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).

BOZAR
Ravensteinstraat 23
Brussels, Bruxelles-Capitale, Région de (fr), Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest (nl), 1000
Belgium

FTRSND

"""The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible"" - Arthur C. Clarke. Bétøn took this “second law” as inspiration for the following live musical and visual performance. Bétøn is a project where neither its members nor output are fixed or defined, born out of the music ecosystem FTRSND (future sound). At TEDxBrussels three musicians and one visual artist composed something entirely live, using a wide variety of analogue and digital synthesizers, drum machines and other instruments linked together in a fusion of textures and sounds. Inspired by 'Musique Concrète', the starting point was audio recordings and samples taken from everyday life. Andri Søren Haflidason, Brice Deloose, Francois Gaspard and Rachid Moro are versatile artists that have performed at Ancienne Belgique, Dour, Botanique, MIMA, Recyclart, Fuse, and TEDx. Francois (Palsembleu, Glü, Antilux) creates and builds his own synthesizers (shipped world-wide as Shakmat Modular), Brice (Sparkling Bits, Pattrn) studied acousmatic music and teaches at the SAE Institute, Rachid (Airem) is a new media artist, creating audiovisual installations in both clubs and museums, and Andri (sonøren) is a musician and audiovisual artist known for his diverse live performances. All are members of http://ftrsnd.com"

Angelo VERMEULEN

Angelo Vermeulen is a space systems researcher, biologist, community artist, and TED Senior Fellow. In 2009 he initiated SEAD (Space Ecologies Art and Design), an international network of individuals working in art, science, engineering and advocacy. Its goal is to reshape the future through critical reflection and hands-on experimentation. Biomodd and Seeker are the two most well-known SEAD projects. In 2013 he was crew commander of the NASA funded HI-SEAS Mars simulation in Hawaii. Currently he is in the final stage of his PHD studies at TU Delft creating new concepts for starship development. The guiding question here is: how can we reinvent space exploration in a more open and participatory way?

Beth HEALEY

Beth is a UK trained doctor who has recently returned from Antarctica where she was working as a researcher for the European Space Agency at spaceflight analogue Concordia ‘White Mars’. A fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and patron of Expedition Medicine with an interest in polar environments she has worked as part of logistical and medical support teams for ski mountaineering expeditions and endurance races in Svalbard, Greenland, Siberia and at the North Pole.

Carla DIANA

Carla Diana is a designer, author and educator who explores the impact of future technologies through hands-on experiments in product design and tangible interaction. She has designed a range of products from robots to connected home appliances, and her robot designs have appeared on the covers of Popular Science, Technology Review and the New York Times Sunday Review. She is a faculty member in the Integrated Product Design program at the University of Pennsylvania where she has created some of the country’s first courses on designing smart objects, and an ongoing collaborator with the Socially Intelligent Machines Lab at the University of Texas, Austin. She writes and lectures frequently on the social impact of robotics and emerging technology and created the world’s first children’s book on 3D printing, LEO the Maker Prince. Her seminal essay, “Talking, Walking Objects”, is a good representation of her view of our robotic future.

Dave CORNTHWAITE

Since quitting a job as a really bad graphic designer in 2005, Dave Cornthwaite has developed a successful career based around his passions. At the core, he is a record-breaking adventurer who has travelled over 19,000 miles in eleven journeys as part of his groundbreaking Expedition1000 project: 25 journeys of 1000 miles or more, each using a different form of non-motorised transport. Dave has written three books: the bestselling Life in the Slow Lane, a hapless search for love in Date, and BoardFree, the story of how he left his job to skateboard further than anyone ever had. His uniquely entertaining and motivational keynote presentations have been enjoyed on six continents and his passionate advocacy of the word YES has contributed to the sprouting of countless adventures worldwide, big and small. In between adventures Dave is committed to enabling others to reach their own potential and a life fully realised through social journeys, workshops, group expeditions and mindset-shaping projects. He runs a social enterprise called SayYesMore and a community of doers called The YesTribe, as well as annual Exploring Mindset paddles down the Mississippi. If his enthusiasm for simple living, the power of adventure for good and the glorious pursuit of enjoying Mondays isn't enough to get you ready for a new challenge, nothing will.

David NUTT

David Nutt is a psychiatrist and the Edmund J. Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology in the Division of Brain Science, Dept of Medicine, Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College London. Here he uses a range of brain imaging techniques to explore the causes of addiction and other psychiatric disorders and to search for new treatments. He has published over 450 original research papers, a similar number of reviews and books chapters, eight government reports on drugs and 30 books, including one for the general public, Drugs: without the hot air, that won the Transmission Prize in 2014. He is currently the President of the European Brain Council and Founding Chair of DrugScience.org.uk (formerly the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD). Previously he has been president of the British Association of Psychopharmacology, the British Neuroscience Association and the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology. He broadcasts widely to the general public both on radio and television. In 2010 The Times Eureka science magazine voted him one of the 100 most important figures in British Science, and the only psychiatrist in the list. In 2013 he was awarded the John Maddox Prize from Nature/Sense about Science for standing up for science.

Dominic Eskofier

Dominic is a huge Virtual Reality advocate and enthusiast and has been called “the single most influential European Virtual Reality specialist”. As one of the early pioneers of the modern VR movement, Dominic has been involved in the industry ever since Oculus founder Palmer Luckey showed him the original duct-taped prototype of the Oculus Rift back in 2012, when it was still a garage-made kickstarter project. After this, he became a huge Virtual Reality ambassador: He co-founded and still moderates the largest community for Virtual Reality on the internet, he started the Virtual Reality Germany meetup group and is a co-founder of EUVR – a European non-profit organization that helps push the envelope for European VR devs, manufacturers and consumers. Furthermore, he co-founded his own Virtual Reality company - realities.io - together with two VR experts which they successfully brought through an accelerator program in Silicon Valley at Boost VC, the premier fund and accelerator for Virtual Reality. During this time, he not only learned how VR is driving a ton of innovation in the world's tech hub, but was also able to expand his VR network with personal contacts to the largest internet sites for VR, to developers, to investors and many more. Seeing how rapidly the tech is evolving, he became even more convinced that Virtual Reality will fundamentally change the way humans interact with computers. Recently, he accepted the challenge to work for Nvidia where he is responsible for building their European VR business – so he's now the central spokesperson for all things VR in Europe and is striving to grow the European and global ecosystem.

Eva BREMS

Eva Brems’ field is human rights law. According to Eva, ‘in a small country such as Belgium, the same people have to do everything’. As a result, she has intervened in human rights wearing several hats, sometimes all at once: a professor, a human rights activist and a politician. Eva does not consider the law to be the most important driver of change toward human rights protection. Yet it happens to be her field of expertise, and she is determined to get the most out of it. She does this amongst others by engaging with the European Court of Human Rights with her team of ‘Strasbourg watchers’ that critically comment on judgments, as well as intervene directly in cases. A lot of Eva’s work addresses human rights in relation to gender and cultural diversity. She likes to theorize the universality of human rights. But her preference is for human rights based solutions to concrete multicultural tensions. She is tired of the headscarf debate, in which she has been involved since the 90s, but she cannot avoid it, as it remains relevant. During her short stint in politics, she was the only member of the Belgian Parliament to vote against the face veil ban. Currently she is contemplating the purchase of a ‘burkini’ for in-depth research into the latest debate that has again turned women’s dress choice into a multicultural mine field.

France SPRINGUEL

France Springuel is since many decades the leading cellist in Belgium. When she won the fourth prize of the International Tchaikowsky Competition in Moscow, she took place among the greatest cello-soloists in the international concert world. She also was prizewinner at the TIJI Competition in Bratislava, and got the ‘Prix du jeune soliste’ in Montréal. In 1983 France Springuel was proclaimed ‘Soloist of the Year’ in Canada, Switzerland, France and Belgium, and in 1986 she was the ‘Festival Star’ at the Flanders Festival. France Springuel performed with famous orchestras and conducters in prestigious concertseries in the Lincoln-center in New York, the ‘salle Gaveau’ in Paris, the ‘Hercules hall in München, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Barbican center in London and many others. Famous conductors as Lorin Maazel and Yehudi Menuhin were impressed by her exceptional musical talent. France Springuel is an accomplished technician, but her mastery of technique is fully subordinated to musical expressiveness. Her interpretations are always characterized by their natural quality, their virtuosity and their wealth of subtlety. Her versatility and tha uncontrived directness with wich she brings life to the great romantic concertos of Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Saint-Saens, Dvorak as well as Shostakovitch and Lutoslavsky, have earned praise wherever she plays. She recently recorded work by Schubert and Schumann. Also the recording of the complete works for cello and piano by Beethoven. These releases will be followed by recordings of Mendelssohn, Brahms, Fauré and other classical and romantic composers. France Springuel rare Italian instrument, a Tomaso Balestrieri, dates from 1752.

Jose Maria ARANAZ

Jose Maria Aranaz joined MONUSCO as director of UNJHRO in January 2015. Mr. Aranaz is a lawyer from Spain specialized in Constitutional Law, Human Rights and legal electoral issues with 23 years of professional experience including 20 in field deployments. Prior to that he has been Deputy Chief Human Rights Officer in Sudan and Iraq and a human rights officer in Rwanda and Bosnia. Mr. Aranaz has also been UN Chief Electoral Adviser to Iraq and member of the electoral commission in Afghanistan as well as other electoral experience including assignments in Timor-Lester, Kenya, Bosnia and Guatemala. In addition to his experience with the United Nations Mr. Aranaz has been Legal Adviser and acting director for Africa for International IDEA and legal adviser to the Secretary-General as well as adviser to the Spanish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Mr. Aranaz has also worked in Croatia on humanitarian issues and Burkina Faso on democracy promotion. Before joining MONUSCO, Mr. Aranaz served as Chief of Staff to the UN Office in Burundi.

Kamila MARKRAM

Kamila is a neuroscientist, autism researcher and the co-founder and CEO of Frontiers, a leading Open Access academic publisher and Open Science IT platform on a mission to make science open for the benefit of humanity. As a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne she co-developed the Intense World Theory of Autism which proposes that autism is the result of a “super-brain” that perceives, absorbs and feels too much, causing autistic people to withdraw from an overly intense world. Despite her love of science, Kamila recognized a crucial need for transparency, accessibility and advanced digitization in the publishing process to accelerate innovation and the scientific solutions we need for a sustainable future. This drove her mission to make research freely available and to popularize science and the people behind the discoveries to help create aspirational role models for younger generations. In 2007 she co-founded Frontiers, the first academic publisher to take scholarly publishing entirely online and currently one of the largest and most impactful open-access publishers in the world. She has been named a L’HEBDO Forum top 100 personality, a finalist for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2016, a Stevie Gold Award Winner for Women in Business and is currently shortlisted for the EU Prize for Women Innovators. Kamila co-founded Frontiers with her husband, Henry Markram. He is also a neuroscientist and founder of the Human Brain Project, Europe’s flagship project to simulate the human brain on super- computers. They share a passion for neuroscience, big science and open science, but above all, their love for their multi-cultural family and five children.

Pattie MAES

Pattie Maes is the a Professor at the MIT Media Lab and head of the Program in Media Arts and Sciences. She directs the Media Lab's Fluid Interfaces group which researches new interfaces and experiences for human-machine interaction. Prior to joining the Media Lab, Maes was a visiting professor and a research scientist at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. She holds bachelor's and PhD degrees in computer science from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium. Her areas of expertise are human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence. Maes is the editor of three books, and is an editorial board member and reviewer for numerous professional journals and conferences. She has received several awards: FastCompany named her one of 50 most influential designers (2011). Newsweek magazine named her one of the "100 Americans to watch for" in the year 2000; TIME Digital selected her as a member of the Cyber-Elite, the top 50 technological pioneers of the high-tech world; the World Economic Forum honored her with the title "Global Leader for Tomorrow"; Ars Electronica awarded her the 1995 World Wide Web category prize; and in 2000 she was recognized with the "Lifetime Achievement Award" by the Massachusetts Interactive Media Council. She also received an honorary doctorate from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium. Her 2009 TED talk is among the most watched TED talks ever. In addition to her academic endeavors, Maes has been active as an entrepreneur as cofounder of several venture-backed companies including Firefly Networks (sold to Microsoft) and Open Ratings (sold to Dun & Bradstreet). She remains an advisor and investor to several MIT spinoffs.

Rudolf WERTHEN

Producer of Multimedia and Virtual Presence productions. Specialized in BtoB, BtoC communication programs and major event projects. Designer of visualization projects. Stage director of numerous theater and opera productions on international stages. Previous: Prizewinner of international competitions for violin (a.o. International Queen Elisabeth Competition, Fritz Kreisler Competition (Vienna). World tours as soloist since 1976. Orchestra conductor at a.o. NDR Symphony Orchestra (Hamburg), Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Kanazawa Orchestra (Japan), Turku Symphony (Finland). Founder of "I Fiamminghi". Former music director of Flemish Opera House. CD recordings on EMI, DGG, TELARC, etc

Sang Hoon DEGEIMBRE

Sang Hoon Degeimbre is an award-winning Chef and the owner of L'Air du Temps, Michelin-starred (**) restaurant in Belgium. At the age of five, he was adopted with his younger brother into a large Belgian family with eight other children. By the age of 14, Degeimbre had discovered his love of cooking, and preparing meals for his family not only trained him in the practicalities of cooking for large numbers, but it also ignited his desire for further education. Degeimbre enrolled in hotel school but soon found it wasn’t what he was looking for, so the ambitious young culinarian went on to intern at catering companies and supported himself by working in the wine cellars of local restaurants, where he discovered a passion for wine as he continued to enhance his culinary technique. Degeimbre soon found himself a wine director, and his résumé began expanding with stints at La Truffe Noire in Brussels; Petit Versailles in Gosselies; and La Salicorne, La Hulpe, and L'Eau Vivein Arbre. In 1997, Degeimbre was finally ready to return to the kitchen to open his own restaurant, L'Air du Temps. Though he knew it was an enormous risk to return to the kitchen after so long and without formal chef training, Degeimbre focused on his own developed philosophy to give the restaurant credibility and direction. It’s a philosophy that combines high-concept cuisine, local ingredients (many from the restaurant garden), and innovative use of technology like sous vide, ultrasonic devices, immersion heating, and even ultrasound. Not surprisingly, wine plays a heavy role in the overall experience. With this philosophy driving him, Degeimbre has gained critical acclaim as he continues to push conceptual boundaries in a seamless, inspiring marriage of Belgian and Korean cuisine.

Thomas KLINGER

Thomas Klinger is head of the "Stellarator Dynamics and Transport" Division and since 2005 scientific director of the project "Wendelstein 7-X" as well as member of the Directorate of IPP. The Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) reactor is an experimental stellarator (nuclear fusion reactor) built in Greifswald, Germany, by the Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics (IPP). In April 2001 he was appointed as Scientific Member of the Max-Planck Society and Director at the Max-Planck-Institute of Plasma Physics (IPP) in Greifswald. After a research period in France he obtained his PhD in 1994 with a thesis on non-linear plasma dynamics. As a research assistant at the University of Kiel, Klinger was concerned with drift wave turbulence and nonlinear plasma structures. As visiting scientist he conducted research at the Alfvén Laboratory in Stockholm, the Centre de Physique Théorique and the Université Aix-Provence in Marseille and Max-Planck-Institute of Plasma Physics in Garching. He obtained his habilitation in 1998 with a thesis on the control of plasma instabilities. Shortly thereafter he was appointed Professor of Experimental Physics at the Ernst-Moritz Arndt University Greifswald, where he has headed the Institute of Physics as chair from 2000 till 2001.

Yeba OLAYE

Yeba Olayé is a Belgian-Beninese designer. Two years ago, she left behind her career in management consulting (finance & strategy) to pursue her dream: create an aspirational luxury brand. Starting with nothing but a sketchbook, this former Business Engineer ultimately turned her vision into reality: her beautiful collection ‘Premiere’ and her undefeated passion inspires. Yeba designs for a woman who lives in the present and moves toward achieving herself; a woman that is aspirational and wants to be the lead of her own story.