Theme: Duality

Our event brings varied, challenging and thought-provoking minds together to share ideas on a world-class stage in the rugged mountains of Northern Utah.
TEDxUSU 2015 is an independently organized TED event focused on ideas worth spreading. Now in its fourth year, the three-session program includes 12 presentations, performances and recorded TEDTalks. TEDxUSU is a joining of both USU-based presenters as well as community, national and international speakers with a goal of creating a sense of Utah State University on the world stage.

Utah State University
Manon Caine Russell Kathryn Caine Wanlass Performance Hall
Logan, Utah, 84322
United States

Beth Fauth

Associate Professor - USU Department of Family, Consumer, and Human Development

Beth (Elizabeth) Fauth received her Bachelors of Science in Psychology at Syracuse University and her Masters and PhD in Human Development at Penn State University. She is currently an associate professor in the Family, Consumer, and Human Development at Utah State University. Beth teaches undergraduate and graduate classes in gerontology, and is the coordinator of the gerontology certificate program at USU. She conducts research on the integration between well-being and social support and the transition into needing assistance in late life. She also conducts research on stress and well-being in family caregivers of persons with dementia, evaluates psychoeducational interventions for dementia caregivers, and has an ongoing study of staff interactions, emotions, and activities in dementia care settings. Beth has received awards for excellence in teaching and research, such as the Researcher of the Year Award in her department and the 2010 Teacher of the Year Award.

Brady Parks

Songwriter/performer - The National Parks

Brady Parks is the frontman for indie-folk-pop band, The National Parks. Brady is a self-taught songwriter who began playing shows as a soloist in the Provo music scene in 2011. The National Parks has amassed over 2 million Spotify streams, has played shows in over 40 cities nationwide, and has seen their music chart on Billboard and iTunes.

Johan du Toit

Professor of Ecology

Johan’s origins are in southern Africa, having been born and raised in rural Zimbabwe where he developed an interest for his natural environment. Directly after his PhD through Wits University in Johannesburg, he spent a postdoctoral stint at USU before returning to his roots to take up a faculty position at the University of Zimbabwe. After nine adventurous years there, he became Director of the Mammal Research Institute at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. He has also served for ten years as scientific advisor to the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research. In 2005, he was offered the opportunity to return to USU as the head of a new department of Wildland Resources, which he did for seven years. He has now returned to research and teaching as a member of the USU faculty, with his focus being the ecology and conservation of large mammals in terrestrial ecosystems.

Luciana Borio

Acting Chief Scientist; Assistant Commissioner for Counterterrorism Policy, US Food and Drug Administration

Dr. Luciana Borio is FDA’s acting chief scientist. In this capacity, she is responsible for leading and coordinating FDA’s cross-cutting scientific and public health efforts. Dr. Luciana Borio is FDA’s acting chief scientist. In this capacity, she is responsible for leading and coordinating FDA’s cross-cutting scientific and public health efforts.

Lynne McNeill

Folklorist

Lynne S. McNeill was born and raised in northern California, and if she had known what a folklorist was when she was a child, she’d have wanted to be one when she grew up. Happily, she is a folklorist now, teaching folklore classes at Utah State University and specializing in digital culture, legend, and belief. Lynne co-directs the Digital Folklore Project, serves as director of the online folklore minor and as reviews editor for the journal Contemporary Legend, and tweets as an old, male folklorist named Wayland Hand. She is the author of Folklore Rules, the most fabulous introductory text book you’ll ever read (assuming that you 1: read it some day, and 2: avoid other really fabulous textbooks). Lynne has appeared on Animal Planet and the Food Network, and has been a repeat guest on PRI’s RadioWest. She is a collector of wines and loves to travel.

Mark Damen

Professor of History

Mark Damen has studied the ancient world since eighth grade when he took a Latin class and realized that English is best understood from the outside looking in. After all, how can you grasp the concept of color if you see only red? Likewise, the best way to know your own language is by comparing it to others, and the more remote, the wider the perspective. Thus began a love of all things old. Many years of acting and working in theatre naturally blended with that into a life of work on ancient drama. Mark’s research on classical Greek and Roman performance and playwriting has appeared in premier journals in the field of Classics, but teaching and passing on his passion for antiquity have always been equally important to him. In students, he believes, lies the future of the past.

Michael Bingham

Teaching Artist at Mountain Crest High School

Michael J. Bingham serves in the Utah Art Educators Association as the state representative for high school art teachers. He is also working to establish a nonprofit art organization to ennoble more individuals with disabilities, providing them with greater opportunities for creative expression. Additionally, Michael continues to create his own art in a variety of styles and mediums.

Rob Davies

Professor

Originally hailing from the Black Hills of South Dakota, Dr. Robert Davies is a Utah-trained physicist and educator. Together with the Fry Street Quartet and composer Laura Kaminsky, Rob is the co-creator of The Crossroads Project, a unique project merging performance art and performance science on the topic of climate change and global sustainability. They have performed for audiences across the United States, Mexico and Brazil. Rob is an associate of the Utah Climate Center and teaches physics and climate at Utah State University, where he is adjunct professor in the department of Plants, Soils, and Climate. He previously studied and taught at Whitman College and Oxford University, worked as project scientist at USU’s Space Dynamics Laboratory, served as technical liaison for NASA on the International Space Station Project in Moscow, and served as an officer and meteorologist in the Air Force.

Rob Gillies

Director - Utah Climate Center

Robert Gillies grew up in Scotland. He received his masters in geography from the University of Glasgow. He joined the faculty of Utah State in 1996. Ten years later, he became the director of the Utah Climate Center, where he set a new course by making its database of Utah climate information available online. Rob has conducted numerous presentations within the state of Utah, as well as at national and international venues in the science behind inversion prediction, climate precipitation cycles, and global climate change.

Salif Mahamane

Doctoral Student - Experimental and Applied Psychological Science (EAPS) program; Multisensory Cognition Lab Manager

Salif is currently a doctoral student in the Experimental and Applied Psychological Program at USU. On a day-to-day basis he manages Dr. Kerry Jordan’s Multisensory Cognition Lab. His research investigates cognitive and neurophysiological outcomes of exposure to, and immersion in, natural environments. Salif loves long walks in the mountains, hunting, fishing, camping, gardening, and planning his future homestead. Most of all, he loves having no idea whatsoever as to how to parent his two-year-old son, but trying anyway.

Vonda Jump

Senior Research Scientist

Vonda Jump Norman is a researcher in the Research and Evaluation Division of the Center for Persons with Disabilities in the College of Education, with an emphasis on systems of care affecting infants in orphanages, parent-child relationships during the first years of a child’s life, and an interest in the intersection of physical and mental health. She is the Principal Investigator of several projects, including a Department of Defense project to investigate the effects of infant massage on father-infant relationships on military installations with high rates of deployment to Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Vonda has conducted training and/or research in orphanages in Ecuador, Haiti, India, and Russia. “What inspires me in my field is visiting an orphanage where caregivers work so hard and have so little education and means, and they are there every day taking care of babies,” Vonda said.