Theme: The Open Future

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).

Calvary Convention Center
1, Jalan Jalil Perkasa 1
Bukit Jalil
Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur, 57100
Malaysia

Angelica Lim

A computer science graduate from Simon Fraser University, Canada, Angelica completed her doctorate in Kyoto University, where she built a new breed of robot emotion system, based on the knowledge of human infant development. She was the first employee at Aldebaran Japan working on the new humanoid robot, Pepper. Also part of the Okuno Speech Media Processing Lab in Kyoto University, she has won awards for her work, including signal processing and entertainment robotics, and aims to develop human-inspired models of emotions and intelligence in robots.

Balbir Singh

Professor

Balbir Singh, Ph.D., is the Director of the Malaria Research Centre at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia. He received his graduate degree in Biochemistry, his M.Sc. in Medical Entomology and Applied Parasitology, and his Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom. He started working on malaria in 1984 at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, initially as a postdoctoral Research Assistant on cytoadherence in Plasmodium falciparum and later as a Beit Medical Fellow. He returned to Malaysia in 1992 to take up a lectureship at Universiti Sains Malaysia in 1992 before moving to Universiti Malaysia Sarawak in 1999.

Danny Quah

Danny Quah is Professor of Economics and International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Director of the Southeast Asia Centre at LSE’s new Institute of Global Affairs. He had previously served as LSE’s Head of Department for Economics and Council Member on Malaysia’s National Economic Advisory Council. Quah is Tan Chin Tuan Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore, and lectures regularly at Peking University. He studied at Princeton, Minnesota, and Harvard, and was Assistant Professor in the Economics Department at MIT before joining LSE. Quah gave the third LSE-NUS lecture in 2013, a TEDxLSE lecture in 2012, and the Inaugural LSE Big Questions Lecture in 2011. His current research focuses on the shifting global economy and the rise of the east.

Joon Won Jeong

Joongwon Jeong is a South Korean artist, best known for his stunningly realistic portraits. While studying in Hongik University, Joongwon he trained himself in sculpturing, photography, graphic design, film-making and even explored stage acting. \Joongwon’s works are praised by art connoisseurs for being notably different from those of his fellow hyperrealists. Inspired by ancient statues or old drawings and imagining how they might have looked like in real life, he creates photo-realistic images of people that predate the coloured photographs such as Homer, Giluiano de Medici and Seneca, introducing the spectators to, as the artist terms it, ‘the phantasma of Simulacra’. Joongwon is currently completing the MFA programme on painting at Hongik University as well as showing his work in and outside the country. He is also teaching a course on figurative painting in Seoul.

JoonWon Jeong

Joongwon Jeong is a South Korean artist, best known for his stunningly realistic portraits. While studying in Hongik University, Joongwon he trained himself in sculpturing, photography, graphic design, film-making and even explored stage acting. In 2011, he introduced a body of figurative paintings including ‘The Apotheosis of Shakespeare’ which won him the first prize in the Fine Art at Beaux-Arts 2011 Awards. He also pursued his passion for realism and began creating hyperrealistic portraits. Joongwon’s works are praised by art connoisseurs for being notably different from those of his fellow hyperrealists. Inspired by ancient statues or old drawings and imagining how they might have looked like in real life, he creates photo-realistic images of people that predate the coloured photographs such as Homer, Giluiano de Medici and Seneca, introducing the spectators to, as the artist terms it, ‘the phantasma of Simulacra’.

Kenn Ross

Liva Sreedharan

Program Officer at Tenaganita

Liva Sreedharan is currently a Program Officer on the Anti-Trafficking Team at Tenaganita, a non-governmental organization in Malaysia. Her primary area of work is managing a hotline for trafficked victims, rescuing victims who have been trafficked for sex work, domestic work, and the fishing industry, and facilitating legal aid for survivors of trafficking. She received a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology and Mass Communication from Uppper Iowa University and later obtained her Master’s Degree in Criminology and Forensic Psychology from Midddlesex University in London. She was selected to present a paper on ‘Cultural Cleansing of the Baha’i Community’ in Iran at the International Critical Criminology Conference in Barcelona in 2009, and the sole Humphrey Fellow representing Malaysia to the USA from 2013 to 2014.

Magdelene Ho

Musically talented Magdalene has been playing the piano since she was four, is one of the few privileged recipients of the Purcell Scholarship. She was also mentioned in a video tribute for ‘Walking in the Air’ by English composer Howard Blake, who was impressed with her amazing ability to sight-read music scores. Magdalene has performed at numerous fund-raising recitals, which were successful enough to allow her to currently pursue the first three years of her scholarship at the Purcell School for Young Musicians in London.

Stefen Chow

Umapagan Ampikaipakan

Radio Personality

Umapagan is a media moll. You can find him almost everywhere – from newsprint to the world wide web, from radio to television – where he contemplates everything from the idiosyncrasies of Malaysian politics to his unnatural obsession with the written word. Blessed with a critic’s pen and a reader’s enthusiasm, Uma (as he is fondly known), is one of our foremost literary voices. His long-running radio show, Bookmark on BFM89.9, is Malaysia’s pre-eminent broadcast on all things book related. (Being the only show of its kind on Malaysian airwaves helps with said pre-eminence.) He is also a film critic with ‘Uma + Joe at the Movies’, a pop-culture columnist for #edGY, and the co-host of BFM89.9′s drive time radio show, The Evening Edition. And when he’s not doing all of that, Umapagan Ampikaipakan also runs The Cooler Lumpur Festival, KL’s (now) yearly gathering of literary minds and thought leaders and Asia’s first and only festival of ideas.