Theme: Uncharted

The future has never felt so uncertain. There are deadly perils to be dealt with, starting with a global pandemic. Yet we also now have an opportunity to rebuild our world in a better, fairer, more beautiful way.

We believe passionately that the global TED community has a key role to play here. We are all believers in human creativity and our collective ability to imagine our way out of this mess. More than ever, we need to connect with each other and figure out how to build back better. Though we can’t do this in person, this eight-week TED program will allow countless ways to deepen community relationships and re-imagine what the future can be together.

We are hosting TEDxSUSTLive, which will webcast the TED2020 Conference. Join online with your friends you want to share your inspiration with! We hope you have a meaningful time with TEDxSUSTLive in August, during summer vacation which requires a break and a deeper thought.

Online
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Sylhet, Sylhet, 3114
Bangladesh

Ariel Waldman

Antarctic Explorer, NASA Advisor

An artist who's pivoted to science, Ariel Waldman creates multidisciplinary, creative collaborations that explore the world under our feet (and beyond our atmosphere). Ariel Waldman is the chair of the council for NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts program, dedicated to developing long-term aerospace travel concepts. She's the principal investigator of a five-week expedition to Antarctica to film microscopic life beneath the ice and the host and producer of Offworld, a show on Adam Savage's Tested. Waldman is the global director of Science Hack Day, a grassroots endeavor to prototype science projects based in 30 countries. In 2013, she received an honor from the Obama White House for being a Champion of Change in citizen science.

Barry Schwartz

Psychology Professor

In his 2004 book The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz tackles one of the great mysteries of modern life: Why is it that societies of great abundance -- where individuals are offered more freedom and choice (personal, professional, material) than ever before -- are now witnessing a near-epidemic of depression? Conventional wisdom tells us that greater choice is for the greater good, but Schwartz argues the opposite: He makes a compelling case that the abundance of choice in today's western world is actually making us miserable. Before Paradox he published The Costs of Living, which traces the impact of free-market thinking on the explosion of consumerism -- and the effect of the new capitalism on social and cultural institutions that once operated above the market, such as medicine, sports and the law. Both books level serious criticism of modern Western society, illuminating the under-reported psychological plagues of our time.

Christina Agapakis

Biological Designer

In her art and scientific work, Christina Agapakis blurs the boundaries between nature and technology to practice a new kind of engineering, taking into account both human and cultural forces. In the lab, Christina Agapakis has worked on enzymes involved in the production of biofuels and mapped the evolution of microbial communities in the soil. As an artist, she's isolated halophilic bacteria from California's Salton Sea and made cheese from bacteria living on human skin. As creative director of the biotech firm Ginkgo Bioworks, Agapakis works to establish more open, equitable and renewable technologies.

Dallas Taylor

Sound and Audio Expert

Dallas Taylor is the host and creator of Twenty Thousand Hertz, a lovingly crafted podcast that reveals the stories behind the most recognizable and interesting sounds. He is also the creative director of Defacto Sound, a sound design company where he has led thousands of high-profile projects ranging from blockbuster trailers and advertising campaigns to Sundance award-winning films and major television series. Taylor is a regular contributor to major publications and a respected thought leader on the narrative power of sound.

Honor Harger

Executive Director, ArtScience Museum

Curator Honor Harger, originally from New Zealand, serves as executive director for ArtScience Museum in Singapore. Since she joined, the museum has held large-scale exhibitions by some of the world's best known artists, including Leonardo da Vinci, Salvador Dalí and M.C. Escher, and presented significant exhibitions that explore aspects of science including big data, particle physics, natural history, marine biology, cosmology and space exploration. Before joining ArtScience Museum, Harger was the director of Lighthouse, a digital arts venue in Brighton, UK. from 2004 to 2008, she was director of the AV Festival, then the UK's largest biennial of digital art, film and music. She was the first curator of webcasting for Tate, where she also curated events. Harger is one of the cofounders of the sound art collective, r a d i o q u a l i a. One of their main projects was Radio Astronomy, a radio station broadcasting sound from space.

Karen Desalvo

Chief Health Officer, Google

Dr. Karen DeSalvo is a nationally recognized health policy leader working at the intersection of medicine, public health and information technology to improve the health of people and their communities. Dr. Karen DeSalvo is the Chief Health Officer of Google Health. She is a physician and health care leader working at the intersection of medicine, public health and information technology. At Google Health, DeSalvo leads a team of health professionals who provide clinical guidance for the development of Google's research, products and services. She served as National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and Assistant Secretary for Health (Acting) in the Obama Administration. DeSalvo was New Orleans Health Commissioner following Hurricane Katrina. Throughout her career, she has inspired new generations of medical and public health professionals to approach health by addressing the physical, emotional and social needs of patients and communities.

Mande Holford

Molecular Chemist

Mandë Holford investigates the power of venom to transform organisms (and lives) when it is adapted to create new therapeutics that treat human diseases and disorders. Dr. Mandë Holford is an Associate Professor in Chemistry and Biochemistry at Hunter College and CUNY-Graduate Center, with scientific appointments at The American Museum of Natural History and Weill Cornell Medicine. Her interdisciplinary research, which ranges from mollusks to medicine, combine chemistry and biology to discover, characterize and deliver novel peptides from venomous marine snails for manipulating cellular physiology. Her laboratory investigates the power of venom to transform organisms and to transform lives when adapted to create new therapeutics for treating human diseases and disorders. Holford's research program is global, interdisciplinary and collaborative with impacts ranging from evolution and molecular systematics to nanotechnology, biomedicine and drug discovery.

Philip Lubin

Physicist

Philip Lubin is a professor of physics at UC Santa Barbara and director of the UCSB Experimental Cosmology Laboratory. His research primarily focuses on the early universe, studying the millimeter wavelengths bands and applications of directed energy for planetary defense and relativistic propulsion. His group designed, developed and fielded more than two dozen ground-based and balloon-borne missions and helped develop two major cosmology satellites. Lubin's group first detected the horizon scale fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background from both their South Pole and balloon-borne systems twenty years ago, and their latest results, along with an international teams of ESA and NASA researchers, are from the Planck cosmology mission, which mapped the structures of the early universe in detail. Lubin is corecipient of the 2006 Gruber Prize in Cosmology along with the COBE science team for their groundbreaking work in cosmology.

Shameran Abed

Senior Director Microfinance, BRAC and BRAC International Ultra poor graduation, BRAC and BRAC International

Shameran Abed is senior director of the BRAC microfinance and ultra poor graduation programmes. BRAC’s microfinance programme serves more than 6.5 million clients in seven countries in Asia and Africa, and has total assets exceeding USD 2.5 billion. BRAC’s ground-breaking ultra poor graduation programme has graduated more than 1.8 million households out of the direst forms of poverty and social deprivation and has inspired the global uptake of the ‘graduation approach’ to tackle extreme poverty. Shameran also chairs the board of BRAC Bank’s mobile financial services subsidiary, bKash, and serves on the boards of the BRAC UK, IPDC Finance and the Global Alliance for Banking on Values (GABV). Shameran is a lawyer by training, having been made a barrister by the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn in London, UK. He completed his undergraduate studies at Hamilton College in the United States, majoring in economics and minoring in political science.

Xiye Bastida

Youth Climate Activist

Xiye Bastida is one of the lead organizers of the Fridays For Future youth climate strike movement. Growing up in a town stricken by both drought and floods, it didn't take Xiye Bastida long to understand the perils of climate change -- or to decide to do something about it. Bastida was born and raised in San Pedro Tultepec, a small town southwest of Mexico City, and moved to the US after a three-year drought in her hometown was broken by devastating floods. She began her career as an environmentalist soon after. Now a climate justice activist based in New York City, she is one of the lead organizers of Fridays for Future, the youth climate strike movement founded by Greta Thunberg. She also sits on the administration committee of the People's Climate Movement, where she brings a voice to existing grassroots climate organizations.