Vanessa Ruiz documents the intersection of medical illustration and contemporary art.

David Bolinsky and his team illustrate scientific and medical concepts with high-drama animation. You've never seen the life of a cell quite like this.

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

Vanessa Ruiz takes us on an illustrated journey of human anatomical art over the centuries, sharing captivating images that bring this visual science -- and the contemporary artists inspired by it -- to life. "Anatomical art has the power to reach far beyond the pages of a medical textbook," she says, "connecting our innermost selves with our bo...

Ninety-nine percent of cancer drugs never make it to tumors, getting washed out of the body before they have time to do their job. How can we better deliver life-saving drugs? Cancer researcher Joy Wolfram shares cutting-edge medical research into nanoparticles -- tiny particles that could be used to deliver drugs accurately to tumors -- and exp...

Biologist, poet and fledgling entrepreneur Ivana Gadjanski has worked on using animal toxins as a possible treatment for MS, and is growing bones and cartilage in dishes. She has also published two books of poetry in Serbia. Now she’s developing Pubsonic, an online research tool that allows users to access free medical journal papers via a graph...

Jimmy Lin's network helps patients with rare genetic disorders connect with the equally rare researcher who's working on their exact problem. Despite the medical advances we’ve witnessed over the past century or so, rare diseases are still paradoxically common. A disease is considered rare when it affects fewer than 200,000 people in the United...

Oncologist and writer Siddhartha Mukherjee suggests that what doctors fight against isn't so much disease -- it's their own biases. In the summer of 2003, I finished my three-year residency in internal medicine and began a fellowship in oncology. It was an exhilarating time. The Human Genome Project had laid the foundation for the new science o...

As anyone who’s ever recovered from an injury knows, physical therapy can be painful, boring and slow. TED Fellow Cosmin Mihaiu is out to change that with MIRA, software that disguises physical therapy exercises as fun-to-play videogames. Here’s how it works. Unlikely -- fun! -- physical therapy. “Traditionally, a patient doing physical therapy...

Researchers at Johns Hopkins think they might have come up with a novel way to manage blood pressure. Hint: Microbes. It’s one of the most eye-opening tangents in recent medical research: Scientists have found that the bacteria living in your gut have an unexpected influence over the rest of your body. The three pounds of microbes we host can a...

Why an environmental chemist in Holland is betting that both farming and hospitals might be improved with the use of a fancy form of water. Something funny happens to water when you spray it through an electrical field: The water can now fight microbes. (Or something in the water can.) Plasma-activated water (PAW) is a fascinating substance tha...

In the daily rush to save lives, hospitals produce a surprising amount of toxic waste. One environmental advocate’s quest to detox the healthcare sector. When Gary Cohen runs down the list of harmful toxins that hospitals spew into the environment, he knows it can deliver a shock -- especially to the people who run the hospitals. “I think the c...

Paleo-oncologist Katie Hunt has a personal connection to the hunt for cancer's earliest appearance in humans. When archeologist Katie Hunt was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at 22, it catalyzed her curiosity about cancer -- and she soon found evidence that this modern killer is a surprisingly ancient disease. Poring over old texts and past arche...

The TED Fellows program turns 10 in 2019 -- and to mark this important milestone, we're excited to kick off the year of celebration by announcing the impressive new group of TED2019 Fellows and Senior Fellows! This year's TED Fellows class represents 12 countries across four continents; they're leaders in their fields -- ranging from astrody...

Mental health suffers from a major image problem. One in every four people experiences mental health issues -- yet more than 40 percent of countries worldwide have no mental health policy. Across the board it seems like we have no idea how to talk about it respectfully and responsibly. Stigma and discrimination are the two biggest obstacles t...

Wise words and solid advice from BJ Miller, who thinks deeply about the end of life as head of the Zen Hospice Project. Death is an uncomfortable topic. Although we’re well-acquainted with platitudes that remind us to seize the moment and live each day like it’s our last, few of us devote real time to envisioning the end of our lives -- or the ...

Dying and death confront every new doctor and nurse. In this book excerpt, Atul Gawande asks: Why are we not trained to cope with mortality? I learned about a lot of things in medical school, but mortality wasn’t one of them. I was given a dry, leathery corpse to dissect in my first term -- but that was solely a way to learn about human anatomy...

“Cookies” and “activism” -- those words don’t usually go together. But self-taught baker Jasmine Cho has managed to turn her cookies into canvases to tell deliciously compelling true stories about Asian-American changemakers. The child of Korean immigrant parents, Cho says she grew up in Los Angeles feeling part of a demographic that was “invis...

3D animation can bring scientific hypotheses to life. Molecular biologist (and TED Fellow) Janet Iwasa introduces a new open-source animation software designed just for scientists.

Welcome the class of TED2017 Fellows! Representing 12 countries, one tribal nation and an incredible range of disciplines, this year's Fellows are all leaders in their fields who constantly find new ways to collaborate and bring about positive change. Among those selected are an Ecuadorian neurobiologist working to uncover the neural circuit...

The TED Fellows program is excited to announce the new group of TED2018 Fellows and Senior Fellows. Representing a wide range of disciplines and countries -- including, for the first time in the program, Syria, Thailand and Ukraine -- this year's TED Fellows are rising stars in their fields, each with a bold, original approach to address...

After a traumatic brain injury, it sometimes happens that the brain can repair itself, building new brain cells to replace damaged ones. But the repair doesn't happen quickly enough to allow recovery from degenerative conditions like motor neuron disease (also known as Lou Gehrig's disease or ALS). Siddharthan Chandran walks through some new tec...

Inequality is a complicated term. It can be applied to so many factors, for one thing. There's income inequality, asset inequality, gender inequality, social, class, political ... you name it, someone, somewhere likely feels (and is) hard done by. And, for all the focus that Thomas Piketty has gained for his analysis of a new, ever-diverging glo...

With candor and cunning, sex historian Kate Lister chronicles the curious journey of an ancient, honest word with innocent origins and a now-scandalous connotation in this uproarious love letter to etymology, queens, cows and all things "cunt." (This talk contains mature language.)

"Tipping Point" author Malcolm Gladwell gets inside the food industry's pursuit of the perfect spaghetti sauce -- and makes a larger argument about the nature of choice and happiness.

Cambridge researcher Aubrey de Grey argues that aging is merely a disease -- and a curable one at that. Humans age in seven basic ways, he says, all of which can be averted.

The coronavirus brought much of the world to a standstill, dropping carbon emissions by five percent. Al Gore says keeping those rates down is now up to us. In this illuminating interview, he discusses how the steadily declining cost of wind and solar energy will transform manufacturing, transportation and agriculture, offer a cheaper alternativ...