G.T. Bynum is using data-driven outcomes and trackable goals to break down historic lines of division.

TED Fellow Mike Gil conducts field experiments and builds mathematical models to understand how marine ecosystems function.

Timothy Prestero loves a flashy "concept car." But in his own work, he aims to design products for social impact, keeping users in mind.

Looking for the best of the best to join your organization? Fresh thinking on how to find the right fit.

Ayah Bdeir is an engineer and artist, and is the founder of littleBits and karaj, an experimental art, architecture and technology lab in Beirut.

Khalil Ramadi builds medical technologies that leverage the connection between the brain and the gut.

As an MIT grad student, Pranav Mistry invented SixthSense, a wearable device that enables new interactions between the real world and the world of data.

Mileha Soneji believes that having empathy and being able to put yourself in another person's shoes is what makes for great design.

Ajit Narayanan is the inventor of Avaz, an affordable, tablet-based communication device for people who are speech-impaired.

By the end of the 19th century, nearly 40% of American cars were electric. But these vehicles had a few major problems — early car batteries were expensive and inefficient, and the vehicles were twice the price of a gas-powered car. And so for the next several decades, gas-powered cars dominated the market. Can electric cars reclaim their place ...

Ed Boyden is a professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at the MIT Media Lab and the MIT McGovern Institute.

Esther Duflo takes economics out of the lab and into the field to discover the causes of poverty and means to eradicate it.

So much of our world is determined by code -- be it the code of life or a string of 1s and 0s. In this session, “Code Power,” we hear from Linus Torvalds, who changed how code is written, and from Girls Who Code founder Reshma Saujani, who wants to open up the field dramatically. And after examining the particular code of punctuation at the ...

How do we improve in the face of complexity? Atul Gawande has studied this question with a surgeon's precision. He shares what he's found to be the key: having a good coach to provide a more accurate picture of our reality, to instill positive habits of thinking, and to break our actions down and then help us build them back up again. "It's not ...

There's nothing quite like a good night's sleep. What if technology could help us get more out of it? Dan Gartenberg is working on tech that stimulates deep sleep, the most regenerative stage which (among other wonderful things) might help us consolidate our memories and form our personalities. Find out more about how playing sounds that mirror ...

Inventor Anirudh Sharma is the founder of Graviky Labs, an MIT Media Labs spinoff.

Young piano player Joey Alexander has an old soul's gift for jazz.

Inspired by open-source software models, Sage Bionetworks co-founder Stephen Friend builds tools that facilitate research sharing on a massive and revolutionary scale.

What if we could better understand the world's biggest challenges simply by looking at a map? Jack Dangermond, a pioneer in geographic information system (GIS) technology that powers the digital maps people around the world use every day, speaks with TED technology curator Simone Ross about how his team is building a geospatial nervous system: a...

Inveterate tinkerer Peter Haas is the co-founder of AIDG, the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, which connect people to electricity, sanitation and clean water through a combination of business incubation, education, and outreach.

Shane Koyczan makes spoken-word poetry and music. His poem "To This Day" is a powerful story of bullying and survival, illustrated by animators from around the world.

Kate Raworth is passionate about making economics fit for the 21st century.

Yasheng Huang asks us to rethink our ideas about China and other large emerging economies. Lately he’s been asking, Does democracy hinder or promote economic growth?

Our skin is the largest organ in our bodies, with a surface area of about 20 square feet in adults. When we are cut or wounded, our skin begins to repair itself through a complex, well-coordinated process. Sarthak Sinha takes us past the epidermis and into the dermis to investigate this regenerative response.

The Way We Work is an original video series where leaders and thinkers offer practical wisdom and insight into how we can adapt and thrive amid changing workplace conventions. (Made possible with the support of Dropbox)

The curator of HOLAAfrica, Tiffany Kagure Mugo is a wine bar philosopher who pontificates on all things and is willing to learn about everything else.

"Do you know what I mean?" Legendary poet, lyricist and screenwriter Javed Akhtar asks why we seem to be losing our power to use words -- and inspires us to better understand and communicate with one another using this near-magical tool that carries our culture across generations. (In Hindi with English subtitles)

Death, the afterlife, and now sex -- Mary Roach tackles the most pondered and least understood conundrums that have baffled humans for centuries. (She's funny, too.)

Bacteria, bugs, germs -- Morgan Vague loves to get in the dirt (literally) to explore solutions to pressing problems.

Janna Levin is a professor of physics and astronomy at Barnard, where she studies the early universe, chaos, and black holes. She's the author of “How the Universe Got Its Spots" and the novel “A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines.”