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).

Binghamton University
Binghamton, New York, 13902
United States

Hannah Fry

Dr. Hannah Fry is a mathematician and complexity scientist from University College London’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. Her work revolves around exploring the patterns in human behavior and applying a mathematical perspective to tackle a wide range of problems across our society. With a view to informing policing strategy in the future, she has examined the behavior of rioters and harnessed the patterns that emerge from burglaries and crime hotspots. While in urban design, she has worked with predicting the shopping patterns of city residents and examined the connections between a daily commute to work and the resilience of tube networks to terrorism. Alongside her academic position, Fry is passionate about sharing the abstract beauty of mathematics with others and demonstrating its importance in our modern world. She has a broad portfolio of media and public engagement activities from schools outreach, math-themed stand-up comedy, YouTube videos and public lectures – including her first TEDx talk which now has over 500,000 views across all TED channels. Fry also regularly presents the Number Hub strand of BBC Worldwide’s YouTube channel, Headsqueeze.

gabriel sayegh

gabriel sayegh directs the New York State office of the Drug Policy Alliance, partnering with community organizing groups, human service agencies and researchers to advance effective drug policies guided by science, equity and compassion. Recent campaigns include ending New York’s marijuana arrest crusade, developing municipal-based drug strategies, passing and implementing historic 911 Good Samaritan legislation to prevent accidental overdose fatalities, creating a tightly-regulated medical marijuana program and reforming New York’s draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws. He is the author of numerous articles and several reports, including Blueprint for a Public Health and Safety Approach to Drug Policy (the subject of a New York Times editorial) and From Handcuffs to Healthcare: Putting the Affordable Care Act to Work for Criminal Justice and Drug Law Reform. sayegh joined DPA in 2003 and launched DPA’s innovative State Organizing and Policy Project in 2005. He directed the project until 2010, coordinating drug policy reform campaigns with local partners in numerous states, including Alabama, Connecticut and New York. Prior to joining DPA, sayegh served as session staff in the Washington State Senate, focusing on criminal justice and social welfare policy; conducted research on global trade agreements and domestic welfare reform; organized with grassroots community groups on ending domestic violence and mass incarceration

Sebastian Walker

Sebastian Walker was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa. After completing his degree in aeronautical engineering, he worked in London for 12 years and founded a management consultancy specializing in information technology and construction project management. After a chance meeting with an American woman in a bookstore, he came to the U.S., and now is based in Washington D.C. He is currently working as a global program manager for Thomson Reuters.

Ruben Santiago-Hudson

Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s first love is the stage. A Tony and Obie Award winner, his acting credits span stage television and film. He has starred in many films including Their Eyes Were Watching God, American Gangster, Mr. Brooks, Shaft, The Devil’s Advocate and Domestic Disturbance. His television credits include three seasons on ABC’s Castle, the PBS Nova special Forgotten Genius, Showtime’s The Red Sneakers, the American Tragedy miniseries and Solomon and Sheba, the first biblical movie made starring actors of color. This past fall Santiago-Hudson co-starred in the AMC network television drama Low Winter Sun.

Anna Holmes

Anna Holmes has written and edited for numerous publications, including The New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, InStyle, Harper’s, Newsweek and The New Yorker online. She is the founder of the popular Jezebel.com website and the 2012 recipient of a Mirror Award for Best Commentary. In 2013, her Twitter account was named one of the top 140 Twitter feeds by Time magazine, at which point she became incredibly self-conscious and stopping tweeting as much. She is the editor of two books, including the Book of Jezebel, An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Lady Things, and Hell Hath No Fury, Women’s Letters from the End of the Affair, and was recently named a columnist for the New York Times Book Review. She lives in New York.

Jeff Garzick

After helping to inaugurate CNN.com on the Internet in the early 1990s, Garzik worked at a succession of Internet startups and service providers for over two decades, all while working on open source software engineering projects. Involvement in one of the best-known open source projects, the Linux kernel, led to an extended tenure at Linux leader Red Hat, during open source's most formative years. In July 2010, while reading slashdot.org, Garzik stumbled across a post describing bitcoin. Immediately recognizing the potential of a concept previously thought impossible − decentralized digital money − he did what came naturally: developed bitcoin open source software and started micro-businesses with bitcoin at their foundation. Almost by accident, Garzik found himself square in the middle of the global, disruptive, amazing hurricane of a technological phenomenon known as bitcoin.

Ben Eisenkop

Ben Eisenkop is an ecosystem ecologist working on his doctorate at Binghamton University who investigates patterns of nitrogen biogeochemistry in relation to the behaviors of various animals including the American crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) and teaches as a graduate instructor. He is also the person behind the alias "Unidan" on the news and link aggregator website Reddit.com, where he has reached millions of users by delivering "micro-lectures" on various biological topics and produced ecology-themed videos on YouTube.