. PomDP the PhD rapper) was born and raised in a rural area between Lexington and Athens, Kentucky. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather worked as mailmen and his mother worked minimum-wage jobs. After graduating valedictorian of Vanderbilt's College of Engineering in 2013, Curtis attended MIT, where he created a cheating detection system used by MITx and HarvardX MicroMasters courses and was awarded the MIT Masters Thesis Award (2017). During his PhD at MIT (2017-2021) he developed artificial intelligence algorithms that augment human intelligence. He has worked at Google AI Research (NYC, 2019), Oculus Research (Seattle, 2018), Amazon AI (Boston, 2017), Facebook AI Research (NYC, 2016), Microsoft Research (Bangalore, 2014), MIT Lincoln Lab (2013), NSF REU (Notre Dame, 2011), General Electric (Louisville, 2010), NASA Research (Langley, 2009). Growing up with limited opportunity, Curtis leaned heavily on rap music as a therapy to dream, escape, and empower. He founded MPWR LLC and MPWR Records (read 'Empower') to create music that empowers others. Over the next year, Curtis is releasing three albums: (1) MPWR India, the first album where Indian locals rap about social issues they face, (2) MPWR AI, the first rap album written by artificial intelligence, and his debut mixtape, (3) the NERD album, introducing a new genre of 'smart rap' to normalize tech and AI in hip-hop to empower those otherwise may not be exposed to such content.

Eric Hinterman

Eric Hinterman is a Ph.D. candidate at MIT in Aeronautics and Astronautics and works on MOXIE, an instrument on the Perseverance rover that produces oxygen on Mars. He attended the University of Notre Dame for his undergraduate studies, where he received a degree in Chemical Engineering. After working in the chemical industry for several years, Eric returned to school to pursue graduate degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics. He currently holds a Master’s degree from MIT and is working towards his Ph.D. at the same institution. Eric is a Matthew Isakowitz Fellow, NASA Space Technology Research Fellow, and Foresight Institute Fellow. He is passionate about human spaceflight and plans to spend his career pushing the boundaries to enable human exploration of Mars and beyond.

Erika DeBenedictis

Erika DeBenedictis is a postdoctoral researcher with David Baker’s group at the University of Washington. During her PhD in biological engineering at MIT, she developed a platform for high-throughout continuous directed evolution and applied it to engineering biomolecules for genetic code expansion. She graduated cum laude from the California Institute of Technology with a Bachelor’s in Computer Science where she worked on topics in computational physics including space mission orbit design at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, quantum computer compilation at Sandia National Laboratories, and computational protein design at D. E. Shaw Research. Erika was awarded first prize at the Intel Science Talent Search, the Davidson Fellowship, and the Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral Fellowship. website - erikadebenedictis.com instagram - @erika.alden twitter - @erika_alden_d

Gabriel Kozlowski

Gabriel Kozlowski is a Brazilian architect and curator. He is currently Assistant Curator for the 17th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2021. Gabriel has held teaching and research positions at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning; the Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism; and the Senseable City Lab. He is also a PhD student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Past curated exhibitions include “Walls of Air” (the Brazilian Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale) and “Housing+” (the 3rd Biennial Exhibit of the MIT L. Center for Advanced Urbanism). Gabriel’s recent books include: The World as an Architectural Project (MIT Press, 2020); 8 Reactions for Afterwards (RioBooks, 2019); and Walls of Air: Brazilian Pavilion 2018 (Bienal de São Paulo, 2018). Gabriel is the founder of TomorrowAnew.org, a philanthropic response to the Covid-19 crisis that gathers thoughts and donations to both help those impacted by the virus, and collectively imagine our future post-pandemic.

Julian Zulueta

Julian Zulueta is a sophomore in the MIT Department of Biological Engineering with a minor in the history of art, architecture, and design. As a Miami native, Julian seeks to connect his city’s artistic components with his work in biological engineering; thereby, he works to expand the scientific perspective to incorporate the intrinsic patterns and cross-cultural connections that has defined his approach as a scientist.

Julie Shah

Julie Shah is an associate professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT and associate dean of social and ethical responsibilities of computing in the Schwarzman College of Computing. Her work aims to imagine the future of work by designing computing that enhances human capability and well-being. She is expanding the use of human cognitive models for artificial intelligence and has translated her work to manufacturing assembly lines, healthcare applications, transportation and defense. Prof. Shah has been recognized by the National Science Foundation with a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award and by MIT Technology Review on its 35 Innovators Under 35 list. Her work on industrial human-robot collaboration was also in Technology Review’s 2013 list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies. She has received international recognition in the form of best paper awards and nominations from the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, and the International Symposium on Robotics. She earned degrees in aeronautics and astronautics and in autonomous systems from MIT.

Marwa Abdulhai

Marwa Abdulhai is a Masters Student at the MIT Laboratory for Information & Decision Systems. She works in the space of robotics, artificial intelligence, religion, and interfaith dialogue. Marwa joined the Addir interfaith community as an undergraduate at MIT to foster understanding between faith traditions and dispel misconceptions about Islam. She is deeply inspired by Islamic Renaissance polymaths such as Ibn Sina and Al Khawarizmi who understood their religion deeply, engaged in conversations with scholars of other disciplines and faiths, and leveraged these ideas into their contributions to medicine, algebra, and the sciences. She aspires to build tools at the intersection of human and robot decision-making and design artificial agents that can learn how to learn and build cooperative, long-term relationships with other artificial agents. She has previously interned at Amazon Robotics, Uber Advanced Technologies Group, and IBM.

Matthew Baldwin

Matthew Baldwin is a senior (Class of 2021) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology studying Physics and Mathematics, and is originally from the UK. Over the past three years, he has worked on development projects across the world. Whether in Beijing, developing urban relocation plans for communities in informal settlements, or in Kathmandu, designing bamboo greenhouses for smallholder farmers, he is fixated by solving complex problems in international development. In February 2020, he co-founded an initiative aiming to bring English language learning to South Sudanese refugee children in Uganda, which is now the focus of his work, with MIT D-Lab. Away from development, Matthew has worked at CERN performing particle detector simulations, and is currently working with the Engineering Quantum Systems Group, researching superconducting qubits. He is a teaching assistant for four quantum computing courses taught through MIT, and is training for a marathon in his spare time.

Maya Nasr

Maya Nasr is a PhD student in the Aerospace Engineering department at MIT, working with Professor Jeffrey Hoffman on the Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment (MOXIE) for NASA Jet Propulsion Lab’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover. A native of Lebanon, she received her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Aerospace Engineering from MIT in 2018 and 2021 respectively. Currently, she is also working on an ISS payload with the MIT Space Exploration Initiative (SEI). She has previously worked on several projects including NASA’s Cassini mission activity on Titan, NASA’s New Frontiers Saturn Probe mission, the OneWeb satellites network, the MIT KitCube Satellite, Zero Robotics ISS programming competition and the AquaMAV at Imperial College London. As part of the Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC) Space Law & Policy Project Group, she is currently the Policy Lead and the Congressional Legislation Lead for the SGAC Taskforce on US Space Legislation. She’s additionally the lead of the Space Resources and Space Ethics & Human Rights subgroups with the goal of space disarmament and peaceful use of outer space. She is also part of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) Space4Women program. Moreover, she is interested in entrepreneurship and startups and has worked on organizing the MIT Global Startup Workshop conference in Colombia and the MIT Global Startup Labs (GSL) program in Peru. Her primary research interests are space systems engineering, international space law, policy and politics, and space security and disarmament. Outside of MIT, she loves traveling around the world, painting, and writing Arabic poetry.

MIT Syncopasian A Cappella

Syncopasian is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s co-ed East Asian music a cappella group. We celebrate East Asian pop culture at MIT through our eclectic a cappella repetoire featuring songs in English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other East Asian languages. Syncopasian is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s co-ed East Asian music a cappella group. We celebrate East Asian pop culture at MIT through our eclectic a cappella repetoire featuring songs in English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other East Asian languages.

Mohsen Mosleh

Mohsen Mosleh is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at the Science, Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship Department, University of Exeter Business School and an affiliate researcher at MIT. Mohsen’s research interests lie at the intersection of data science and cognitive science. In particular, he studies how information and misinformation spread on social media, collective decision-making, and cooperation

Onur Yüce Gün

Onur Yüce Gün is currently the Creative Manager of Computational Design at New Balance and develops computational design workflows and futuristic concepts with a specific concentration on dfAM. Onur instituted the Computational Geometry Group at KPF NY in 2006. His computational architecture work got published in Elements of Parametric Design. In 2009, he developed the curriculum and directed İstanbul Bilgi University’s undergraduate program in architecture. He taught at MIT, RISD and Adolfo Ibáñez University in Chile. Trained as an architect, Onur holds a Ph.D. and a Masters in Design and Computation, both earned at MIT. He shares his expertise in design and teaching over his YouTube channel [https://bit.ly/2ZPPMc1].

Or Shemesh

Having lost his grandfather to Alzheimer’s disease, Or Shemesh decided to study diseases of the nervous system. While completing his PhD in neuroscience, Or realized that he could not answer basic questions about the seeding cellular and molecular events that lead to pathology, due to the lack of proper technologies and methodologies to study the brain. To develop expertise in creating technologies, he joined MIT as a postdoc and learned the nuts and bolts of tool-building in the Synthetic Neurobiology Group. Nowadays, Or is starting his group as an Assistant Professor in the University of Pittsburgh, where he leads a team to invent novel technologies to study and reverse brain disease. In his talk, Or will describe the magnitude of the problem Alzheimer’s disease poses, why we failed in understanding the root causes of Alzheimer’s disease, and how technology can solve this looming threat to society.

Travis Wagner

Travis Wagner is a systems engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He currently works on the Mars 2020 mission as a Mission Planning Engineer and his current operational roles include Surface Operations Transition Planner and Communications Planner. In the past he’s also worked on the Mars Science Laboratory mission as a Science Planner and Sequence Integration Engineer. Travis holds a bachelor of science degree in Aerospace Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Tyler Dewitt

Tyler DeWitt works at the intersection of science, technology, and education. He is the creator of one of the most popular instructional channels on YouTube and is the video author for the newly-released textbook “Interactive General Chemistry,” published by Macmillan Learning. Tyler is a frequent speaker and consultant on technology and the future of education. Tyler is currently the Executive Director of Innovation at Quality Executive Partners, where he works to bring VR and other learning technologies to the life sciences and pharmaceutical sectors. Tyler holds a Ph.D. in Microbiology from MIT.