Theme: Ni Hao Ma?

‘Ni Hao Ma’ , ‘你好吗’，is a very common Chinese greeting phrase carrying simple but deep meaning.

When one asks oneself ‘ni hao ma’，one starts to realize that there’s endless excitement in exploring the unknown; that one can look forward to personal serenity and happiness.
By walking out of our self, one can also greet others softly with “ni hao ma” which expresses concerns that potentially cross distances between human hearts.
Further, going beyond the individual, the concern for others can even extend to all things in the universe. For instance, with the advent of technology, people will inevitably pose the question ‘ni hao ma’ to new technologies.

We choose this intimate greeting as our theme which is ordinary but may lead us to explore, question and embrace affairs and things ranging from individuals to the great universe.
Corresponding to the lovely theme, we tried to hunt for speakers from various realms. Finally, we got seven guests who had their eyes on different fields for a long time and possessed some worthy ideas to share. We managed to have speakers expert at diverse fields and made sure that the conference was interdisciplinary and multicultural rather than only focusing on certain subject. Also, this TEDx university event wonderfully demonstrated local youth’s power and amazement. For example, we invited Changran Hu, a bachelor student from Tsinghua University who created a stunning AI model to make music, to share his insights into AI music and his inspiring story of conquering the problem with the audience.

During the process of training guests, not only did we successfully work with all the guests to help them deliver an impressing 18-minute talk, but also we managed to make them understand and endorse the core value of TEDx, ideas worth spreading. Many of them told us later that thanks to our event, they learnt how to express what they think and impress others better than before. For us curators, instructing speakers to prepare their talk also brought us lots of valuable experience and made us become more professional TEDx curators.

After submitting our request to our school committee and landing the venue, we started promoting out event by posting advertisement on we-chat platform and posters all around campus. Our event got huge popularity and there were more than 200 hundred people applying to attend the event. Since this event is not allowed to have more than 100 attendees, we designed application form so that we were able to select people who were really into TEDx event and passionate about ideas worth spreading.

On June 3rd, 2018, TEDxTHU Spring Conference was successfully held in Mengmingwei Building, Tsinghua University with 7 guests presenting talks to spark deep thoughts and 90 attendees staying together to benefit from these brilliant ideas and spread them later in their lives.

Ni Hao Ma? While this question is simple and ordinary, starting with it, we can surmount distance between people, affairs and things. With an open mindset, we can go on to question our truer selves, experience a vaster world and explore even greater gripping changes.

Mengminwei Multifunctional Hall
Mengminwei Building
2nd Floor
Beijing, Beijing, 100086
China

Changran Hu

Computer Scientist Student

Changran Hu is a 2014 undergraduate student in the Department of Electronics, Tsinghua University. He joined the future internet Team in 2016 and founded the DeepMusic project to create artificial intelligence music with team members. DeepMusic project won the Champions League in the 2016 Microsoft Campus Elite Program and “President Cup”, “Challenge Cup” in 2017. Kevin also won THU undergraduate special scholarship nomination in 2018. This project received millions of investments.

Longxi Wang

Sex Education Researcher

Wang Longxi, director of the Marie Stopes China project, director of the Beijing Sex Education Research Institute has conducted hundreds of training for the National Health and Family Planning Commission, the China Population Welfare Foundation, the China Youth Development Foundation, other governments, social organizations and different youth groups. He also served as an advisory board member of UNESCO and other international sex education projects, and edited several sex education materials for teenagers. He has been working on the front line of sex education for a long time. On the Internet, he has offered many courses, and made a lot of speeches on many occasions.

Shaokun Zou

Entrepreneur

Zou Shaokun is currently the CEO of Huayu Yuandian. He once worked as a prosecutor in Beijing, undertaking a large number of cases of significance. After this, he shifted his career focus to private equity and worked as a commercial lawyer, specializing in foreign affairs legal services. Both his rich experiences in the legal field and his broad technical vision have made Zou believe in a bright future for the application of artificial intelligence in the legal field. Despite the long road ahead, the Huayu Yuandian team headed by Zou has a concrete goal: to integrate law and technology to increase the productivity of the legal industry, bringing fresh changes to the legal field.

Xuening Bai

Astrophysical Scientist

Bai Xuening is currently a faculty member at Institute for Advanced Study at Tsinghua University and Tsinghua Center for Astrophysics. After graduating from Department of Physics at Tsinghua University with distinction in 2007, he obtained his Ph.D. in Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University and worked at Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC), Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics as a Hubble Fellow and Research Associate. His research interest lies mostly in theoretical and computational astrophysics, including planet formation and plasma astrophysics. He has published over 40 academic papers and gained over 2000 citations.

Yanqin Ouyang

Educator

Ouyang Yanqin，former reporter at Caixin Media. In 2015, she established the “Kido Education”, a non-profit education organization for migrant children. In the summer of 2017, she was invited to the U.S. federal government to participate in a conference. As one of the Left Behind Children, Ouyang devoted herself to explore new ways of non-academic education for migrant workers’ family and young people, providing them with guide and more opportunities.

Yige Li

Columnist

Yige Li is a renowned author and columnist. Her recent publications include Zhu Bu (2017) and Ge Wai (2012). Yige has a track record in writing on major media since 2010. As a Founding Class student at Minerva Schools at KGI, Yige helps reimagine higher education for the 21st century. While studying and working across five continents, she speaks at Global Mobile Internet Conference, Global Education Summit and at some other conferences.

Ying Long

Architect

Dr. Ying Long received his PhDin Urban Planning from School of Architecture, Tsinghua University in2011, with a bachelor degree of environmental science and engineering. Fouryears later he returned to theschool as a facultyand now he is an associate professor in the school. He also established theBeijing City Lab (BCL), one of the first urban research networkusing emerging new data in China, implementing his research interest on urban planning, quantitative urban studies, and applied urban modeling.