Medical scans can produce thousands of images for a single patient in seconds, but how do doctors know what's useful? Scientific visualization expert Anders Ynnerman shows us sophisticated new tools -- like virtual autopsies -- for analyzing our data, and hints at the sci-fi-sounding medical technologies coming up next. This talk contains some g...

Anders Ynnerman studies the fundamental aspects of computer graphics and visualization, in particular large scale and complex data sets with a focus on volume rendering and multi-modal interaction.

Using art and technology, Alexander Tsiaras visualizes the unseen human body.

Carter Emmart uses astronomy and computational modeling to create scientifically accurate, three-dimensional tours of our universe.

JoAnn Kuchera-Morin demos the AlloSphere, a new way to see, hear and interpret scientific data. Dive into the brain, feel electron spin, hear the music of the elements ... and detect previously unseen patterns that could lead to new discoveries.

Nathalie Miebach is a Boston-based artist who translates weather data into complex sculptures and musical scores.

Image-maker Alexander Tsiaras shares a powerful medical visualization, showing human development from conception to birth and beyond. (Some graphic images.)

Ani Liu explores the intersection between technology and sensory perception.

Deb Roy studies how children learn language, and designs machines that learn to communicate in human-like ways. On sabbatical from MIT Media Lab, he's working with the AI company Bluefin Labs.

Giorgia Lupi sees beauty in data. She challenges the impersonality that data communicate, designing engaging visual narratives that re-connect numbers to what they stand for: stories, people, ideas.

On Monday, the INK Conference (which is being held in partnership with TED) and the Rajeev Motwani Foundation hosted US President Barack Obama at an Expo on democracy and open government. The organizers were tasked with the critical job of showcasing new Indian innovations that might improve the relationship between citizens and government. ...

Janet Iwasa's colorful, action-packed 3D animations bring scientific hypotheses to life.

Michelle Borkin's 3-D imaging work uses tools from astronomy to help doctors visualize patients’ hearts. She makes fluid flow visualization pop with 3-D modeling, helping everyone from geophysicists to architects see their data in new ways. You have your fingers in a lot of different pots. What are you up to these days? I’m working on scie...

Human beings: we are approximately 100 trillion cells, and yet so much more. In his talk “Conception to birth -- visualized,” Alexander Tsiaras shows the incredible journey we all take from a single cell to a crying baby born into the world. In a video that makes use of micromagnetic resonance imaging, Tsiaras shows the stunning pace of deve...

3D visualization researcher

As designer Manuel Lima points out in his TED Talk, A visual history of human knowledge, the network has become a powerful way to visualize much of what is going on in the world around us. “Networks really embody notions of decentralization, of interconnectedness, of interdependence,” says Lima. “This way of thinking is critical for us to solve ...

Deepen your understanding of Visualizing Data with these carefully crafted educational exercises that let you get the most out of this TED Studies subject. Activity 1 Watch Nic Marks's TEDTalk "The Happy Planet Index". Marks argues that when we measure only economic indicators such as GDP, we are focusing on the wrong things. What does Marks thi...

We know from the likes of Robert Ballard and Edith Widder (seriously, watch her priceless reaction to seeing close-up footage of a giant squid for the first time) that deep-sea exploring can pay off, big time. But deep-sea expeditions are still far from easy, and sometimes even the best-laid plans still go awry. This week, we heard sad news ...

In his TEDGlobal 2013 talk, Fabian Oefner shares breathtaking images at the nexus of art and science, which beautifully capture unique moments of physical and chemical drama. Formally trained in art and design, Oefner says that he has always been interested in science. Though he can’t pinpoint the exact moment when he became interested in pai...

. Artist Julie Freeman creates kinetic sculptures, compositions and animations from nature-generated data. Think: the motion of fish swimming, or the quiver of moths' wings. This week, Freeman revealed a new piece of work from the TED Fellows stage. Called "We Need Us," it's an online, data-driven artwork that explores the nature of metadata. ...

Here, some staff picks of smart, funny, bizarre and cool stuff on the interwebs this week: Happy Birthday, Upworthy! Here are 11 lessons our friends at Upworthy learned in their first year on the Internet. [Upworthy] Jay Horwitz, media relations director for the Mets, is the Barry Bonds of butt dialing. He frequently booty calls everyone i...

A scary discovery from Arctic ice researcher David Barber -- that hints at wild weather to come. On July 1, David Barber will pack a trunk full of warm clothing and scientific gear and head 1,500 kilometers north, right to the heart of the Arctic. It will be his 35th Arctic field trip. As chief scientist aboard the Amundsen, an icebreaker doubl...

About this event: Is space travel our salvation? Perhaps, but just not in the ways we might have thought. The sky is a deeply rooted metaphor of the infinite, the untouchable celestial realm inhabited by gods. Those who traveled to the moon reacted genuinely in unscripted ways about where they went, what they traveled through, and how moved they were to see Ea...

The massive layer of ice covering Greenland melted at a faster rate in July than at any other time in recorded history, with 97% of the entire ice sheet showing signs of significant thaw. The unprecedented rapid melting, which was captured in images taken from several satellites and released by NASA, alarmed scientists and deepened fears about...

Richard Turere, 13, grew up hating lions. In Nairobi National Park, where he lives, lions roam freely and often targeted his family’s livestock at night. And yet Turere also hated the only solution his community had come up with to stop lion attacks on cows -- killing the majestic creatures. “I had to find a way of solving this problem,” says...

Art so often seeks to capture the beauty of the natural world -- from cave drawings of animals, to paintings of landscapes, to sculptures of the human form in marble, bronze or wood. But in this playlist, find artists and designers who take this to the next level, making art based on the laws of nature and the invisible workings of biology i...

Amy Robinson maxed out her bank account to attend TEDGlobal 2010. While there, she heard Sebastian Seung of MIT give the talk “I am my connectome” and knew she had to talk to him. Two years later, Robinson—the organizer of TEDxHuntsville—saw on Twitter that Seung was launching something new: EyeWire, a game allowing citizen scientists aro...

Science visualization designer

How to Be a Better Human How to answer your biggest questions—with data (w/ Mona Chalabi) November 28, 2022 [00:00:00] Chris Duffy: This is How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy, and this podcast has been fact-checked by professionals. That's important to note because, sometimes as a comedian, I can get a little squishy with my f...

  Super Cells is the new TED Book by Nina Tandon and Mitchell Joachim, who take us on an eye-popping tour of the tantalizing array of inventions already being created with nature’s elemental building block, the cell. They argue that we’re entering a new technological revolution, one in which we can create smarter technologies by making ce...