Jessica Green wants people to understand the important role microbes play in every facet of our lives: climate change, building ecosystems, human health, even roller derby — using nontraditional tools like art, animation and film to help people visualize the invisible world.

Why you should listen

Jessica Green, a TED2010 Fellow and TED2011 Senior Fellow, is an engineer and ecologist who specializes in biodiversity theory and microbial systems. As a professor at both the University of Oregon and the Santa Fe Institute, she is the founding director of the innovative Biology and the Built Environment (BioBE) Center that bridges biology and architecture.

Green envisions a future with genomic-driven approaches to architectural design that promote sustainability, human health and well-being. She is spearheading efforts to model buildings as complex ecosystems that house trillions of diverse microorganisms interacting with each other, with humans, and with their environment. This framework uses next-generation sequencing technology to characterize the “built environment microbiome” and will offer site-specific design solutions to minimize the spread of infectious disease and maximize building energy efficiency.

Jessica Green’s TED talks

More news and ideas from Jessica Green

Global Issues

How data constellations tell a story: MAPPing the TED Fellows network and the conflict in Syria

April 8, 2014

What’s this galaxy-like cluster of dots and lines? It’s the TED Fellows Collaboration Network MAPP, a rich and interactive web that shows the patterns of cross-disciplinary collaboration among TED Fellows over the past four years. This rainbow visualization was created using MAPPR, a cloud-based network mapping tool that Eric Berlow demoed during TED2014. It allows anyone to make shareable, interactive network […]

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