Theme: TEDxPenn 2021: Unknown

Admission to the event is 100% free! On April 10th, we will be hosting our first ever TEDxPenn 2021 Online Conference. The theme for this year's conference is Unknown! Some of the most exciting discoveries and ideas have come from venturing into the unknown, whether that's probing the biggest questions in science and public health or exploring an endless world of creative possibility in writing or design. This year, given the circumstances, we are bringing our conference fully online for a day of insight and learning from our talented speaker lineup and performers. Join us for a dive into the value of a multidisciplinary approach to problem solving, because we know that the next big idea will require synthesizing many perspectives.

University of Pennsylvania
VIRTUAL - 220 S 33rd Street
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19104
United States

Angela Guzman

Angela is a designer and entrepreneur based out of Silicon Valley. Over the last decade, she has worked for Google, Airbnb, and Apple where she has managed, led, and directly contributed to design teams that focus on user experience, interaction, and visual design. Angela is best known for designing the original Apple emojis. Today, she is the co-founder and CEO of Tijiko, her startup. When not designing, Angela loves to write about design, share her experience in the industry, and mentor budding designers.

Brandon Copeland

Brandon Copeland is an entrepreneur and a professional athlete. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Management and Entrepreneurship from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. With his wife, Taylor, he operates two real estate companies and a nonprofit organization called Beyond the Basics Inc. Entering his eighth season in the National Football League, he has played for the Baltimore Ravens, the Tennessee Titans, the Detroit Lions, and is currently the starting linebacker for the New York Jets. He is Professor at the University of Pennsylvania of a course on financial literacy which he calls “Life 101”.

César de la Fuente

César de la Fuente is a Presidential Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he leads the Machine Biology Group whose goal is to combine the power of machines and biology to understand, prevent, and treat infectious diseases. Current application areas in his lab include developing novel approaches for antibiotic discovery, building tools for microbiome engineering, and creating low-cost diagnostics. Specifically, he pioneered the development of the world’s first antibiotic designed by a computer with efficacy in animal models, designed pattern recognition algorithms for antibiotic discovery, successfully reprogrammed venoms into novel antimicrobials, created novel resistance-proof antimicrobial materials, and invented rapid low-cost diagnostics for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. De la Fuente is an NIH MIRA investigator, a BBRF Young Investigator, and has received recognition and research funding from numerous other groups. Prof. de la Fuente was recognized by MIT Technology Review in 2019 as one of the world’s top innovators for “digitizing evolution to make better antibiotics”. He was selected as the inaugural recipient of the Langer Prize, an ACS Kavli Emerging Leader in Chemistry, and received the Nemirovsky Prize, AIChE’s 35 Under 35 Award, and the ACS Infectious Diseases Young Investigator Award. In addition, he was named a Boston Latino 30 Under 30, a Wunderkind by STAT News, a Top 10 Under 40 of 2019 by GEN, a Top 10 MIT Technology Review Innovator Under 35 (Spain), 30 Rising Leaders in the Life Sciences and received the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers Young Investigator Award in addition to the Young Innovator in Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering and the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) CMBE Rising Star Award. His scientific discoveries have yielded over 85 peer-reviewed publications, including papers in Nature Communications, PNAS, ACS Nano, Cell, Nature Communications Biology, and multiple patents.

Emily Falk

Emily Falk is a Professor of Communication, Psychology, and Marketing at the University of Pennsylvania, Director of Penn's Communication Neuroscience Lab and a Distinguished Fellow of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Falk is an expert in the science of attitude and behavior change. Her research uses tools from psychology, neuroscience and communication to examine what makes messages persuasive, why and how ideas spread and what helps people get on the same page when communicating. Her work has been widely covered in the popular press in the U.S. and abroad (e.g., New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, Forbes, Scientific American and others), and she has consulted for and collaborated with major corporations, NGOs and government groups. Her research has been recognized by numerous awards, including early career awards from the International Communication Association, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Attitudes Division, a Fulbright grant, and Social and Affective Neuroscience Society, a DARPA Young Faculty Award, the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award. She was named a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science. She received her bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience from Brown University, and her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Laney Broussard

Alanis Renell Broussard (Laney) is a young woman with an endless desire to advocate for avenues of change through the power of speech and communication with others across all walks of humanity. Among the many accolades she has received, her most notable achievements include being one of the youngest keynote speakers at the Atlanta World Congress Center in 2019, starting her own public speaking organization called Soul to Speak, being interviewed by USA Today in her own segment entitled "Coronavirus Chronicles," being featured on Good Morning America and being asked to speak on the nationally-televised event "Graduate Together 2020" hosted by Lebron James. To her, the call to "speak your soul" has never felt truer, as she continues her journey of inspiring, understanding, and communicating with others.

P. Michael Boone

P. Michael Boone (“P”) is a self-taught barber, entrepreneur, and advocate for underprivileged youth in his community. He founded the Haute Barbershop and the Junior Barber Academy, a youth-based program introducing the art of barbering to children. He also founded the P. Michael Boone Foundation, which is centered on bettering the lives of Philadelphia’s youth and families. Through his foundation, he has provided workshops, seminars, and free haircuts for the homeless. He has developed partnerships with Sneaker Vill a, YMCA, Salvation Army, and the Philadelphia Police. P is also an author, writing and publishing his first book, Fred’s First Haircut.

Paul T. Shattuck

Paul T. Shattuck, Ph.D., is a pioneering leader in the field of research about autism services and policy. He was the founding leader of the AJ Drexel Autism Institute’s interdisciplinary research program on Life Course Outcomes and the National Autism Data Center. His work has informed national policy and awareness related to the transition from adolescence to adulthood.

Sonja Duempelmann

Sonja Dümpelmann is an award-winning landscape historian and Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design. Trees in cities and our relationship to them are the focus of her most recent book SeeingTrees: A History of Street Trees in New York City and Berlin (Yale Univ. Press, 2019). She is interested in studying relationships between subjects such as architecture and landscape; those in power and those subjected to that power; and social and political processes, scientific and technological accomplishments, and landscape transformation.