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).

MIT
32 Vassar St
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02139
United States

Alex Rivest

Alex Rivest is a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-trained PhD Neuroscientist. His research has been published in two of the most highly renowned scientific journals, Science and Nature Neuroscience. Alex grew up in an environment where curiosity and question-asking were highly valued, and he has dedicated his life to helping teach others about the wonders of the world. As an educator, he received the Angus MacDonald Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at MIT, and founded the non-profit Blue Kitabu, which built a sustainable primary school in central Ghana. As a filmmaker, Alex’s videos have accumulated over 70 million views online, and have been featured everywhere, from billboards in Times Square to installations in science museums and even in an opera production of “Das Rheingold.” Alex produced and co-directed, CANARY, the documentary film about Lonnie Thompson which recently premiered on over 160 screens across the USA, was featured in the NYTimes “What to Watch” section, and was screened at NYC Climate Week and COP28.

Ariel Furst

Ariel L. Furst is the Paul M. Cook Career Development Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. She received her B.S. from the University of Chicago and her Ph.D. from Caltech, both in Chemistry. She was then an A. O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley before starting as an assistant professor in Chemical Engineering at MIT in 2019. She is a 2023 NIH New Innovator Awardee, a 2023 Marion Milligan Mason Awardee, a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar for Bio-Inspired Solar Energy, and an ARO Early Career Grantee. She was recently awarded the MIT UROP Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award for her work with undergraduate researchers. She is passionate about STEM outreach and increasing participation of underrepresented groups in engineering.

Daniel Jackson

"Daniel Jackson is professor of computer science at MIT, and associate director of CSAIL. For his research in software, he won the ACM SIGSOFT Impact Award, the ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award and was made an ACM Fellow. He is the lead designer of the Alloy modeling language, and author of Software Abstractions. He chaired a National Academies study on software dependability, and has collaborated on software projects with NASA on air-traffic control, with Massachusetts General Hospital on proton therapy, and with Toyota on autonomous cars (for which he has two patents pending). Jackson has consulted for many companies, including Accenture, AIG, AT&T, Fujitsu and Teradyne. He has mentored startups for the Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, and has given talks to developers worldwide. Developers from 500 companies have watched his videos on UX design, and more than 2,000 students have taken his courses on programming and software design at MIT. His newest book, The Essence of Software, presents a new way to think about software design, and lays out a path, accessible to anyone—from strategist and marketer to UX designer, architect, or programmer—for making software that is empowering, dependable, and a delight to use."

Daniela Rus

Daniela Rus is the Andrew (1956) and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT. Rus’s research interests are in robotics, mobile computing, and data science. Rus is a Class of 2002 MacArthur Fellow, a fellow of ACM, AAAI and IEEE, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy for Arts and Science. She earned her PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University.

David Karger

David Karger has spend that last 10 years exploring ideas for improving the online discussion platforms that occupy so much of our attention nowadays. In addition to misinformation and trust, he studies ways to fight online harassment, help people communicate across differences of opinion, help people discuss difficult topics and ask embarrassing questions, and use online discussion effectively for the classroom

Deborah Douglas

Debbie Douglas is the Senior Director of Collections and Curator of Science and Technology at the MIT Museum. She leads the Collections Team that aims to make accessible more than a million artifacts that can be used to tell important (and often entertaining) stories about science, technology, architecture, photography, art, and MIT.

Julie Shah

Julie Shah is the H.N. Slater Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT and leads the Interactive Robotics Group of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Shah received her SB (2004) and SM (2006) from the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, and her PhD (2010) in Autonomous Systems from MIT. Before joining the faculty, she worked at Boeing Research and Technology on robotics applications for aerospace manufacturing. She has developed innovative methods for enabling fluid human-robot teamwork in time-critical, safety-critical domains, ranging from manufacturing to surgery to space exploration. Her group draws on expertise in artificial intelligence, human factors, and systems engineering to develop interactive robots that emulate the qualities of effective human team members to improve the efficiency of human-robot teamwork. In 2014, Shah was recognized with an NSF CAREER award for her work on “Human-aware Autonomy for Team-oriented Environments," and by the MIT Technology Review TR35 list as one of the world’s top innovators under the age of 35. Her work on industrial human-robot collaboration was also recognized by the Technology Review as one of the 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2013, and she has received international recognition in the form of best paper awards and nominations from the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, the International Symposium on Robotics, and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.

Kanokwan Tungkitkancharoen

Kanokwan was born and raised in Las Vegas, NV, and her parents are from Thailand. As a junior at MIT, she studies mechanical engineering and public policy. Her research areas span two labs: reviving failed renewable energy facilities with the MIT Energy Initiative and integrating design justice into engineering pedagogy with the MIT Media Lab. Around campus, she serves as the Executive Director of the FLI (first-gen, low-income) Program, a Makerspace Mentor for Project Manus, a Blogger for the Admissions Office, and a Fire Dancer for the Spinning Arts club.

Luca Carlone

Luca Carlone is the Boeing Career Development Associate Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Principal Investigator in the MIT Laboratory for Information & Decision Systems (LIDS). I am the director of the MIT SPARK Lab, where we work at the cutting edge of robotics and autonomous systems research.

Moshe Alamaro

"As a graduate student and later as a Research Scientist at the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), Moshe helped to design, build, and manage the MIT Air-Sea Interaction Lab. He specializes in fluid mechanics, heat and mass transfer, thermodynamics, applied mechanics and mechanics of materials, hydrology, sea-air interaction, ice engineering, compressible flow, optimization and nonlinear programming, and cross-disciplinary research and engineering. He initiated programs for weather modification, medical devices, smog abatement, evaporation suppression over water reservoirs, new direct contact cogeneration technology and applications, and snow making technology for winter ice manufacturing used for a variety of applications. He is the founder of ReSlope Global, https://reslopeglobal.org/, a nonprofit enterprise for terrain alteration in semi-arid areas for turning marginal dryland land into arable cultivable land. This international enterprise may have a potential to alleviate the looming world food crisis. "

Sarah Williams

"Sarah Williams is an Associate Professor of Technology and Urban Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where she is also Director of the Civic Data Design Lab and the Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism. Williams’ combines her training in computation and design to create communication strategies that expose urban policy issues to broad audiences and create civic change. She calls the process Data Action, the name of her recent book published by MIT Press. Williams is co-founder and developer of Envelope.city, a web-based software product that visualizes and allows users to modify zoning in New York City. Before coming to MIT, Williams was Co-Director of the Spatial Information Design Lab at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). Her design work has been widely exhibited, including work in the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Venice Biennale, and the Cooper Hewitt Museum. Williams has won numerous awards, including being named one of the top 25 technology planners, Game Changer by Metropolis Magazine, and most recently won an Anthem Award for the best use of data in the humanitarian sector. Her latest exhibition at the World Food Program (WFP), Distance Uknown, explores the risks and opportunities of migration to the Americas and helped to influence recent US migration policies. She has also just released a tool with Transportation Alternatives called Spatial Equity NYC. "

Vladimir Bulović

" Vladimir Bulović is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, holding the Fariborz Maseeh Chair in Emerging Technology. He directs the Organic and Nanostructured Electronics Laboratory, and is the Founding Director of MIT.nano, MIT's nano-fabrication, nano-characterization, and prototyping facility. He is an author of over 300 research articles (cited over 70,000 times and recognized as the top 1% of the most highly cited in the Web of Science). He is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors and an inventor of over 120 U.S. patents in areas of light emitting diodes, lasers, photovoltaics, photodetectors, chemical sensors, programmable memories, and micro-electro machines, majority of which have been licensed and utilized by both start-up and multinational companies. The start-up companies Bulović co-founded jointly employ over 350 people, and include Ubiquitous Energy, Inc., developing nanostructured solar technologies, Kateeva, Inc., focused on development of printed electronics, and QD Vision, Inc. (acquired in 2016) that produced quantum dot optoelectronic components. Products of these companies have been used by millions. Bulović was the first Associate Dean for Innovation of the School of Engineering and the Inaugural co-Director of MIT’s Innovation Initiative, which he co-led from 2013 to 2018. For his passion for teaching Bulović has been recognized with the MacVicar Fellowship, MIT’s highest teaching honor. He completed his Electrical Engineering B.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees at Princeton University. "