Freeman Hrabowski is president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), which has made an extraordinary name for itself educating students of all types in science and engineering. “What makes our story especially important,” says Hrabowski, “is that we have learned so much from students who are typically not at the top of the academic ladder.” […]
An indefinable quality lies at the heart of any successful idea or project … a spark of intuition, genius or insight that acts as the driver of all later action. Our speakers in this session all possess such a spark, from the educator who’s made it his mission to help high-achieving minority students to a […]
Watch all of TED2013 Session 3 for free at 5pm PST today: http://tedlive.ted.com/webcasts/2013 See the 2013 TED Prize revealed!
Monday on the TED Fellows stage, Tom Rielly did something unprecedented in the history of the Fellows — he singled out one for recognition. Presenting the newly minted TED Fellows Hero award to Iranian-British filmmaker Taghi Amirani, he said, “This person has gone above and beyond in writing, participating, a certain amount of kvetching, mentoring […]
In art school, Phil Hansen developed a shake in his hand. He couldn’t so much as draw a straight line anymore. After years of excelling in pointillism, his tight grip of the pen had caused permanent nerve damage. “To me this was doomsday. This was the destruction of my dream of becoming an artist,” says Hansen in […]
Beardyman, né Darren Foreman, is a London-based beatboxer and inventor who has always been frustrated by the limitations of the human voice and body. After all, Beardyman’s instrument is his voice — and he only has one. No one, for example, can sing two notes at the same time. So naturally, Beardyman built a machine […]
Saskia Sassen thinks deeply about the world’s cities, and she’s on the TED stage to share some of her provocative theories about how we should think about urbanizing technology, that pervasive force that has impacted so much of the way in which we live and work. She starts by pointing out an amazing fact: there […]
There are giants in the ocean, and we can prove it, begins marine biologist Edie Widder on stage at TED. Widder first became involved with TED when she gave a talk on life in the underwater world at Mission Blue in 2010, as part of Sylvia Earle’s TED Prize wish. There she met the late […]
Stuart Firestein begins with an ancient proverb, “It’s very difficult to find a black cat in a dark room, especially when there is no cat.” Firestein, the chair of Biological Sciences at Columbia University, thinks that this is a good metaphor for science. Generally we think science is orderly, a collection of knowledge. But real […]
Sebastião Salgado has worked as a professional photographer since 1973. And he arrives on the TED stage with extraordinary gentleness and humility. He doesn’t think everyone is necessarily familiar with his work, so he starts by showing some of his incredible pictures, and we watch in silence. The images make for powerful, often difficult viewing. It’s clear that […]
Clouds. We think of them as light and fluffy, sometimes a touch menacing. But TED Fellow Camille Seaman sees something even deeper in the clouds above her. Seaman, who is known for her stunning images that give personality to icebergs, was raised as a Shinnecock Indian, in a culture that taught her that everything is interconnected. “When I […]
Moving images and hidden systems — Session 2 moved into the world of the unexplored. Listen for an exploration into the secrets of cities, find out how the elusive giant squid was caught on film and hear a case for the virtue of ignorance. The speakers who appeared this session. Click their name to read […]
In 2005, the TED Prize was given to Bono. Eight years later, Chris Anderson asks, has there been any progress? The U2 frontman is here to tell us. But first, some good-natured Anglo-Irish joshing. “Chris Anderson asked me if I could put the last 25 years of of anti-poverty campaigning into 10 minutes. That’s an Englishman asking […]
Chances are, what you’re doing at this very minute is killing you. That’s right, sitting down is killing you. As Nilofer Merchant tells us today at TED, people sit 9.3 hours a day, more than they even sleep. As you sit, you don’t burn fat, and inactivity causes 10 percent of colon and breast cancer. […]
Sometimes, it feels like your smartphone is your friend. But if Keller Rinaudo has his way, your phone may be more like a pet. Rinaudo, the co-founder and CEO of Romotive, has created Romo, a smartphone robot. Your phone docks into a robotic base that looks a bit like a powdery blue tank. When you download the Romo app, […]
We’ve heard a lot about robots at TED over the years. Demos of amazing specialized robots … talk about what robots can and can’t do … and will they take jobs from humans and is that a good or a bad thing? What’s missing is a concrete example of a multi-purpose robot that can indeed […]